Improve Your Listening Skills to Effectively Learn English | Live-Lesson

hey everyone welcome to today's lesson my name is wes and this is interactive english the channel that is all about just trying to help you practice and improve your english skills and today we're going to work on your listening because when when you're learning a language listening is very important so we're going to practice our listening skills and i'm going to have you listen to a couple of different sentences a couple of stories and we're going to use that to help you improve just your overall language skills which is why i titled listen and learn but i don't know why i chose uh just like a stream there i think of nature you can listen to the sounds of the water and i i think it's a bit relaxing and i think when you're listening you want to you want to be relaxed you want to be able to concentrate on what you hear the other person saying so that you can identify different things which is what we're going to talk about in this lesson we're going to work on identifying well learning new vocabulary and just when you hear a word that you don't know and trying to put that word in context and understand the meaning of that word we're also going to practice just identifying the main idea making sure you comprehend most of the most of what you hear we're going to talk about key details as well as making inferences and if you don't know what uh inferences are it's when you're using the information that you know in order to infer other information for example if i say that my wife just walked in and she's carrying an umbrella that's wet then you when you hear that an umbrella that's wet you can infer that it's probably raining outside so when you listen to information you want to be able to infer other information which it just goes back to your overall comprehension so before we start i just want to give some shout outs uh hello saw some members with me lolly good to see you rod vip um glad glad that you guys are here uh monica steve alyssa uh yamila alana salam great heba sees so many familiar names i love it so let's start we're going to start with something that is a little easier and then it'll get more difficult actually it'll get much more difficult which uh i i just hope that you are ready to listen so if you're with me right now in the chat i'd encourage you to try and write you listen to uh what i tell you try to write your answers in the chat even if you're watching this later just listen try to write your answers in the comment participate in the lesson that that's what interactive english is all about so let's start with um let's start with trying to if you have if you encounter a new vocabulary word and you want to be able to put that word in context so i'm just going to give you um a simple sentence and i want you to listen to it and then i want you to tell me what this word means okay so for example i want you to listen uh right now okay the teacher chided me for texting in class that is the sentence the teacher chided me for texting in class and i want you to tell me what does it mean to chide to chide someone so the sentence that i gave you and maybe you know this word um maybe you don't and this is what this is when listening helps that you can think about this word and hopefully the more you listen to it and read it and you encounter this word you'll be able to use it and make it part of your uh vocabulary the teacher chided me for texting in class all right excellent so yes uh sarah lali great so here is the sentence and i'll give you the meaning so the teacher chided me for texting in class to chide someone it means to scold or reprimand angrily so in this case uh if you are i know some people some of you out there are teachers um we love hearing from other uh teachers other english teachers if someone if a student is texting in class it doesn't make me feel good it probably doesn't make most teachers feel good and you might say something to that student and tell them to put their phone away so in this case if you chide someone they probably did something wrong and you're speaking a little angrily to them so now that you know that if if you are chiding someone that you are talking them to them in a way that you are a little angry you're upset with this person and you're like no no don't do that don't do that now that you know the meaning of that word let's use it and we'll make an inference okay so i'm going to give you another sentence and i i'll well let me tell you the sentence and then i'll tell you what i want you to do so again just listen to what i'm going to say say mom chided us for playing baseball inside the house mom chided us for playing baseball inside the house my question to you is well why why would why might she do that why might the mother chide the children for playing baseball inside the house and in this case i'm asking you to to make an inference what do you think i'm giving you that situation and i want you to think about the other things that are going on or things that could happen so you know the situation mom chided us for playing baseball inside the house okay you know what the word chide means we just uh we we just talked about that so you know that the mother is doing this but why that is my question why do you think this is happening what are some inferences that you can make because you know this situation and that's where there is no wrong or right answer it's kind of just trying to get you thinking in a different way um because you're not only when you're listening you're listening to the information but you want to be able to comprehend more than just directly what somebody is saying um so yeah maybe excellent there's a lot of great answers um the house is small maybe you break some glass playing these games are not inside so here is the sentence i said mom chided us for playing baseball inside the house i told you there are many different there are many things that you can infer about this for me when i would think about this i would think well something could break maybe a window or perhaps maybe the maybe they did break a window and that is why they are being chided or perhaps it