Listening

September 16, 2010

Listening And Imitating

Want an easy exercise you can regularly do for speaking practice? Try listening and imitating.

Just as the name implies, this refers to listening to a sample of the language, whether it be a song lyric, a passage from a speech or a line you see in a foreign language film. Listen intently to that particular line and do your best imitation aloud.

Don’t just state it blandly. Instead, imitate the tone, the pronunciation and the inflections used in the lines you’re mimicking. Copy the speed of the original speaker, as well as the pauses they include in their speaking. Those small details, after all, usually make communication from native speakers much clearer.

If you’re copying from a video, such as a movie or a recorded speech, imitate the gestures and facial expressions as well. Those non-verbal elements of language can communicate just as much as the words that come out of your mouth.

This practice is an excellent supplement for your regular language software lessons, especially as an aid to improving your pronunciation and non-verbal communication. Additionally, this is a great way to build up an even bigger vocabulary, as it potentially exposes you to plenty of new words used in the formation of full sentences.

Filed under: Language Learning — Tags: language practice, listening, practice exercises

July 12, 2009

How To Listen Your Way To Better Language Learning

One research study in New Zealand has found strong evidence that extensive listening to a foreign language, in whatever form, makes a huge difference in a person’s overall ability to quickly acquire a particular vernacular. That means immersion activities such as listening to natives in conversation or enjoying songs can accelerate your overall results in language learning.

While this has long been prescribed by many language teachers, the study brings the activity to the forefront, arguing that it’s one of the most natural and indispensable strategies that you can employ in increasing your overall language facility. In fact, the researchers go so far as to suggest that it is possible to acquire the language even without formal training using this method.

There is no doubt that listening can help you develop your communication skills. If you’d like to make speedy and long-lasting gains, however, we highly recommend employing formal lessons, like you can get from a language software or a complete course book.

According to the research, the brain automatically makes the necessary neural connections to make sense of unfamiliar sounds, eventually allowing you to gain some amount of comprehension for a language even if you do start out from a blank slate. Coupled with the strategic training that language lessons can provide, it is highly likely that your overall improvement will be much more pronounced.

Filed under: Language Learning,Language Learning Software,Language Program,Language Software — Tags: listening, listening skills, listening techniques

June 9, 2009

Listening Is Learning: Accents And Sounds

When it comes to developing language skills, listening is one of the most under-rated activities available to you. While it may not seem like it, listening to materials spoken in the exact language you are trying to master.

Simply put, if you cannot hear the way sounds are produced, you can never learn how to produce the same sound. As such, it’s very important to supplement written courses, such as books and language software, with real world listening experience, whether you achieve that face-to-face with native speakers or through the media with movies and songs.

That’s one of the reasons why it becomes difficult to learn a new language whose accent is very much different from your own. When we listen, we tend to have expectations about what we will hear and are trained in it for years with our own first language. As such, English speakers tend to have a near-impossible time trying to make out the seemingly lightning fast accents of Chinese speakers – those sounds are completely unfamiliar to them.

The more you immerse yourself in a language, listening to materials made in it, the more familiar those strange sounds become. Repeated hearing will eventually entrench specific sounds into your mental phonetic library. Soon, it becomes natural to expect to hear them, making the process of learning vocabulary and pronunciation easier than it usually is.

Filed under: English Learning,Language Learning — Tags: art of listening, learning by listening, listening

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Listening And Imitating

How To Listen Your Way To Better Language Learning

Listening Is Learning: Accents And Sounds