3 Big Mistakes in Your English Listening | Go Natural English

hi guys I'm Gabby Wallace and this is a go natural English lesson a lot of you have written to me and told me that your biggest challenge in English is listening I know it can be difficult to understand native English speakers when we speak quickly so I made this video to help you out I want to share with you the three biggest mistakes that you may be making when you're listening to English alright so let's get started with number one right here listening is not the same as reading this may seem obvious but the way that we often learn English in school the way you may have learned English is with a focus on reading and writing for academic purposes maybe in high school you had to read in English but maybe you didn't have as much listening practice in English or you didn't know how to approach listening the way our mind works is with reading we are visual learners we're looking at the text on a page in a book and we're associating the letters and the words and these shapes that we see on the page which are letters we associate those with meaning when you listen to English it's a completely different process we hear sounds words phrases and we need to associate those sounds with meaning this is especially difficult in English because the way that we write words the way that we spell is crazy it's just crazy we have silent letters we have diphthongs we have words that come from other languages and pronunciation varies widely so remember not to listen the same way that you read ok number two translating it takes a lot of effort to translate okay when you hear words in English do you automatically try to translate them into your native language you might do this because of course you're familiar with and comfortable with your native language and you want to make sense of English you want to understand so you naturally try to translate it into your first language so that you can understand what's going on but translating actually is a waste of time I'll tell you why you're putting a lot of effort into converting the meaning of a word into your native language and then converting your thoughts back to English in that time you're not hearing the words that are being spoken while you're translating and you're not able to focus on the person you're speaking with so your mind is wasting a lot of energy trying to translate the words that you hear in English into your native language and then back to English so that you can add to the conversation now another reason why you shouldn't translate is that when you get past basic words when you get into phrases idioms metaphors and some cultural ideas or words that really only exist in English they are difficult if not impossible to translate correctly in other languages so I encourage you to listen and match what you hear with meaning directly cut out the middleman cut out the translator and number three the biggest mistake that you may be making is expecting to understand 100 percent don't be a perfectionist it's impossible even native speakers with good hearing don't catch 100 percent of what we hear it's normal aim for 60 to 80% understanding of what you're listening to okay stay calm stay relaxed and it will become easier to listen to English and understand what you're hearing I've made a full course with 17 secrets to improving your listening skills in English so I'm going to talk more about these points and also share 17 strategies for improving your listening today also the course includes five practice session videos so that you can not only understand the strategies but use them this course is available on my website go natural English comm and it's called the 17 secrets to improving your English listening skills so I hope that you'll come take a look because I want to help you develop your listening skills for more confidence when you're engaging in English conversation more confidence when you talk to people at work at school in your personal activities so I know that this is a big need and that's why I'm addressing it so come on over take a look at the course and I hope to see you there in the course with me I am there to help you not only through videos but through question and answer you can ask me a question during the course about any of the videos or any listening questions that you may have so guys I'm a real person I'm not just on video I exist behind the screen and I'm here to help you thank you so much for watching and I hope to see you in the 17 secrets to improving your English listening skills bye for now

Channel: Go Natural English

Views: 4,131,319

Keywords: english listening, go natural english, gabby wallace, 3 big mistakes in your english listening, gabby wallace english, go natural english listening, listening english, mistakes, natural english, gaby wallace, 5 secrets to improve your english listening skills, english mistakes, go english natural, gabby wallace listening

Id: BlCBnY3Y-jw

Length: 6min 31sec (391 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 09 2014