‘Train – your - ears’ exercises
It will not be something like 1-2-3 training.
We’ll be doing it properly for a linguistic site. That means, there are some exercises to train our unused to a fluent and at a normal speed native speakers' language ears. They are simple. And useful – try and you’ll see!
- Listen to a 3-minutes passage of any interesting for you audio-file (never do anything uninteresting – we are learning ‘at a pleasure pace‘– do you remember?). How many words have you understood? Not many? OK, listen it again… and again… and again… No, I am not a damaged record-player, I want you to grasp at your listening exercise as much as you can. The quantity of words will rise till some point – when you come to the seaming end of your means. Then read a script (or subtitles) – and translate the unknown words with Google translate – rather useful tool – write them down – learn them – and listen again! It’s SIMPLE, isn’t it?
- And a very useful thing is to repeat the words or even the whole phrases or sentences tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and a week after the day after tomorrow… Just keep a dictionary of your new words (they are your REAL ACHIEVEMENT!) – in time they will go from your passive vocabulary to the active one. This is the goal!
- Use the “Break & Grab” Technique of this engVid guy – it’s interesting. For short, you have to hear while listening this or any other passage of audio file all the SOUNDS ‘s’, or ‘t’, or … any you want. Count them, please – how many ‘s’ have you encountered in the first 3-4 sentences? And so on…
- In time you’ll be able not only to hear, but listen and understand much more than before. Promise!
- Anyway, all exercises are useful, why not this one?
Listen to the audio books – you can download the on the Play Market – believe me – they are great! And, by the way, you can read the content you are listening – a good help for the learners! Begin with children books or classic things, waiting or sitting, or riding but – not on the crossroads…
And there are these Big Talks, and TED, and different kind of masterclasses – with B-B-Beautiful English subtitles! And what are their themes and personalities! Welcome to the English-speaking World! Your efforts were worthwhile!
- Now then - you can watch films or cartoons – whatever you do prefer. That was what all the thing was about (I mean this my blog…). Choose them with English! subtitles – throw away your be-lingual dictionaries – not a great help to begin to speak and think in the foreign language, anyway…
- There are also some podcasts – TV-shows and films, the most popular nowadays is “Friends” – USE them! PLEASE! The heroes are speaking the colloquial language, everyone has his own ’voice’ and manner to speak, as well as his specific vocabulary traits… Listen to them, imitate them – and you’ll see receive ‘another YOU’-personality! They say, knowing many languages gives people more than one personality, and in English you will sound and behave somehow the other way than in your native tong – you will become your English-speaking YOU!
Uh-h!
NOW you’ve read it all and – as I suppose - have digested it properly –
Take Your BONUS:
The best 2018 world Song – Ed Sheeran – “The Shape of You”:
(Google the lyrics - read - translate – learn – and sing – or hum it, as you wish… In the kitchen – in the office – on the road – in the bus – in the train – everywhere and whenever you like – aloud or in your mind – as it suits you!)
It’s BEAUTIFUL!
