#137 How to make listening in English fun (rep)

Episode 137

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Read the Transcript

Follow the text while you listen, then repeat useful sentences aloud.

Hi, everybody! I am Georgiana, your English teacher and founder of SpeakEnglishPodcast.com. My mission is to help you speak English fluently.

In this episode:

I'm going to give you seven ideas you can use when you perform repeated listening.

After that, I'm going to read a Point Of View story. It' an excellent technique for improving your grammar.

Ok, let's start!

As you may know, I always encourage students to listen daily. Listening is the best way to deeply learn the different sounds, words, and expressions you find in English. It's how we learn our mother tongue.

Also, it's vital to understand that listening to an audio several times helps you consolidate what you learn.

However, some students complain that they get bored. It's normal. Our brain likes new and fresh content. In other words, we like the novelty.

Here are some tricks, which will help you to keep your interest while you repeat the same audio material.

Try to guess what the speaker will say next: At first, it may seem difficult, but since you repeat the audio many times, it's a stimulating game to play.

Focus on the pronunciation of each word, especially the words you find more difficult to pronounce. Try to notice the subtleties of each sound.

Concentrate on the intonation of each sentence. As opposed to the pronunciation of individual words, here, you need to pay attention to the "musicality" of the sentence: the rhythm and the "music" of the phrase.

If you are listening to a mini-story (with questions and answers), try to answer faster. You can also try to give a longer answer.

While you listen to the audio, imitate the narrator. Listen to the material and try your best to talk at the same time as the narrator.

It may be hard, but it's fun! This technique is called "shadowing" and requires a lot of concentration. So, it's better if you pick an easy material.

Try to move while listening. You can walk, run, wash the dishes, etc. Doing a different activity while listening to the same audio adds some variety.

Listen to a friend. It's always more entertaining to share a task and to discuss the main topic with a friend. You will definitely lose track of time.

As you can see, repeating the same audio material doesn't need to be a tedious task. Using some of these powerful methods will help you to learn English patterns thoroughly.

Ok, let's move on to the next section.

Now, let’s practice.

Speaking Practice

POV Story: Grammar in Context

Notice how the verbs, pronouns, and time perspective change naturally.

First version

Past Tense

This is how it works: I will tell you a short story more than one time. Every time, I will change a grammar point. For example, I can change the tense or the person. This way, you will intuitively recognize the changes.

Ok, let's start:

Max was a very enthusiastic and successful English student. He repeated every audio one hundred times! Sometimes he got bored, so he tried to guess what was next in the audio. He was good at that.

Since he truly wanted to improve his pronunciation, he paid close attention to how the words were pronounced and, of course, the intonation of every sentence. He was full of tricks!

He really enjoyed the questions & answer lessons, and he tried to provide long answers once he noticed short answers became too easy.

He also used another fascinating method called the "shadowing technique." He tried to imitate the narrator repeating the exact words at the same time, paying special attention to the pronunciation. This process was fun but also demanding.

Every time Max had the opportunity, he listened to his favorite English audio lessons. He always carried around his mp3 player and walked for hours. Doing some exercise and learning English was an excellent combination!

Second version

New Point of View

Max and Lisa were very enthusiastic and successful English students. They repeated every audio one hundred times! Sometimes they got bored, so they tried to guess what was next in the audio. They were good at that.

Since they truly wanted to improve their pronunciation, they paid close attention to how the words were pronounced and, of course, the intonation of every sentence. They were full of tricks!

They really enjoyed the questions & answer lessons, and they tried to provide long sentences once they noticed short answers became too easy.

They also used another fascinating method called "the shadowing technique." They tried to imitate the narrator repeating the exact words at the same time, paying special attention to the pronunciation. This process was fun but also demanding.

Every time Max and Lisa had the opportunity, they listened to their favorite English audio lessons. They always carried around their mp3 player and walked for hours. Doing some exercise and learning English was an excellent combination!

Ok, this is the end of this short lesson. As you can see, just by changing a point of view of the story, you can learn grammar intuitively.

Today, we have practiced the singular and plural in the past. You've noticed how naturally the words 'was' and 'were' changed. You are learning grammar here!

Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you in the next episode.

Review

Vocabulary from This Episode

Review useful words and expressions before listening again.

01 musicality

an expression used in this episode.

02 music

an expression used in this episode.

03 shadowing

an expression used in this episode.

04 listening