happened in the past but uh playing baseball inside the house yes something could definitely break so now i those are really that's kind of just like a warm-up that i wanted to give you that you hear me say these simple sentences and just you're maybe trying to learn a new word and try to figure out the meaning by putting it in context and then we use that word to make an inference about some of the other information that that you hear so now we're going to get into we're going to go from easy to definitely more difficult what i'm going to do now is i am going to give you a story i'm going to tell you a story and i just want you to listen to it just relax and just think about what i'm saying and it may help to put a picture in your mind if you are if you're able to put a picture in your mind that does help follow along with the story especially when you need to recall the information because we're gonna we're i'm gonna read this to you and then we're gonna practice uh key details the main idea um new vocabulary we're gonna do a little bit of everything so this is a longer story i'm gonna read it i'll read it twice and then i have five questions for you about this story all right so again if you uh are just joining us right now we are practicing uh our listening skills and i'm gonna you're gonna listen to me tell you a story and then i'm gonna i'm gonna ask you some questions about what you heard so this is really just practicing seeing how much information you remember how much you understood you comprehended and then how much you can retain so let's go over here and again uh i'll read it to you i just want you to listen carefully okay so here is the the story my friend dave traveled to the big apple for the weekend to attend his friend's bachelor party he promised that he would write me a postcard i never got one i saw a day five days after he returned from his trip i noticed his hand was in a cast when i asked what happened he said he fell down the day before he flew out and he hadn't been able to use his hand jokingly i asked about the postcard he told me that he wrote one but it must have gotten lost in the mail i suspected that dave was not telling the truth after all he is a southpaw okay all right that was uh a lot of information that i just threw at you um i don't think the story may be too difficult to follow along but i will read it one more time and then we're gonna go through and uh um i will ask you five questions about this story right here are you ready all right listen carefully i'll read it again my friend dave traveled to the big apple for the weekend to attend his friend's bachelor party he promised that he would write me a postcard i never got one i saw dave five days after he returned from his trip i noticed his hand was in a cast when i asked what happened he said he fell down the day before he flew out and he hadn't been able to use his hand jokingly i asked about the postcard he told me he wrote one but it must have gotten lost in the mail i suspected that dave was not telling the truth after all he is a southpaw okay so let's start out um with uh maybe as more of a simple question that i i hope that you would be able to get so the first question that i have for you and again i'm i'm not going to show you the question just listen to it and see if you can an answer all right so the first question i have from you for you is what city did dave visit so this was at the very start of the story um i talked about my my friend dave uh was going on this trip and what city did dave visit and this is definitely a little more challenging because not only i did not say the specific name of the city it's more of a nickname and you really have to know that nickname and then you can identify the city so yes i i said the big apple you're right the big apple is another name it's a nickname for new york city so this is where my friend dave traveled all right what city did dave visit dave went to the big apple which is new york city so really technically you would say that the answer is new york city okay the next question that i have for you is what event may dave attend in the future so we're talking again about uh my friend dave i gave you some information about this situation he's in new york city the big apple based on what you know what you listen to what event may he go to in the future dave may go to this it's it's a big event that somebody would have and it's going to happen in the future all right he didn't do it now i gave you the information that you could infer okay this is probably what he's going to do all right so this is again this is a good example because i think many of you uh are saying bachelor party bachelor party is what i want you to use to infer what event he will go to in the future so we're talking about the future from now um dave's come back from the bachelor party if somebody goes to a bachelor party if you know what that is what event might they go to in the future uh yes exactly uh fulia rahel i think now that uh hopefully now that i explained that a little bit more it makes sense i told you he was in new york for a bachelor party so if that's the situation in the future dave is likely to go to his friend's wedding so if you don't in this case you need to know what a bachelor party is and if you don't know what a bachelor party is um and i don't know if it's in um if all countries have it but in like the united states before someone gets married um the bride or the groom maybe the groom would have a bachelor party and his close friends will get together and they go have this party maybe in another place and perhaps the wife might have a bachelorette party so because of that you know that it's a bachelor party in the future dave will likely go to his friend's wedding all right so we know he's in new york he's at a bachelor party um and dave was supposed to do something uh while he was there now i told you that dave hurt his hand so this is definitely more detail when dave and i met so i'm telling you this story about dave and i when dave and i met after his trip how many days had it been since he hurt his hand all right how many days had it been so dave hurt his hand and then