Reading and Listening Are The Keys To Unconscious Communications

Many English learners believe that they must memorize all or most of the rules of English grammar in order to be able to speak it correctly. Some students and teachers even think that studying grammar is a “shortcut” or faster way to improve someone’s English. Unfortunately, this is usually not true, especially for speaking and listening. When you are speaking or listening, you usually don’t have time to stop and think about specific grammar rules consciously. If you did, you would have to speak…very…slowly…like…this! Most of what we use when we communicate is “unconscious”; that is, we use knowledge that we don’t have to think about or even know the rules for.

Here’s a very important point to understand: The best way to be able to use good grammar is to listen and to read English you can understand. Most native speakers of English can’t explain to you the rules of grammar, but they can speak and write English without any problems. How is this possible? Because they have listened and read a lot of English, and they “know” the rules unconsciously, without having to think about them. For you to get this same ability, you only need to listen and read as much as you can in English.

Using Voice Of America Podcasts to Improve Listening and Speaking Ability

Listening to podcasts is a good way to improve your English listening and speaking ability. Some Internet news websites provide special programs for people who are trying to learn English. One of these is called Voice of America’s (VOA) Special English. VOA’s Special English uses easy vocabulary to talk about different news stories in the United States and in other countries. These stories are easier to read and understand than regular news stories in English. Everyday, the VOA also has an audio podcast with that day’s news. These news stories on their podcast are read at a slow rate, like ESL Podcast, so that you can understand them more easily. Although there are no explanations like you find on ESL Podcast, they are still a good way to listen to more comprehensible English.

Another website that provides special English help is the British Broadcast Company, or BBC. The BBC has a special section on its website to help people learn English through the news. The BBC website has stories written in easy language, with definitions of difficult words after some of their stories. You can read the story and listen to an audio file of someone reading the story to you.

Websites:
http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/index.cfm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/

"Narrow Listening" - Effective Method of Listening Comprehension Improvoment

One of the best ways to improve your comprehension of English is to listen to things you can understand. But what should you listen to? Many people believe that they should listen and watch programs about many different subjects to build their vocabulary. It is possible to do that, but there is a problem with this method: the vocabulary is different for each new topic, and you never get to hear the words used more than once. We know that it often takes hearing something several times before you really understand it. If you do “wide listening” – listening to many different topics – you will not hear the vocabulary repeated very much, and will not be able to pick up the words very quickly.

There is another way to listen, what we will call “narrow listening.” Narrow listening is when you listen or watch different programs on the same topic. For example, if you are interested in the World Cup, you listen to three stories in English about a specific game. Each story or program will talk about the same things, using very similar vocabulary. By using narrow listening in this way, you can hear the same words used over and over again, and have a more opportunities to understand and acquire them. You may listen to a story about a certain topic from three or four different Internet news programs in English, such as the BBC, Voice of America, CNN, and others. Be sure to listen to stories on the same topics or about the same news event. After listening to them a couple of times, you will begin to understand more and more.

Closed Captioning is an Excellent Way To Increase Comprehension

Most American television shows and movies on DVD have closed captioning. Closed captioning means that you can read the words that are spoken as you watch the program or movie. The “captions” or words can be seen on the screen. This is an excellent way to increase your comprehension if the speakers are speaking too fast or not clearly enough for you to understand them.

There are a few ways to use closed captioning. Some people like to watch a program or part of a movie without the captions, to see how much they can understand. Then they watch it again with the captions. Or you can watch the program first with the captions and then without. Other people prefer just to watch it once, with the captions. Any of these ways is okay – pick one that you think works best for you.

Some additional ideas on using closed captioning:

• It is usually best to make sure that you have the English captions or words, not a translation in another language. If you can’t understand the video with the captioning on, it is probably too hard for you and you should find something easier to watch.

• If necessary, you can stop the program on a DVD to be able to read what the person is saying more easily.