When Learning a Language: Listen Before You Speak

And so the listening is sort of the preparation for speaking.

Hi, Steve Kaufmann here and today I want to talk a little bit about

listening, why you should listen before you speak in language learning, and

maybe that's the lesson for life.

Make sure your mind is open and that you're listening before you

just say whatever you want to say.

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So if you follow me here, you know that I believe in the power of input, uh, I

believe in Stephen Krashen, uh, that we learn from meaningful messages and we

learn when we're listening to a language and we hear things that are somehow

compelling for us, that way we learn.

And, um, of course in history, long before we had, so input can

be listening and it can be reading.

Those are the two ways in which the language, which we don't have

inside us, can come into our brain.

We can develop new language habits based on this stimulus from the language that

we receive in listening or reading.

And, uh, but listening, you know, obviously historically precedes reading,

uh, humans were communicating orally long before we had any writing system.

People learn things by listening to the elders or listening

to experts and so forth.

So listening is, has been around for a long time.

So how do we listen to learn languages?

Um, in my own case, listening is my favorite activity

because it's so easy to do.

And I think that's important.

We kind of force ourselves to do things all the time that we find difficult.

We don't want to be pushing against, you know, too much resistance.

Listening is something that I can do first thing in the morning

while doing my exercises, I can do it while preparing breakfast.

I can do it while in the car.

And I do a lot of it, probably more than any other activity, but listening

implies some degree of understanding or at least an attempt at understanding.

Otherwise we just hear something.

So we just hear noise.

We just hear a language and it's, there's nothing there that we understand.

I don't think that's very effective for language learning.

So I always make a point of listening to something where I have access

to a transcript at a very early stage in my language learning.

Uh, I rely on going over the transcript because it is just noise when I start

and I go through the transcript, I might look up words in LingQ and I

review the words and I listen again, and I listen to the whole lesson again

and gradually sort of the fog lifts.

It's like the jigsaw puzzle as more pieces fall into place we start to

notice some other things, but always the listening is the easiest thing to do.

And it also triggers my reading where I find it easier to sort of define

the words that I'm hearing if I just rely on my listening, I, I can't

really grab what those words are.

So it's very much a combination of listening and reading, but most

of the time is spent listening.

Now, when we listen, we aren't, and here, I want to point out some

things that I think experienced...

at least I shouldn't say that, but in my own case, I know that I will continue

not understanding for a long time.

It doesn't bother me.

So we listen, we don't fully understand, but we are understanding something.

And so the language is washing over us.

We are listening.

We're not just hearing the language.

We are listening.

We're grabbing things here and there.

And when we listen to the second time we notice some other things.

So, um, I combine it with listening, but the listening itself, which is

so easy to do is also helping the language to wash over my brain.

And I do pick out certain things every time I listen.

Um, now the other thing about listening, I like listening while I'm doing other

tasks, because I actually surprisingly find it easier to concentrate...

start off by saying we can't concentrate a hundred percent when we are listening

to anything, uh, let alone in a foreign language where it requires a little more

concentration to, to understand what's being said to sort of seize upon those

things that we do understand and try to fill in some things that we don't yet

understand and guess what they mean.

So all of this stuff requires a fair amount of concentration, but you

can't be concentrating the whole time.

If I sit down to deliberately listen, I find it more difficult.

My mind is more likely to wander for some reason.

On the other hand, if I'm driving, if I'm doing the dishes, if I'm exercising, I'm

not worried about when my mind wanders.

I'm assuming that my mind is going to wander uh, and for some reason

I'm able to better concentrate.

Obviously exercising is more difficult, but doing the dishes I'm

able to, I'm able to concentrate.

And if it's, if it's the mini stories where there's a lot of repetition,

I start noticing certain structures that I didn't notice before.

If it's more advanced content in languages that I speak say relatively

well, I'm more focused on the meaning.

I don't listen to those things so often, but all of this has helped the

language sort of wash over my brain.

And while we do this, and especially we combine it with reading, we are building

up our capability to speak, but the listening especially starts certain

phrases sort of ringing in our brains.

And we get to a point where we want to try these out.

We may use them wrong.

We may fall flat on our face, but we build up this well of things

that we want to say in the language, because we've been listening a lot.

And so the listening is sort of the preparation for speaking, and

it's not only sort of the easiest activity to do, it's very easy

to find an hour a day to listen.

15 minutes here, 20 minutes there you put together an hour.

Uh, hopefully that triggers you to go and read the same content if

you have access to the transcript.

So it's a very easy activity to do.

It's a fun activity.

Listening comprehension is also a major goal in language learning so that

the, the activity becomes the goal.

Uh, not the medium is the message, but you know, the activity of learning is the

goal itself, because if we can achieve a high degree of listening comprehension.

We now have access to so much more in the language that we can use to improve.

This could be simply having meaningful conversations with people because we

understand more of what they're saying.

It's very frustrating to be in a conversation with someone where

you struggle to say something, and then you don't understand

what they're saying back to you.

Um, if we have good listening comprehension, we can listen to podcasts.

We can watch a Netflix films or series.

So the listening comprehension, which we achieved through lots of listening

is not only the main activity it becomes the goal because you get

a sort of a multiplying effect.

Once you achieve a certain level of listening comprehension, you can

listen to more compelling material, which increases your ability to

understand your listening comprehension.

And it just gets you on a sort of...some...

gives you momentum in your language learning that will

eventually lead to better fluency.

So once you have enough of that comprehension and you have taken advantage

of your listening comprehension to, you know, access all of the kind of

content that's available on the internet, listening and hopefully reading and

looking at words on LingQ or whatever, once you are, you know, headed in

that direction the speaking will come.

And so that's why I always say, listen before you speak, that's not to say

you can't start speaking whenever you want, but make sure that even as you

start speaking, put a lot of emphasis on listening because when you're,

if you're not very, you know, at an early stage, if your comprehension

isn't very well developed and you're struggling to say something, you're

going to be mostly focusing on trying to say what it is you have to.

Whereas, if you're focusing enough time on listening, you're building

up that listening comprehension and eventually you'll end up speaking better.

So I just wanted to make that point about listening someone

similar to the discussion I had in French a couple of weeks ago.

Thank you for listening.

Bye for now.