When I studied in school I always got relative low scores on listening and speaking, it is because I always found the native speakers speaking English so fast that I could hardly hear a word. Since then, I always look for a way to improve my English listening.
Every Day English
I always envy some of my friends who have chances to study aboard. Of course some of them were forced to study outside Hong Kong (because they couldn’t get enough scores to get to the local Universities), and some of them got financial support from their parents to study aboard.
No matter the reasons behind, they had chances to live in a place surrounding by people speaking other languages. Most of them studied in Australia, England , Canada and USA, so they were forced to use English to communicate in their daily lives.
In other words, they were offered golden opportunities to learn English and get to the higher standard of English than normal people in Hong Kong.
Actually the most important factors of learning a language is to be surrounded by that language, and make sure we use that language every single day.
If we use English to communicate every day, we must master English, just like we master our Cantonese.
This is actually the key to learn English, and this condition can be manually created by ourselves.
Listening to Youtube videos Every Day
Watching Youtube videos can be more than just entertaining.
There are a lot of videos on Youtube presented in different languages like Mandarin, Cantonese, English, etc. If you want to learn a language, the most direct way is to listen to the videos presented in that language.
My practice is that I always put on my headset and listen to different English videos that are related to start-up, entrepreneurship, motivation, marketing, presentation, etc. Instead of watching them, I just listen to them because I need to work on the daytime.
“Listening to Youtube videos while working? Dude! how can you focus on your work?”
That’s right. When I am working on some tasks that requires my laser focus, I won’t listening to anything. However, when I am doing something routines, I am able to do the work while listening to Youtube.
The key here is, I am not trying to understand every single work but to make sure that I got used to an English speaking environment. By listening to hundreds of Youtube videos I will be familiarise with native speakers’ speaking speed and accents.
As a result, I start to hear some words that previously I couldn’t hear from native speaker’s talk.
Listening to Audio Books
Same applies to listening to audio books. While Youtube videos might be shorter in length and more fun, audio books are more lengthy and more educational.
Because of the writing in nature, we can learn a lot of vocabularies and way of writing from audio books.
I find the main difference between Youtube videos and audio books is that the speakers of audio book are speaking more formally and pronouncing words in a better way.
Because the “reader” have nothing to read but to listen to the book in order to understand it, the speaker needs to speak correctly and in attractive way, otherwise no one would like to listen to the book no matter how informative and interesting the book could be.
From listening to audio book, we can be more than just being surrounded by English speaking environment, but to really know how to pronounce a sentence, how to present a story in an attractive way so that the listeners will not get bored, and how to make sure the listeners can understand the story without reading anything.
In other words, listening to audio book can improve our writing, listening and speaking skills.
Watching Netflix Movies & TV dramas
The final way of improving listening skill is to watch Netflix movies and TV dramas.
This is indeed the most interesting way of learning English as we all love to watch movies and TV dramas.
I was told that one of the ways to learn English via watching movies is to turn on English subtitles. When we listen to some words that we don’t understand, we can check the subtitles.
I personally think this does not work because I don’t think I can read anything when I am focusing on listening. That’s why I mentioned above that I only listening to Youtube when I am doing something that requires less focus.
Unless you can understand the subtitle immediately with just a glance, I would recommend you use the subtitle in your mother language, ie, Chinese in my case.
When watching the movie, I will not look at the subtitle at all and only hear what the characters say, until the moment I really don’t understand the meaning of the sentence, I will spend a second to look at the subtitle. In that sense I can easily get the meaning without pausing the movie.
For some movies that I am confident to understand without the subtitle, I will turn off the subtitle and listen to the characters’s speaking just like I listen to Youtube videos.
So the main advantage of watching Netflix movies and TV dramas is that they have better subtitles to help us understand the English, and we can choose to use this tool whenever we want. We can also use the English subtitle to learn how people speak in daily lives.
I hope you enjoy my blog post today.
