If you're following me, you know that this blog is a way that I'm using to improve my English writing skills. This was the fun way that I found to study a language and not get boring doing it. But, I need to improve the other skills, listening and speaking. Today, I'll write about a method to improve your listening skills.
Mostly of the people say that read a book and listen to a podcast are a great way to improve your listening skills. They are right. However, generally podcasts are a casual conversation, the people that record it doesn't think about pronunciation, they've a limited vocabulary (as I do) and sometimes the accent isn't easy to understand. I know that are proper podcasts for English students, but IMO they aren't funny or even interesting.
It was for those reasons that I tried to find something that I could combine read and listen in a fun way. This year I discovered the Audio books, I already know that they existed but it never interested me before. So, I thought: Let's try once and see if the audio book is really a great way to "read" when you don't have conditions to hold a book or an eBook reader. It's really great!! An audio book is read by someone with a good pronunciation and voice tone. I can understand properly what the storyteller is saying and is a fun way because you're still reading a book of your interest.
Then, I combine the book and audio book. It's like to watch a movie with subtitles, but the movie is inside your head. Is a good way to know how to say a word and memorize the way that it sounds. There's a lot of words that I don't know how to say it, but I know the meaning. Using this combination is improving this knowledge and making more easily to just listen to the book instead of read and listen at same time. Someday, I'll probably understand casual podcasts with the same facility.
My tips to you start using this combination are:
Mostly of the people say that read a book and listen to a podcast are a great way to improve your listening skills. They are right. However, generally podcasts are a casual conversation, the people that record it doesn't think about pronunciation, they've a limited vocabulary (as I do) and sometimes the accent isn't easy to understand. I know that are proper podcasts for English students, but IMO they aren't funny or even interesting.
It was for those reasons that I tried to find something that I could combine read and listen in a fun way. This year I discovered the Audio books, I already know that they existed but it never interested me before. So, I thought: Let's try once and see if the audio book is really a great way to "read" when you don't have conditions to hold a book or an eBook reader. It's really great!! An audio book is read by someone with a good pronunciation and voice tone. I can understand properly what the storyteller is saying and is a fun way because you're still reading a book of your interest.
Then, I combine the book and audio book. It's like to watch a movie with subtitles, but the movie is inside your head. Is a good way to know how to say a word and memorize the way that it sounds. There's a lot of words that I don't know how to say it, but I know the meaning. Using this combination is improving this knowledge and making more easily to just listen to the book instead of read and listen at same time. Someday, I'll probably understand casual podcasts with the same facility.
My tips to you start using this combination are:
- Get a great earphone, don't buy a cheap one if you want sound quality. With a great earphone, you don't have to put the volume high and the sound will be amazing.
- There's eBooks at Amazon with the audio book included, search for Audible. The Audible player combined with Kindle is amazing, your kindle will be synchronized with the player!
- There's a lot of free audio books, the hard thing is to find the corresponding book/eBook.
- Don't start with a complex book to read. I recommend to pick first a easy book to read to you get used with this method.
R3D9 - 100
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