some of these things happen i saw dave when he got back from his trip how many days had it been since he hurt his hand so in this case you really need to think about uh there was some specific information that i gave you but then you need to think about the situation like the the bachelor party all right i'll tell you right now five five is not the answer all right remember i'm saying how many days had it been since he hurt his hand when he first hurt his hand and then how many days is it so the correct answer would see i'd say about seven or eight okay and the reason why i say that is because remember in the story we're talking about he said he hurt his hand the day before leaving for a weekend bachelor trip all right um so for example wait a second i want to make sure all right so i said that he he's gone for the weekend which is two days and i said i saw dave five days after he got back so he returned from the trip and then five days passed and then that's when i saw him so you could say five plus two seven works if you want to count the same day that he hurt his hand then you could say eight so i'd say seven or eight days would be the correct answer and this was difficult because you had to remember the five days after he got back it's a weekend bachelor trip bachelor party our trip so that's two days and then he hurt his hand the day before so that was definitely um a little more difficult all right the next question um i apologize if some of these are a little difficult but again this is this is good practice all right now my next question very simple straightforward dave was going to send me a postcard he didn't send it all right was i angry about the postcard was i angry about that that i didn't get a postcard and which word did you hear that tells you the answer to this all right so first like do you think was was i angry that my friend dave did not send me a postcard on his trip to new york city the big apple and what word did you hear that tells you either yes or no all right and this is when i want you to i'm trying to think if you can identify the specific word that you um that you heard and maybe again this is a lot to take in but oh okay so most of you know that yes no the answer is no i was not angry about this um uh jennifer it was a very close guess excellent um shaya yes the key word that i want you to focus on was that i don't know if you remember specifically the sentence said jokingly i asked about the postcard so jokingly was the word it's an adverb it means you're kind of you're just joking around i'm teasing like hey why didn't you send me my postcard um that was the word that kind of tells you that i was not upset it's it's not serious i was not angry about that i didn't get a postcard jokingly was the key word all right and then the last one which i think is certainly going to be maybe a little more challenging and i didn't say this which hand did dave injure and how do you know so i talk about dave's dave's hand well i didn't say which hand was in a cast a cast if you didn't if you don't know what a cast is if you perhaps hurt your arm and you break it and they put that uh mold around your arm so you can't move it in this case if it's a hand maybe if somebody maybe they break their wrist maybe they would the doctor would put a cast around your hand and you just can't move it um and that's what a cast is so which which hand which handed did dave break and how do you know this how do you know that it was either the left or the right hand and maybe you're just taking a guess you have a 50 50 chance and i see some people putting left hand some people putting right hand but but wait if why why are you coming up with these answers are you just guessing that that's okay if you are um the answer that the key word is the word southpaw and if you don't know what a southpaw is the what it means originally was talking about somebody who boxes left-handed or in baseball somebody who throws left-handed but you could use it as an informal term to talk about somebody who just does something left-handed so i said that uh i knew dave was lying or i suspected he was lying um after all he is a southpaw so dave is left-handed all right dave if dave hurt his left hand and his his hands in a cast which means he can't write he's not able to write a postcard which is why i said i suspected that he is lying because he's a southpaw he's not able to write he broke his left hand all right yes so southpaw is an informal word that means um that just somebody's left-handed and in case you didn't know something fun fact about me is that i i am a southpaw i am actually uh i'm left-handed i write left-handed i throw left-handed um if i guess if i were to box i would i would box left-handed even though i don't throw punches at all um so this is again it's good listening practice i have another story for you and if you thought that was difficult i apologize this is definitely more advanced this is going to be a lot more challenging and the reason why this is more difficult is because it's a speech this is a short speech that i'm going to read to you and then i'm going to ask you some questions and i think it it it's a good speech because it learns it's a little bit about a little culture and history i don't want to give you too many uh hints before we're doing it but also a speech is um a speech is challenging because people tend to be more formal they use more advanced vocabulary and because of that i think it makes listening more of a challenge so this i'm gonna read this speech and then i have five more questions for you okay um and this is going to be difficult i'll just go ahead and tell you that right now uh but listen carefully and then we'll talk about these questions again i will read it twice so right now i just want you to take a deep breath relax and listen to this speech okay ready here we go i am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us the blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common the rich inheritance of justice liberty prosperity and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you not by me the sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me this fourth