Hi This is Abbe, I hope you’re doing well.
In this video, I want to share
another method you can use to practice English
while doing something you actually enjoy.
In particular, this method will
help you improve your listening skills.
Before getting started,
I recommend that you subscribe to our channel
because we put out a lot of free videos and hacks
to help you improve your English skills!
Now, As for today’s topic.
You've probably listened to some music in English recently, haven’t you?
I thought so.
Songs in English can be heard all over the world nowadays.
If you switch on the radio right now,
there is a high likelihood
that what you hear will be in English.
You might have never thought about it before,
but this is a great opportunity for you
to practice your listening skills!
Now, I’m sure some of you will point out this can be pretty difficult to do
because you don’t understand many of the lyrics,
even if it's a song you love.
This is totally normal.
I’m here to give you the learning technique that will enable you
to develop your ear while listening to your favorite songs.
Let me explain in more detail:
1. Pick songs that you like
This sounds obvious,
but it is very important for your motivation!
You should start with an English song or artist that you already know and like.
The music genre where you pick is very important as well.
Make sure that you select a song that has fairly clear lyrics.
Fans of rap or metal might find it hard to understand the lyrics to their favorite songs!
But of course, if you’re up for a challenge, go for it!
There is a large selection of music videos
available to you on MosaLingua Web
that’s where I recommand getting started
if you don’t already have a song in mind.
You will find a button below this video
that will take you to the music library.
Next: Listen to the song and try to sing along
Once you pick a song you like, you can start listening to it
without reading the lyrics.
What you want to do in this step is to focus on what you hear,
and not what you understand.
This way, you'll get your ear used to hearing English sounds.
I also recommend singing along while you listen,
or humming if you are not too sure of the words!
The idea here is to avoid reading altogether,
so that this does not interfere with
your understanding or your pronunciation development.
It’s also important to note down
all of the words or expressions you recognized,
as this will be an important indicator of progress later on.
The next step consists of... Surprise!
Looking up and reading through the lyrics of the song.
Often, the meaning of the lyrics is actually quite different from what you might have thought.
That surprise is often great motivation
to keep trying this technic
with other songs you might be curious about.
You need to make sure that you only read the lyrics
after you’ve become fairly familiar with the song.
This is the step where you will fill in
all the gaps of the things
that you did not understand during listening,
but try your best to understand
as much as possible before you get to this point.
You will find the lyrics to all of the songs in MosaLingua Web
just underneath each video.
Otherwise, just type “lyrics”
and the name of the song into your favorite search engine,
and you will find them in no time.
While listening to your song and reading its lyrics,
make sure you create flashcards for words or expressions you don’t know.
One thing you should know about the vocab you will find in mosts songs
is that it includes a lot of slang words
and idiomatic expressions.
You might not want to include all of these in your learning stack.
Make sure to focus only on the vocabulary that
you think you will need or that you find particularly important.
And last but not least: Listen again and again and again
Practice makes perfect!
After a few listening sessions,
you will get to know the lyrics of the song pretty well
and you will be able to sing along
AND understand the meaning.
Try to imitate the singer as much as you can
so that you also improve your pronunciation during this process.
The more you repeat it, the more easily you will remember
these new words and their correct pronunciation.
You’ll notice that once you learn them,
you’ll start to hear these new words everywhere,
especially in other songs!
Overall, music is a great way to improve your English Skills
because the technic is easy to use and best of all, it's fun!
Introduce it gradually into your learning activities
and you will see how quickly your skills will start to improve.
That’s it for this video, I hope you enjoyed it.
I’ll see you very soon for another one.
And until then, happy learning, and happy listening!