17 Secrets to Native English Listening Skills | American English Accent | Go Natural English

hi everybody I'm Gabby Wallace and this is a go natural English lesson this video is a sneak preview of my full video course online that's available for instant viewing as soon as you sign up on my website gonaturalenglish.com the class is called 17 secrets to improving your listening skills in English and yes there are really 17 secrets plus five practice videos there is also a bonus video so you have a few hours of course materials that will improve your listening skills and you can ask me questions there as well but in this video I want to share five of these strategies or secrets for improving your listening skills so let's get right to it number one your 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 a 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 a 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 your confidence so that you interact with success in any English speaking conversation all right that's why we're here let's take a look at the second strategy listen read 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's say you want to be really good at soccer right and the rest of the world football but in the u.s. 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 would increase your endurance or your breathing your your lung capacity maybe you'd want to try swimming it's a totally different sport but it should help your overall physical capabilities so I recommend finding materials where you can listen and read them so this video is a material that you can listen to and you can read the subtitles right so you could start by listening only don't read the subtitles and then the second time that you watch the video you can listen and read so pay attention to those subtitles other materials you could use include my podcast project all ears English you could use the Voice of America news they often have listening and reading that you can do together alright the third is speak so what I want you to try with this video or with my podcast is to first listen then listen and read then try a speaking technique that's called shadowing I have another video that describes how to shadow but I'll quickly describe it here what you do is you listen and as soon as you can possibly repeat what you hear I want to say it okay so you're going to be mimicking what you hear as fast as you can right after you hear it alright 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 okay and speaking well if you can say a sound you'll be able to hear it better I hope that makes sense but trust me that this kind of cross-training will really help your listening skills next diversity I encourage you to listen to a diverse set of materials try some listening materials that are short two minutes three minutes five minutes and then as you advance try materials that are longer twenty minutes thirty minutes a full movie of an hour or two so a diversity of lengths of materials and shorter length materials are better for repeating over and over if you have a three minute video you could repeat that five times and you've still only studied for 15 minutes so it's very easy 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 material about soccer or listen to an actual soccer game with English sports 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 to you could listen to the NPR radio that's the National Public Radio or the BBC radio the British Broadcasting what does C channel I think there you're going to find topics on science technology business health all different kinds of topics that you can explore to listen to our 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 a different field or a different topic then you would usually choose and that will keep things fresh that will challenge you okay next guess first why would you guess first we want to be sure we want to have concrete 100% confidence in what we're hearing right well actually no I want you to guess what you think you're going to hear based on the situation or the materials 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 three 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 have to work so hard to dig it up so before you enter a 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 last point 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 pad 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're 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'll have a place to put all the 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 in more detail but what I mean is we have to get used to things like the rhythm of English how we chunk phrases together and sometimes it has nothing to do with punctuation like periods or comments although sometimes it does we have to get used to the stress that we put on certain parts of a 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 function words I'll explain all this in my full course we have to get used to also the sounds that we're going to hear within the words that maybe you don't have in your native language like the th sounds or the R or the L or maybe the P or the B sounds I know in other languages these may not exist so this is what I call getting used to the big picture or 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 in your brain and when we organize it helps us to remember all right so these are five secrets for listening success I would love it if you would come join me for my full course the 17 secrets to improving your listening skills in English which you can find on my website at go natural English dot-com under courses I can't wait to see you there so come join now

Channel: Go Natural English

Views: 5,321,675

Keywords: 5 secrets to improve your english listening skills, how to improve listening skills, 17 Secrets to English Listening Skills Introduction, 17 Secrets to English Listening, 17 Secrets to Native English Listening Skills, listening skills, english listening practice, gabby english, american english listening, Native English, Listening Skills, English lesson, learning English

Id: GtKX_H5wr5o

Length: 11min 27sec (687 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 16 2014