of july is yours not mine you may rejoice i must mourn to drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty and call upon him to joy join you in joyous anthems were inhumane inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony do you mean citizens to mock me by asking me to speak today all right so again that is a speech it was from uh it was from a long time ago and i will read it again and just try to listen and if it is very difficult try to try to get the main idea don't think that you need to try and listen to all every single word and catch all of the details try to get the main idea i'm going to read it one more time this is a speech and later on i'll tell you more about this speech and where it came from so it says i'm not included within this within the pale of this glorious anniversary your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us the blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common the rich inheritance of justice liberty prosperity and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you not by me the sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me this fourth of july is yours not mine you may rejoice i must mourn to drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty and call upon him to join in this in the joyous anthems where inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony do you mean citizens to mock me by asking me to speak today so uh like i said this is definitely this is definitely challenging all right the first question that i have for you is hopefully maybe is a little easier hopefully you can get it is which holiday is being celebrated so in this speech this person is giving he's talking about a holiday uh that's being celebrated what holiday is it uh let's start out and see if you can identify that there was um i mentioned a date in there that would hopefully tell you a little bit more about um what i'm talking about what holiday i'm talking about there are some key words in there such as anniversary i give you the date i actually did a whole uh lesson on this day uh not too long ago i did it last month uh maybe that gives you so uh excellent uh lolly reuben uh jennifer yamila uh dairy naima the fourth of july is the the holiday that this person is referring to so in in this i mentioned the fourth of july this celebration remember they said that this celebration it's yours it's not mine so the next question after listening to that um i want you to think about the main idea and in this speech this person says the immeasurable distance between us all right he's talking about this holiday it shows the immeasurable distance between us who is us what two groups of people is he referring to what do you think this is talking about the fourth of july it's independence day and this is a speech from a long time ago and in the speech and toward the beginning he talked about the immeasurable distance between us the distance between us who is us what two groups what two groups of people do you think this person is referring to and as we go through this i think it's going to help you start to comprehend the a little more about the main idea and the situation and what this speech was talking about so let me know um if you you have any guesses so we're talking about the fourth of july this is um it's a it's a holiday it's independence day celebrated in the united states so again let's start putting this uh see what you can infer i i said the speech was from a long time ago a long time ago in the united states they're celebrating independence day so it's after 1776 um but it's still a time period where they're talking about the immeasurable distance between two people you guys are some of you are getting close uh lourdes shaya excellent you got it um so what we're talking about is in this case um it's talking about the distance between white people and black people so again this is going to help you understand the speech a little bit more about what this person is talking about and trying to think about who this person is so he's talking about the the country wants to celebrate but they're still an immeasurable distance between uh white people and black people and how and why they should be celebrating so the next question that i have for you is um in this story in this speech he he says the word bequeathed and i want you to think well what does bequeath mean so i'll read the the part of it uh to help you understand it a little bit more so it's just identifying this word bequeathed and i want to ask you what do you think that word means in the story um or in the speech he says the rich inheritance of justice liberty prosperity and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you not by me so justice liberty prosperity and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you and not by me what do you think it means bequeathed and this is the reason i chose this word is because it is an older word it's not a word that you're probably going to go out and use it's not a word that you're going to hear in everyday conversation it's a very formal word and it's from a longer time ago i actually think of like kings and queens um when maybe the king would be like oh and to my son the prince i bequeath this this thing um so excellent lolly perfect so if you bequeath something all right it's talking about it's usually money or property in a will but in general you could be talking about something that's given to someone else after after they die which is why we're usually talking about a will in this case we're talking about independence bequeathed by your fathers the founding fathers of the country which is a reference back to july 4th the founding fathers um the guy the people responsible for the declaration of independence um they gave independence was bequeath was given to these people which in this case uh white people not shared by me so automatically you know that uh the person who wrote this speech is black and i will tell you who it is in just a moment i have some more a couple more questions and this might be a little easier the phrase to drag a man in fetters refers to what heinous act so he uses the phrase to drag a man in