remember you need repetition and novelty after a while if you're listening to the same thing over
and over again the brain is picking up less and less and less hi there steve kaufman here
today i want to talk about listening skills listening skills how to get better at listening
how to use listening to learn a language remember if you enjoy these videos please subscribe click
on the bell for notifications so as you know i consider input listening and reading to being
to be the keys to learning a language you have to get the language into you it has to come from
outside you have to get your brain used to a new language this is best achieved through listening
and reading reading helps you acquire more words but listening gets your brain used to the language
and of course listening comprehension is a tremendously important skill because if you're
speaking to someone and we all want to speak in the language if you can't understand what
they're saying what the other person is saying then it's very uncomfortable and you can't have
a very meaningful conversation so how do you use listening to get better in the language and
what are the tips to get better at listening first of all
it depends on each each person but i cannot sit down and just listen if i were to sit
and i've tried it so i have whatever lesson i'm listening to and i sit down in a comfortable chair
and i say i'm going to spend half an hour listening to this podcast or whatever it
might be i'm incapable of doing that my mind mind wanders so i can't concentrate
if i have dedicated study time then i'm going to read or i'm going to work on my ipad with link
so where does the listing come in listening has the
tremendous advantage that we can do it wherever we are i don't have my air pods handy but
i have my airpods and i recently bought a new kind of airpod that sits outside the ear and
they work really well i went jogging yesterday and i could hear very well and i don't have
these things actually plugged into my ear but i can listen first thing in the morning i get
up i have a little seven minute exercise routine i listen i make breakfast i listen if i exercise
during the day i listen if i'm in the car i listen so you've got all this time to listen all right
so then people say well when you're listening do you always focus all right it is impossible to 100
focus while listening you have to like so much in language learning you have to accept imperfection
so when you speak you're going to make mistakes when you listen there's going to be lots of areas
you don't understand there are also going to be moments when you are not focused on what
you're listening to you lose track you your mind wanders off somewhere else that's fine as long as
you come back and so let's say for a period of 30 minutes that i'm in the car listening to something
maybe i'm only focused on what i'm listening to for half that time or i don't know what the number
is because i don't worry about it but i know it's not a hundred percent of the time but for whatever
percentage of the time i'm listening i'm exposing my brain to the language and i am getting used to
the language now one of the things that's very important is you cannot continue to listen to
your target language and not understand anything or only understand five percent that is very
inefficient in my experience so if i listen to something obviously at the early stages in the
language i don't understand anything but then i will read it i will look up the words i'll review
them in link read it again then i'll listen and i still don't understand even though i understood
kind of when i was reading and looking up words when i go to listen i don't understand but that
doesn't bother me i know that from personal experience that in time what initially is just
noise for me by a process of reading and listening and going back and reading again and looking up
words again and listening again eventually more and more of this becomes comprehensible
don't listen to the same lesson over and over and over again at one sitting in other words
the brain as i've said many times requires repetition and novelty so you can listen
to an item a few times then move on to the next item even if you don't fully understand
the first so you have lesson one and you listen and you listen and you read it then you listen
again and you understand twenty thirty percent move on to the next one don't try to you know
master any particular lesson or content item it's all exposure it's all helping the brain get used
to the language remember you need repetition and novelty after a while if you're listening
to the same thing over and over again the brain is picking up less and less and less
so you have to move to the next lesson and to the next lesson so keep pushing yourself forward
maintain that balance between repetition and novelty and there's all kinds of research into
how the brain learns that sort of block learning that third fourth fifth time we read something
or we listen to something we are in fact learning less and less so you have to keep moving forward
now so don't worry about losing focus don't worry about what you don't understand
keep challenging or rewarding your brain with new material but do have enough repetition
so that you start to notice certain things that you didn't notice the first time
and this is the next point about listening i can listen to a mini story that i've listened to
30 40 times before so i know the mini story and yet i will suddenly notice a structure a verb
pattern verb form that i hadn't really noticed before even though i knew the rule vaguely but
the 31st time that i listened to that i notice it in a different way so give yourself a chance to
notice things when you go back for that additional pass through the same material so you're again
you're maintaining that repetition and novelty but when you're on your in your repetition activity
allow yourself to notice certain things you don't have to notice everything you can lose focus but
there will be times when you notice certain things in there that will help you in your
gradual acquisition of the language and remember that listening comprehension here is the goal
it's not going to be perfect but it will gradually improve and the better your listening
comprehension the better your ability to have conversations but again give yourself you know
a variety between repetition repetitious material and new challenging material combine reading with
listening try to focus in on certain aspects of pronunciation that you maybe didn't notice before
be aware that some of the things that you didn't notice on the first time
listening or the second or the fifth or the tenth time you may notice the 20th time you listen
so the the process of acquisition of a language is gradual so if you listen and you don't understand
don't get frustrated if you listen and read and listen and read and still don't understand
don't get frustrated that's normal and at least in my own case i prefer to be listening and doing
something else cleaning up the garage whatever it might be listening fading out focusing in again
that works better for me than trying to sit down and say okay for the next half hour i'm
to listen to this all right the exception of that of course
is if you're watching a movie which is a form of listening but you're watching and listening at
the same time and it's rewarding because it's fun to watch a movie and you can see the people you
can almost feel as if you're participating with this family that's why series you know on netflix
are so great if it's if it's the same group of people interacting all the time in the series
and you watch them and you feel you're a part of them and you're getting that sense of being in
that cultural you know uh sphere um all of that is good but i wouldn't you know i consider the
the sort of video movies tv series that's more of a reward that's fun you have to develop the
ability to be able to listen without seeing what's going on uh initially sort of repetitious material
like the many stories eventually audiobooks where just hearing the words conjures up meaning for
you so that you're automatically converting you know words in the target language into meaning
and so as you build up to that level of of listening comprehension you are preparing yourself
to become fluent in the language so that's my advice treat listening and listening comprehension
not only as a primary goal in language learning but as an important way of helping your brain
become accustomed to the language so i hope that was helpful thank you for listening