(singing) Hi, James from EngVid.
That's a mighty nice ear! Today, I want to teach a lesson on listening skills.
About a year ago I did a lesson on listening skills, and I promised in
that one to give you a system that you could use to improve at home, and then I
decided I wanted to make it better than that. I want you to get instant skills, so
today's lesson, "Instant Advanced Listening Skills". Well, how do you do that?
Because, "instant" means immediately, and you're probably thinking
I've been practicing for months, or years and I still have trouble.
We're going to fix that today, if you follow the four steps. The first thing we want to talk about
is this: "Don't think, just listen." Now just imagine this, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah, boo-boo, blah, blah, blah boo-boo blah, blah; crazy right?
Well, people do this all the time, even when they speak their own language.
What I'm talking about is they are thinking while
someone else is speaking. And that's the problem, because if
you have one voice going and then another voice is going, what you're
actually doing is carrying on two conversations -- and you get confused.
So I often tell students "Don't do that. Don't think." For some people
not thinking is kind of easy. But this is special thinking. I'm
saying, "Don't try to understand what they're saying." Now if you go to the
first video you go "Well, that's the opposite of what you said." This is different.
In advanced skills you might notice if I go, "woof" you know
that's a dog. You don't sit there and think "Is that a dog, or a squirrel,
or a chicken or a cow?" You know it's a dog. When someone's speaking just listen.
I'm going to help you with something else that will make it easier for you
to get the information, even if you don't think. So just let the information
come to you, all right? Now remember, "Don't think. Just listen."
Because you can't understand two conversations at once, that's the one
in your head, and the one you're listening to. That's why we usually
only let one person speak at a time. Now what's the second thing? Well
now you're sitting there listening. Here's a problem. If you listen to
somebody for about 10 minutes; a long speech, tired is the first thing you're
going to get. But that's not even it; you're going to lose information.
It's very difficult to listen to something for a long time, and keep
getting that information and keeping it fresh, especially if you're not thinking. So here's what we're going to do. We're
going to break it into "chunks". "Chunks" means parts or pieces, so
if you have a bigger piece, and you break off a part it's called a "chunk".
How do we break it into chunks? That's the second part of the
formula -- ask questions. "Engage to be engaged". "Engage" means to take
part in or, for some people, get married, right? Whatever, you know the wedding song. Anyway, if you "engage" by asking
questions, it brings in your curiosity and it brings in your mind, or your
brain to be fresh, to concentrate and that's what we need. We need you to
focus on what you're hearing. Because you are not actually thinking, by asking
the question it helps you to take that information and break it into "chunks"
so you're not listening to long speeches. But also by doing that what you're doing
is you're allowing yourself well, later on for your brain to take the
information, from the questions to understand, because the question has
to be relevant. "Relevant" means, has something to do with the
situation at that time, all right? "Is it relevant?" So it will help you with thinking.
Why are we doing this? Well this is the "instant" part, believe
it or not, because if you can do this right away you will start noticing
that you understand 60%-70%-80% of conversations, right away. But I did
lie a little bit. You need a little practice at home to make this work.
Because once we do this part, this will happen instantly. So let's
go over to the board, all right? Home practice; yes the dreaded "H-word".
I could think of other words like my ex-girlfriend Helen, but that's
another story. Home practice is absolutely necessary. And what I
mean by this is we're going to do something else I probably told you not to do.
Or most teachers say they say "Don't watch movies. They're too difficult,
and you have to watch with subtitles." Personally I disagree with that.
I've taught classes for years, and I would freak students out -- and "freak
them out" means shock them or surprise them -- where they would come
in, I'd put on an English movie, where the English people were speaking
as fast as I am, believe it or not, and no subtitles, and
they would freak out. Like, "Oh, you're crazy! How do you
expect us to learn?" But within one to two weeks a lot of these students
could get 50%, if not 80%. Oh, I lie; 50% to 60% of the movie, and in two months, 80%.
Some of them even would go to the theater, and watch the movie
in the theater, no subtitles! And there's a reason why I
don't like subtitles. When I'm speaking to you words are not
appearing under my mouth as I speak. (LOL) This does not happen in reality. So
when somebody says to you, you know, "You need subtitles to understand." Think
about it: there are no subtitles! So I don't think we should use them,
not for advanced skills. If you're doing beginner skills, as I said, watch
the first movie. That will help you or the first video. We should look at movies. First
thing: no subtitles. The other thing I want you to do is take a chunk.
We used that word before. Like two or three sentences, maybe five, between two people.
No more than five and you play that same chunk
over and over again. I recommend if you're just beginning,
ten times down to a minimum of three times. When you get really good three
times is all you need, and you'll catch most of the information. Now, by
doing this here's what I want you to do. I didn't write it on the board,
but now I need you to... "You need to listen to me, because
I'm going to explain." As you play the "chunks", what I want
you to do -- or that scene -- is write out every word you hear. Not some, not
what you think, but exactly what you hear. When you finish playing it,
either three, or up to ten times, only then can you put on the subtitles, yeah? But this is different than what other
teachers want you to do. What I'm asking you to do is put the subtitles
on, and compare what you wrote with what it says. Good. The reason why is
then you can see what you're missing and whatever you're missing,
you must practice out loud. So if there's a word, "blasphemy"
and you've never seen it, of course you've never seen it, or heard it before.
