Efficiency Advice on Generate Silence

[jbrock]

I teach Spanish. Every semester students submit an audio recording of them using the language.

Here is how I go about correcting their grammar and pronunciation:
1. I import their recording into Audacity.
2. I have set up a keyboard shortcut (Shift + L) for Generate Silence.
3. About every 5-10 seconds in the recording, basically between their sentences, I insert 5 seconds of silence using my keyboard shortcut. To do this I move the cursor line forward with the right arrow key. When I get to a small gap between sentences, I then hit Shift + L then Enter to insert 5 seconds of silence.
4. After inserting these gaps of silence, I then listen to the recording with my recording headset. In the 5 second gaps of silence I correct their pronunciation and grammar.
5. After this point, I export to .ogg and email the audio file with the corrections to them.

I have up to about 75 students every semester. Each recording is 3 to 5 minutes in length. As you would imagine the part where I insert silence every 5-10 seconds gets a little tedious and takes a long time.

I tried to make multiple cursor lines in the recording at once to then hit Shift + L then Enter once. However, I was unsuccessful. If anyone has any ideas on how inserting all of these silent segments could be made more efficient, I will be quite grateful. Thank you

[steve]

You could copy 5 seconds of silence (Select 5 seconds of silence and Ctrl+C), then to insert silence, all you need to do is place the cursor where you want the silence and paste it (Ctrl+V)

[jbrock]

You could copy 5 seconds of silence (Select 5 seconds of silence and Ctrl+C), then to insert silence, all you need to do is place the cursor where you want the silence and paste it (Ctrl+V)

Thanks so much for that input. I will try implementing that instead. It definitely sounds more efficient.