How To Improve Your Listening Skills

Remember you need repetition and novelty after awhile. 请记住，一段时间后您需要重复和新颖。 If you're listening to the same thing over and over again, the brain is picking up less and less and less. Si escuchas lo mismo una y otra vez, el cerebro capta cada vez menos. 如果你一遍又一遍地听同样的东西，大脑就会越来越少。 Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here. Today. I want to talk about listening skills. Listening skills, how to get better at listening, how to use listening to learn a language.

Remember if you enjoy these videos, please subscribe, click on the bell for notifications. So, as you know, I consider input, listening and reading to be, to be the keys, to learning a language. You have to get the language into you. It has to come from outside. You have to get your brain used to a new language.

This is best achieved through listening and reading. Reading helps you acquire more words. But listening gets your brain used to the language. And of course listening comprehension is a tremendously important skill because if you're speaking to someone and we all want to speak in the language, if you can't understand what they're saying, what the other person is saying, then it's very uncomfortable and you can't have a very meaningful conversation.

So how do you use listening to get better in the language and what are the tips to get better at listening? First of all, it depends on each, each person, but I can not sit down and just listen. If I were to sit and I've tried it, so I have whatever lesson I'm listening to and I sit down in a comfortable chair and I say, I'm going to spend half an hour listening to this podcast or whatever it might be.

I'm incapable of doing that. My mind, mind wanders. So I can concentrate if I have dedicated study time then I'm going to read, or I'm going to work on my iPad with LingQ. So where does the listening come in? Listening has the tremendous advantage that we can do it wherever we are. I don't have my AirPods handy, but I have my AirPods and I recently bought a new kind of AirPod that sits outside the ear and they work really well.

I went jogging yesterday and I could hear very well and I don't have these things actually plugged into my ear, but I can listen. First thing in the morning I would get up, I have a little seven minute exercise routine. I listen, I make breakfast. I listen.

If I exercise during the day, I listen. If I'm in the car, I listen.

So you've got all this time to listen. ですから、あなたはいつも耳を傾ける必要があります。 All right. So then people say, well, when you're listening, do you always focus? All right. It is impossible to a hundred percent focus while listening. Es imposible concentrarse al cien por cien mientras escucha. You have to... like so much in language learning, you have to accept imperfection. Tienes que ... que te guste tanto en el aprendizaje de idiomas, tienes que aceptar la imperfección. Je moet... zoveel van het leren van talen houden, je moet imperfectie accepteren. So when you speak, you're going to make mistakes.

When you listen, there's going to be lots of areas you don't understand. Cuando escuche, habrá muchas áreas que no comprenderá. There are also going to be moments when you are not focused on what you're listening to. You lose track you, your mind wanders off somewhere else. Te pierdes la pista, tu mente vaga a otro lado. That's fine. As long as you come back. Siempre y cuando regreses. And so I'd say for a period of 30 minutes that I'm in the car, listening to something, maybe I'm only focused on what I'm listening to half that time, or I don't know what the number is, cause I don't worry about it, but I know it's not a hundred percent of the time. Entonces diría por un período de 30 minutos que estoy en el auto, escuchando algo, tal vez solo estoy concentrado en lo que estoy escuchando la mitad de ese tiempo, o no sé cuál es el número es, porque no me preocupo por eso, pero sé que no es el cien por ciento de las veces. But for whatever percentage of the time I am listening, I am exposing my brain to the language and I am getting used to the language. Pero, sea cual sea el porcentaje del tiempo que escucho, estoy exponiendo mi cerebro al lenguaje y me estoy acostumbrando al lenguaje. しかし、聞いている時間の何パーセントでも、私は自分の脳をその言語にさらし、その言語に慣れてきています。 Now, one of the things that's very important is you cannot continue to listen to, uh, your target language and not understand anything or only understand five percent. Ahora, una de las cosas que es muy importante es que no puedes seguir escuchando, eh, tu idioma de destino y no entender nada o solo entender el cinco por ciento. さて、非常に重要なことの1つは、ターゲット言語を聞き続けることができず、何も理解できないか、5パーセントしか理解できないことです。

That is very inefficient in my experience. So if I listen to something, obviously at the early stages in a language, I don't understand anything, but then I will read it. Entonces, si escucho algo, obviamente en las primeras etapas de un idioma, no entiendo nada, pero luego lo leeré. I will look up the words. Buscaré las palabras. I'll review them. Los revisaré. Read it again, then I listen and I still don't understand, even though I understood kind of when I was reading and looking at words, when I go to listen, I don't understand, but that doesn't bother me.

I know that from personal experience that in time, what initially is just noise for me by a process of reading and listening and going back and reading again and looking at words again and listening again, eventually more and more of this becomes comprehensible. Don't listen to the same lesson over and over and over again at one sitting.

In other words, the brain is, I've said many times requires repetition and novelty. En otras palabras, el cerebro, lo he dicho muchas veces, requiere repetición y novedad. So you can listen to an item a few times, then move on to the next item. Even if you don't fully understand the first. Incluso si no comprende completamente el primero. So you have lesson one and you listen and you listen and you read it, then you listen again and you understand 20, 30% move on to the next one. Entonces tienes la lección uno y escuchas y escuchas y la lees, luego escuchas de nuevo y entiendes que el 20, 30% pasa a la siguiente.