But if you said, "The act was blasphemous." You might know "the".
You might know, "act". But, "blasphemous" you don't know. So
practice it "blas-phe; blas-phe-ma; blasphemous" until you can recognize it. After you do that with all the
missing words, play it again without subtitles. Magic, you will notice
instantly you can hear the words. You may know what they mean but you'll
hear them, and that's extremely important, because if you can't identify
something, you can't ask anyone to explain it to you, right? Cool. So that's when we can play it with
subtitles to help us fill in the gaps. "Gap" mean space. I've got a space
here but gap means space between two things. Now finally once you're
finished, and we've done all that work here, because it's a lot of work, I
want you to watch it one more time, but close your eyes. Human beings are really interesting.
They have found in science that when a human loses one sense; hearing,
taste, vision, or touch, the other ones get better. When you close your eyes,
it allows you to listen better or to focus more, so you can pick up more information.
So, to recap, and when we say "recap" it means to go over; to
give you the important parts; by doing your home practice I can promise you,
when you do this it will be easy. Now one small little thing, before we forget.
Things that most teachers don't tell you. There is actually an
order of movies you should watch, or programs or let's say media, you should
watch to get the most out of your listening. Number one: start with kids programs! Why?
"I love you, you love me, we're one big happy family" and then they
show you pictures. A big heart, "I love you, you love me", and they put it up there.
I mean come on; they make it easy for you to get it
and then they explain it! First. Next -- TV programs, once you're there
and you're bored of it, and you're like, "I got it. I got all the basics"
because it will be basic language, you must learn it anyway. Watch
something like "Friends." "No one knows you." Watch "Friends." It's what we call stupid humor. People
will and fall over, "Oh, he fell, Chandler fell." And then you go, "Oh,
fall that's what he did. Ahahaha." Stupid comedies -- it makes it easy. They don't
speak quickly, right? They want the audience to understand. It's
very short, 20 minutes maximum. What do we do after that? So, first
kids movies, then TV programs, easy ones. You want to know what you watch next.
Action movies. That's right, action movies. Action movies are
made for stupid people. I said it. I love action movies, I won't say I'm
stupid, but I love action movies. Why? Because they always explain any hard words.
If there's something hard, "It will be a catastrophe if
this occurs." Someone will run in and the hero will go, "catastrophe" and
the little nerd scientist -- "nerd" means uncool -- will run and go,
"Catastrophe! Bad things will happen and people will die." And the hero will go, "Oh my gosh,
that is bad." So then, suddenly you understand all the big words, they
speak slow enough, so you get everything, all right? So now you're
intermediate, if you can do action movies. From there I recommend drama,
and then dark comedies. Drama -- they use big words and because they're
intellectual and very smart, they won't explain the words to
you, because they're saying we're sophisticated, you should understand.
And finally, dark comedies are good, because they play with the language.
They won't be falling all over the place. They'll use language in a
sophisticated way, which means a high level, so you really have to understand
what you're listening to, and the language you're working with. By the way, this isn't just for English
you can use this for any language you're trying to learn, okay? But this
especially works with English. So if you remember those five types of
movies I was telling you about, that you should study in that order, and you
follow these rules, you will have absolutely no problem at
all learning from movies. I know this is a long video, but I've
got one other thing to help you with. That one other thing is how do you get
this information? Do you remember, when I said this is going to be instant
you still have to go, "Well, James, how am I going to get this information?"
Well, I'm going to tell you. There are about five things you should
remember when you're trying to get the information. Times -- people often
say time; they often say dates, numbers, names, and addresses in any conversation.
"Tom went home at three o'clock, and I don't think he's coming
back again." So you've got Tom and you've got a time. The other thing that people give is
important information, and I'm sure you're saying, "How do I know that
it's important information?" Well, you've been taking grammar and I've
been speaking pretty quickly, so I know you're advanced. So you already know I'm sure about
superlatives and modals of necessity. When you hear something like "never",
"always", "must", or "should", someone's telling you, "What I'm about
to tell you is very important." Yeah? So keep those in mind. Also, when you hear a superlative -- "most
or "best" -- it's usually important. If you can remember those pieces of information,
practice trying to find them when you're listening to the video, your
brain will grab the rest of that information and give you complete
sentences or ideas of sentences. And because you're practicing and I
like movies, because they are closest to real life when you are in real life,
and you're not trying to think at the same time, and you're actually
asking questions, or "engaging", you're going to find that almost instantly,
you're understanding conversations. Don't believe what I say. Try it. And
I can almost guarantee you, you're going to be surprised at how quickly you learn.
Now before I take off because I know you're listening to
me carefully now and this is very important -- see, it's that "very" --
tells you important information. You need to go someplace to do the
first lesson, keep that one first. And where would that be? Those of you
who've been with me for a while know it's www -- that's a funny w -- www.eng as in
English; vid as in video, .com ,where I'm going to be happy to teach you this
and other lessons. Mr. E.? I'm out. Learn English for free
www.engvid.com