fetters what heinous act does this what is this talking about and right now you can probably guess we're talking about the united states a long time ago a distance between black and white what heinous act was taking place in the united states a long time ago and this is another again learning new words if you don't know what the word heinous means put it in context we're talking about a situation that what do you think is it a good situation or a bad situation hopefully you know okay this is this is a bad situation it's not something that's good so if i'm talking about a heinous act heinous means that it is terrible it is despicable it is something that is just awful all right so what act were are we talking about to drag a man in fetters i think is the the phrase that i think really where they're discussing this act directly uh so yes adriana eric uh we're talking about slavery and the so to drag a man in fetters fetters is talking about something that keeps you locked up and in this case i thinking of like chains somebody is chained up um and it's referring to the act of slavery and i i used an image of abraham lincoln there he was the president um during this time in which they had the civil war and slavery was uh slavery ended so in this case the heinous act we're talking about slavery now the last question that i have for you want to uh listen uh for this is this is definitely a little more difficult it says why why does this person and the person who gave the speech is frederick douglass frederick douglass just to give you a little more information about him um he escaped slavery and he became a prominent figure speaking out against slavery and he did a lot of writing too and wrote books that were just talking about why we should get rid of slavery we should abolish slavery and we don't need it so he lived through this he was a slave he escaped slavery and he became a prominent person speaking out against slavery and in this case this is his speech and my question is why is it sacrilegious irony for frederick douglass to join in the celebration why in his words he says that this is sacrilegious irony if he were to join in this celebration why does he say that why does he say that it is sacrilegious irony and again we let's put these words into context all right because maybe you're thinking well i don't know sacrilegious irony what does that mean um if you don't know what sacrilegious means if something is um sacrilegious it means that it is disrespectful so something that is sacrilegious it's something you should not do all right irony is talking about having the opposite effect so in this case why do you think he says it's sacrilegious irony if he were to celebrate so think about what's going on they're celebrating independence day in the united states and he's talking about the irony of this situation that you want everybody to celebrate independence but but black people are not free they're they're they're still slavery and this is the irony of all of this and he's basically saying well why should i celebrate there's a picture of frederick douglass why should i join this celebration what what do i have to celebrate because the slavery still exists in this country and there are so many people that are not free that do not have the same freedoms that white people are celebrating on the fourth of july so this is why i'd say you know he's being asked to celebrate the freedom which he does not have that that he does not share with everyone else and he refers to it as sacrilegious irony the name of the speech in case you want to look it up um it's frederick douglass and the name of the speech where is it i had it here it says uh the the title of the speech is what to a slave is the 4th of july so it's what to a slave is the 4th of july is this speech i told you it was definitely more advanced because speeches are more formal they're using more advanced vocabulary but hopefully you were able as we went through the questions to comprehend it a little bit better and i would encourage you afterwards go back and listen to it again and now that you know the answers to see if when you're listening to it if you can identify all of this information again so this is the way that we were listening and learning and improving your skills and again if you guys do if you like what we do here at interactive english you can sponsor and support our channel there are youtube memberships uh patreon we offer different rewards and there are links in the description saw some members uh people uh patrons here today like lolly and rod um so what i hope what i hope that again that you guys can gain from this is that you're just able to practice these skills to again learn new vocabulary and try to put it in context that you can try to remember and identify key details and recall that information as well as make inferences and take the information that you hear the information that you have and try to think about okay well what else is going on what other information can i infer based on the present situation it's always good practice i'm really happy that you guys join me today i hope you found it useful if you did please go ahead hit that like button that way i know okay you maybe you learned something today or you found that this was useful and helpful so thank you guys uh lolly uh so lee english with jerry sarah um oh it's going so fast naima alice thank you guys so much um them comigo excellent amir uh curiosities enigmatica sorry my spanish i haven't been uh i haven't been speaking thank you graciana fatima thank you guys hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend and i will see you next time so

Channel: Interactive English

Views: 12,948

Keywords: interactive english, learn interactive english, english vocabulary, english live lesson, learn english listening, listen to english, improve listening skills, improve english listening, learn new vocabulary, listen key details, listen make inferences, listen learn english, english listening lesson, learn english by listening, english practice lesson, practice english

Id: XjcfroceOQs

Length: 39min 3sec (2343 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 22 2020