I was a beautiful and spectacular woman. My face was like the moon shining in its brightest expression, and my eyes were blue like the sea. Do you wanna know my secret? My beauty magically grew and grew with every compliment I received! Every day, from the time I got up until dawn, I only received compliments from everyone. I got so used to those words of admiration that I no longer appreciated them, and soon I'd be punished for it.

One day an evil witch bewitched me and made me look ugly. I became the ugliest woman in the world. What a tragedy! I was sad for a while. However, I soon remembered that my beauty grew with every compliment I received. So I wrote on a sign, "Compliment me". And I held the sign until someone praised me. Every day I received praises, and within a month, I was as beautiful as ever. What I learned from this experience is that I should always be grateful for the beautiful things others say to me.

Bella was a beautiful and spectacular woman. Her face was like the moon shining in its brightest expression, and her eyes were blue like the sea. Do you wanna know her secret? Her beauty magically grew and grew with every compliment she received! Every day, from the time she got up until dawn, she only received compliments from everyone. She got so used to those words of admiration that she no longer appreciated them, and soon Bella would be punished for it.

One day an evil witch bewitched her and made her look ugly. She became the ugliest woman in the world. What a tragedy! She was sad for a while. However, she soon remembered that her beauty grew with every compliment she received. So, she wrote on a sign, "Compliment me". And she held the sign until someone praised her. Every day she received praises, and within a month, she was as beautiful as ever. What she learned from this experience is that she should always be grateful for the beautiful things others say to her.

Let's continue with the next and last section of this episode.

The Benefits of reading listening.

In this last part, I'll explain the benefits of reading and listening and the relationship between reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

As a language student, the main activities to learn a new language are: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. This is what we naturally do in our mother tongue.

One key aspect to keep in mind is that we can categorize these activities as input and output. As you may guess, listening and reading are input activities, and writing and speaking are output activities.

In other words, when you're listening or reading, you are being exposed to the language, and when you're writing and speaking, you are "producing" the language.

The traditional approach tells you that the more you write and speak, the better. That's why language schools insist on writing a lot and "practicing" your speaking with other students, sometimes in groups.

This seems reasonable, but it's not effective. There's a lot of research that points out the contrary: Basically, in order to develop your English, you need to do input activities most of the time.

Why is that? Because you can't produce the language if you haven't previously learned it, and the only way to learn it is through comprehensible input, as simple as that.

But then...is speaking and writing a waste of time? No, I didn't say that.

When you speak in a conversation, you can see what areas of the language you need to improve. Then, when you listen again, you will naturally pay more attention to those areas. For example, if you're in a conversation, and you have to describe something in the past tense. When you try to do it, you see that you make some mistakes. The next day, when you listen to your materials again, I bet you'll pay more attention to the past.

A good schedule may be listening for one hour a day (a course, a podcast, etc.) and practicing your speaking with a tutor or friend a couple of times a week. You will improve a lot.

Last but not least, there's an interesting consequence when you listen and when you read:

Listening will naturally help you with your speaking.

Reading will naturally help you with your writing.

So, if you are interested in developing your speaking, your fluency, you will need to listen a lot. Then you can practice with a friend or tutor. The same thing happens with reading and writing.