In this lesson, I want to share 5 of these strategies or secrets for improving your listening skills. So let's get right to it.
1. Mindset
The way that you think, whether it's positive or negative, makes a huge difference in your abilities to take action or to understand what you're hearing. So if you go into a situation with a negative mindset, trust me, you won't do as well and you won't feel as confident. If you go into a situation with the positive mindset, "yes I can do it. I am able to understand what I hear in English. I do have the skills and I have the motivation to improve my skills. I see myself improving every day". These are the kinds of phrases, these are the kinds of ideas that I want for you to have in your mind as you approach situations in English where you want to understand what you hear. So my first tip is to start with the positive mindset. I believe you can do it. You can understand what you hear in English. And I'm here to help you so that you can even improve even more and build you confidence, so that you can interact with success in any English speaking conversation. Alright, that's why we are here.
The way that you think, whether it's positive or negative, makes a huge difference in your abilities to take action or to understand what you're hearing. So if you go into a situation with a negative mindset, trust me, you won't do as well and you won't feel as confident. If you go into a situation with the positive mindset, "yes I can do it. I am able to understand what I hear in English. I do have the skills and I have the motivation to improve my skills. I see myself improving every day". These are the kinds of phrases, these are the kinds of ideas that I want for you to have in your mind as you approach situations in English where you want to understand what you hear. So my first tip is to start with the positive mindset. I believe you can do it. You can understand what you hear in English. And I'm here to help you so that you can even improve even more and build you confidence, so that you can interact with success in any English speaking conversation. Alright, that's why we are here.
2. Listen, read and speak
When you listen, it's very helpful if you can use other activities to develop your listening skill. I would compare this to cross-training for a sport. Let say you want to be really good at soccer. Alright, in the rest of the world football, but in the US we call it soccer. So, you might play a lot of soccer to get good at soccer. Of course, that's obvious right. But some people will encourage you to cross-train. Maybe try a different sport that will increase your endurance, or your breathing, your lung capacity. Maybe you want to try swimming. It's a totally different sport, but it should help your overall physical capabilities. I recommend finding materials where you can listen and read them. So in these three ways you're going to develop your listening skills, because reading will help you identify the connection between what you hear and what you read. And speaking, well, if you can say a sound you'll able to hear it better. I hope that make sense but trust me that this kind of cross-training will really help your listening skills.
3. Diversity
I encourage you to listen to a diverse set of materials. Try some listening material that are short, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, and then as you advance, try materials that are longer. 20 minutes, 30 minutes. a full movie of an hour or two. So a diversity of length of materials and shorter-length materials are better for repeating over and over. If you have a 3-minute video, you could repeat that 5 times and you'have still only studied for 15 minutes. So it's very east to do. Another point about diversity is I encourage you to begin listening to materials that are interesting to you, that fit within your interests. So if you're interested in soccer, listen to materials about soccer or listen to an actual soccer game with english sport casters or announcers. But, I want you to push yourself to go outside of your interests and listen to a diverse range of materials. Okay. If you are an artist, I want you to find science materials to listen too. You could listen to the NPR radio, that's the National Public Radio. Or the BBC radio, the British Broadcasting.. What is it.. Channel, I think. There you are going to find topics on science, technology, business, health, all different kinds of topics that you can explore to listen to a diverse range of materials. Why should you do this? Because of vocabulary. I want you to be familiar with a wide range of vocabulary. So again, begin with topics that motivate you, that you're really interested in. But when you're ready for a challenge, try materials that you wouldn't naturally be drawn to. Maybe something in the different field or a different topic than you would usually choose. Now, that'll keep things fresh. That will challenge you.
4. Guess first
Why would you guess first? We want to be sure. We want to have concrete, 100% confidence in what we are hearing, right? Well, actually no. I want you to guess what you think you are going to hear based on the situation or the material that you expect. So let's say you are listening to one of my video lessons, I want you to look at the title first and take 3 seconds to guess what you are going to hear in that video. This activates your brain and you start thinking about vocabulary that you can expect and that way that vocabulary is fresh in your mind and your brain doesn't work so hard to dig it up. So before you enter conversation at a specific event or a specific place with a certain person, I want you to guess what do you think that person might want to talk about. That will help you to be prepared mentally for that conversation or for the material, like my videos.
Why would you guess first? We want to be sure. We want to have concrete, 100% confidence in what we are hearing, right? Well, actually no. I want you to guess what you think you are going to hear based on the situation or the material that you expect. So let's say you are listening to one of my video lessons, I want you to look at the title first and take 3 seconds to guess what you are going to hear in that video. This activates your brain and you start thinking about vocabulary that you can expect and that way that vocabulary is fresh in your mind and your brain doesn't work so hard to dig it up. So before you enter conversation at a specific event or a specific place with a certain person, I want you to guess what do you think that person might want to talk about. That will help you to be prepared mentally for that conversation or for the material, like my videos.
5. Understand the big ideas
What I mean by this is I want to help you to understand what's special about the structure of English and the way that we speak. What are the patterns? If we can start to identify the patterns of English, then when you want to understand a specific conversation, a specific phrase or a specific word, you are going to be able to place that within the framework or the structure of English. And you'll be able to organize these new learnings much more easily. You will have a place to put all the new ideas, the new vocabulary and the new phrases. So the first thing that I want you to think about is the big picture, or the framework of English. And in my course, I describe this is more detail. But what I mean is we have to get used to things like rhythm of English, how we chunk the phrases together. And sometimes it has nothing to do with punctuation like period or commas, although sometimes it does. We have to get used to the stress that we put on a certain part of the phrase. The stress that we put on certain syllables in a word. We have to get used to how in English we have key content words and we have weaker a function words. I'll explain all of this in my full course. We have to get used to also the sounds that we are going to hear within the words. That maybe you don't have in your native language. Like the "TH" sound or the "R" or the "L" or maybe the "P" or the "B" sound. I know in other languages these may not exist. So this is what I call getting used to the big picture, understanding the big picture. So that you have a framework to understand how English is special. And when you learn new ideas or new words, you can organize all of these things on your brain. And when we organize, it helps us to remember.
So these are 5 tips for listening success. See you in the next lesson.