***********************************************************
If you want to know more about what I have learnt from other successful people, you can click the below link. This could the one of the life-changing articles for you:
Scott Pilgrim Comic Rating Short Essay On Old English
Prose
Stop by my website best books (bahissitesi2019.blogspot.com)
Asking questions are genuinely good thing if you
are not understanding anything completely, except this piece of writing offers pleasant understanding yet.
Best Free Audible Books Uk Old English Poetry Vs Middle English Poetry
Feel free to surf to my site :: bog (https://crexbooks.blogspot.com/)
Is Bookofmatches Legit The Wicked King Amazon
Feel free to visit my blog: book epub (http://plohed.shoppy.pl)
The Giver Katie Holmes Chemical Reaction And Equation Class 10 State Board
Feel free to visit my site :: bog (plohed.shoppy.pl)
I loved as much as you’ll receive carried out right here. The
sketch is attractive, your authored subject matter stylish.
nonetheless, you command get bought an shakiness over that you wish be delivering the following.
unwell unquestionably come further formerly again since exactly
the same nearly very often inside case you shield this
increase.
Appreciation to my father who informed me about this weblog, this webpage is
truly remarkable.
I like it when individuals get together and share thoughts.
Great site, keep it up!
Woah! I’m really digging the template/theme of this website.
It’s simple, yet effective. A lot of times it’s challenging to get that “perfect balance” between user friendliness
and appearance. I must say that you’ve done a superb job with this.
Additionally, the blog loads extremely quick for me on Internet explorer.
Exceptional Blog!
Like!! Thank you for publishing this awesome article.
you’re really a good webmaster. The website loading velocity is amazing.
It sort of feels that you’re doing any unique trick.
Moreover, The contents are masterpiece. you’ve performed a
wonderful job in this subject!
This is a good tip especially to those new to the blogosphere.
Simple but very precise information… Appreciate your sharing this one.
A must read article!
Thank you for your support! I hope you could enjoy my other blog posts! Cheers!
Hello terrific website! Does running a blog such as this take a lot of work?
I have absolutely no understanding of coding however I was hoping to
start my own blog soon. Anyway, should you have any
ideas or techniques for new blog owners please share.
I understand this is off subject but I just needed to ask. Kudos!
Thank you for your support. I am sorry I don;t have any coding background, just using wordpress features to build this site. I guess there are a lot of resources out there you can find in Google. Cheers!
Hi there! Do you know if they make any plugins to assist
with SEO? I’m trying to get my blog to rank for some targeted
keywords but I’m not seeing very good success. If you know of any please share.
Thank you!
Hi, I wish i could help but i am still learning here. Hope you could find the answers from Google.
Hi there, after reading this awesome piece of writing i am also cheerful to share my experience here with friends.
Thanks you for your support!
Truly when someone doesn’t be aware of then its up to other people that
they will assist, so here it takes place.
I don’t even know how I finished up here, but I assumed this
put up was once great. I do not recognize who you are however definitely you are going to a well-known blogger if
you happen to are not already. Cheers!
I enjoy what you guys tend to be up too. Such
clever work and exposure! Keep up the superb works guys I’ve included you guys to my blogroll.
Thank you! Glad you enjoy my blog!
Having read this I believed it was very enlightening.
I appreciate you taking the time and effort to put this content together.
I once again find myself personally spending way too
much time both reading and posting comments. But so what, it
was still worthwhile!
Thank you for your comment! I will keep it up!
Simply desire to say your article is as astonishing.
The clearness in your publish is simply spectacular and that i can think you are a professional in this
subject. Well along with your permission allow me to seize your RSS feed to
stay up to date with forthcoming post. Thanks a million and please carry on the rewarding work.
P.S. If you have a minute, would love your feedback on my new website re-design. You can find
it by searching for “royal cbd” – no sweat if you can’t.
Keep up the good work!
Thank you very much. I can see you have a wonderful website as well! I got some knowledge after reading the “Beginner’s Guide to CBD Oil”.