Three Stages of Listening to Get to Fluency

hi there Steve Kaufman here today I'm going to talk about listening I'm gonna talk about what I consider to be the three stages of sort of a listening strategy I'm experimenting today I'm in a different room this room has a carpet on the floor has some curtains hanging here and so I think the sound will be better I may get some of those movers blankets you know to hang on the wall in order to absorb more sound if that turns out to be worthwhile you've got these goofy fish prints behind me I might even spring for some kind of a backdrop but I don't know if I need to go that far I might get another light on the side here to get you know more even lighting at any rate I'm learning I'm learning about it because you know everyone I think we all like to improve I mean language learning is all about improving improving usually means learning more about something and as we learn more about something then we can you know develop better skills and so I'm trying to do a better job with my podcast but getting back to the subject of listening so I thought about it today I went for a run yesterday without listening to any language and of course that's a good time to think you know you need some time to think I can't spend all my time listening to language and and it dawned on me that there are three stages in our listening strategy there is an initial stage where we need a lot of repetition so I would call this sort of intensive listening this is where I listen 30 or 40 times to the same many stories not right away but I'll go lesson one two three four five back to lesson one two three four five eventually six seven eight nine ten back to one and so you're listening repeatedly to a lot of the same content a lot of this content as in the case of our mini stories has a lot of high frequency verbs you're certainly going to come across the high frequency words and verbs often and therefore it's easier to get to know them and as you listen to this whereas when you started everything with just noise and you think you'll never learn this language and particularly if it's written that difficult or a different script like the Arabic script but with time all of a sudden you know you start to understand things and then you and this is what I've often referred to as the sort of steep part of the upside down hockey-stick Oh a sudden you understand something you can say something you feel good about yourself now comes the second part of the sort of listening strategy and this is where you need to you suddenly realize that the the sort of high-frequency verbs the frequency drops off off so quickly that the words that you need to know they they appear so infrequently now that they're much more difficult to learn and but so in that second period if I go to the third period you know I was thinking about today the third period the final period is what I came to in Russian or in Czech or some of the other languages that I have learned or Portuguese I'm not there yet in Korea and I'm certainly not there I'm there in check in Ukrainian these are the languages I'm not there in Greek or Romanian these are the languages where I can just grab anything and I will understand most of it and so I don't have to listen more than once if I have access to the transcript I read it I might pick up a few words but but by and large I can go for a run like I went for a run yesterday and I can be listening to something that's interesting on whatever is an interest to me history literature politics and I'm reviewing fit words and phrases that I've you know learned I'm learning new things my brain is getting used to the language I'm kind of launched there it's a little difficult but it's not very difficult I'm it's very satisfying that's the sort of goal and and once you're in that third stage where you can listen for enjoyment and listen out of interest and you'reyou're just filling your brain with phrases and words in the language words that you've learned once twice three times they come up again your strengthening your hold on the language that's a very solid base from which to really embark and speaking and speaking speaking often and speaking of some on subjects of interest which I can do with the tutor online or if I go to the country I'm now launched in the language so how do we get there so the first stage was kind of getting a toehold in the language with a lot of repetitive listening and that third stage is when the difficult interesting authentic material is is accessible comprehensible and you can just go off listening to it put it in your car listen to it you're just enjoying the language you're enjoying the rewards of your labor how do we get there and I often get this question how do we jump from essentially a 2 to B 2 in the European framework and there it's just we have to make that investment we have to invest in acquiring more words so that eventually we can then listen and enjoy it so what I do now at link is I go into sentence mode and I use the five-second repeat and I just tried to especially in Farsi where we don't have text to speech and I listen to it and I listen to the sentence and I listen to the sentence again and I look up the new words and I hear the sentence again and I kind of proceed but I'm dealing with authentic interesting potentially interesting content difficult content and gradually and ever so gradually I'm not getting worse you know this is the thing the brain likes to learn we all like to learn there are no shortcuts but every little you know every time I put effort into it even though I think I'm gonna getting in anywhere of course I am I'm building up my vocabulary my ability to to understand when I hear not just when I read and that's difficult because you can read through it and pick out the words and you didn't quite get it the first time if you look at the word you know what it is and then you hear it and it's still not comprehensible and you just have to continue so in a way the the rewards are fewer in that middle stage you're not listening as often to the same material because typically whereas the the many stories are four minutes long here you I might be dealing with a podcast that's 15 minutes long and I'm going through it through its sentence-by-sentence and I'm working it and mining it for worries and phrases and save a word and then I saved the phrase and if it's in Arabic I can hear the text-to-speech of the phrase or I use the actual live audio track go over that sentence by the way I shouldn't spill the beans so to speak but we're working on a number of interesting things for link and one of which one of these will be the ability in sentence view to set the time stamps because the automatic time stamps often don't work and so you know you click on the text-to-speech for that sentence you get the text-to-speech we want it to be so that you click on that you know audio indicator and you get the natural voice for that sentence so all of these things are going to become better there's a number of things that we have on the pipeline that are gonna make it better and I think a big part of it is to make that that intermediate stage where we're building ourselves up so that we will be able to and that's the goal we will be able to eventually just grab an interesting audio book and interesting podcast just listen to it enjoy it discover the culture discover the language feed the brain and all this kind of stuff and that's kind of the third that's the glide apportion okay so just to summarize so I see three stages there's the initial very steep climb but you have that sense that you've you're achieving something then you have that long grind where you just have two sake in more words and phrases train the brain sentence mode or full lesson mode whatever you prefer so that you eventually get to the point where now you can just listen for fun and now you're well on your way and when you're good at listening for when you do a lot of listening for fun and you have a significant vocabulary then you can really start speaking a lot which you eventually have to do you have to speak a lot in order to speak well and and I would say that in my own strategy learning strategy you know even now I'm spending all my time working with these texts developing my ability to understand what I hear increasing my vocabulary I'm not doing any online tutor sessions it would be fun to do it but I just feel I don't have enough I'm more concerned about how well I'm gonna speak at the end of my journey rather than what I'm able to do you know in the first phase or the second phase although I enjoyed interacting generous and I mean I may get started specially in Farsi where we don't have text speech just in order to have a better sense of these words so anyway there you have a three stages in our you know language learning strategy as a couple

Channel: Steve Kaufmann - lingosteve

Views: 55,894

Keywords: learning a new language, language learning, language barrier, language acquisition, languages of the world, language learning tips, language learning apps, language english, language learning notebook, a language barrier, polyglot stories, polyglot pal, polyglot progress, polyglot tips, polyglot level up, polyglotte, polyglot conversation

Id: Zr5LxefI4OE

Length: 9min 43sec (583 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 30 2020