Don't try to, you know, master any particular lesson or content item. No intente, ya sabe, dominar ninguna lección o contenido en particular. It's all exposure. Todo es exposición. It's all helping the brain get used to the language. Todo está ayudando al cerebro a acostumbrarse al idioma. Remember you need repetition and novelty after awhile. If you're listening to the same thing over and over again, the brain is picking up less and less than that. So you have to move to the next lesson and to the next lesson.

So keep pushing yourself forward, maintain that balance between repetition and novelty. Así que sigue empujándote hacia adelante, mantén ese equilibrio entre repetición y novedad. And there's all kinds of research into how the brain learns that sort of blocked learning that third, fourth, fifth time we read something or we listen to something we are in fact learning less and less. Y hay todo tipo de investigación sobre cómo el cerebro aprende ese tipo de aprendizaje bloqueado esa tercera, cuarta, quinta vez que leemos algo o escuchamos algo que de hecho estamos aprendiendo cada vez menos. So you have to keep moving forward. Entonces tienes que seguir avanzando. Now...

so don't worry about losing focus. Don't worry about what you don't understand, keep challenging or rewarding your brain with new material, but do have enough repetition so that you start to notice certain things that you didn't notice the first time. No se preocupe por lo que no comprende, siga desafiando o recompensando a su cerebro con material nuevo, pero repita lo suficiente para que comience a notar ciertas cosas que no notó la primera vez. And this is the next point about listening. I can listen to a mini story that I've listened to 30, 40 times before.

So I know the mini story, and yet I will suddenly notice a structure, a verb pattern, verb form that I hadn't really noticed before, even though I knew the rule vaguely. Así que conozco la mini historia y, sin embargo, de repente notaré una estructura, un patrón de verbo, una forma de verbo que realmente no había notado antes, a pesar de que conocía la regla vagamente. The 31st time that I listened to that, I notice it in a different way. La 31ª vez que escuché eso, lo noté de una manera diferente. So give yourself a chance to notice things when you go back for that additional pass through the same material. Así que date la oportunidad de notar cosas cuando regreses para ese pase adicional a través del mismo material.

So you're, again, you're maintaining that repetition and novelty, but when you're on your, in your repetition activity, allow yourself to notice certain things. You don't have to notice everything. You can lose focus, but there will be times when you notice certain things in there that will help you in your gradual acquisition of the language.

So, and remember that listening comprehension here is the goal. It's not going to be perfect, but it will gradually improve and the better your listening comprehension, the better your ability to have conversations. But again, give yourself, you know, variety between repetition and repetitious material and new challenging material combined reading with listening.

Try to focus in on certain aspects of pronunciation that you maybe didn't notice. Be aware that some of the things that you didn't notice on the first time listening or the second or the fifth or the 10th time, you may notice that 20th time you listen. So the process of acquisition of a language is gradual.

So if you listen and you don't understand, don't get frustrated. If you listen and read and listen and read and still don't understand, don't get frustrated, that's normal. And, um, at least in my own case, I prefer to be listening and doing something else, cleaning up the garage, whatever it might. Be listening, fading out, focusing in, again, that works better for me than trying to sit down and say, okay, for the next half hour, I'm going to listen to this.

All right. The exception to that of course, is if you're watching a movie, which is a form of listening, but you're watching and listening at the same time. And it's rewarding because it's fun to watch a movie and you can see the people, you can almost feel as if you're participating with this family.

That's why series, you know, on Netflix are so great. If it's, if it's the same group of people interacting all the time in this series and you watch them and you feel you're a part of them, and you're getting that sense of being in that cultural, you know, uh, sphere. Si es así, si es el mismo grupo de personas que interactúan todo el tiempo en esta serie y los miras y sientes que eres parte de ellos, y tienes esa sensación de estar en esa cultura, ya sabes, eh, esfera. Um, all of that is good, but I wouldn't, you know, I consider the, the sort of video and movies, TV series, that's more of a reward. Um, todo eso es bueno, pero yo no, ya sabes, considero el tipo de video y películas, series de televisión, que es más una recompensa. That's fun. Eso es gracioso. You have to develop the ability to be able to listen without seeing what's going on. Uh, initially sort of repetitious material like the mini stories, eventually audio books. Where just hearing the words conjures up, meaning for you so that you're automatically converting, you know, words in the target language into meaning. Donde solo escuchar las palabras evoca un significado para ti, de modo que estás convirtiendo automáticamente, ya sabes, las palabras en el idioma de destino en significado. 単語を聞くだけで、ターゲット言語の単語が自動的に意味に変換されるように、意味が思い浮かびます。

And so, as you build up to that level of, of listening comprehension, you are preparing yourself to become fluent in the language. So that's my advice. Treat listening and listening comprehension, not only as a primary goal in language but as an important way of helping your brain become accustomed to the language. Trate la comprensión auditiva y auditiva, no solo como un objetivo principal en el lenguaje, sino como una forma importante de ayudar a su cerebro a acostumbrarse al lenguaje.

So I hope that was helpful. Así que espero que haya sido útil. Thank you.