Follow up to ‘Listen harder and longer’
In my last blog entry I wrote about the issue of improving your listening comprehension. At the end of that post I wrote:
‘In the coming posts to this blog I will attempt to address this issue of what habits are getting in your way now and what new skills can be learned to make it easier for you to improve your listening comprehension.’
I also mentioned that the ‘key’ to changing your skill levels involve: a] changing old [negative] habits - meaning habits that get in the way of your progress.
and b] learning some new skills[which can soon become new habits].
The first negative habit I’d like to address is the habit of listening to - ‘one’ - ’word’- ‘at’- ‘a’- ‘time’. You can see how choppy that makes the phrase ’one word at a time’. This /one/word/at/a/time/habit also makes it extremely hard to understand what it means.
The first requirement for any kind of learning is for the learner to ‘understand’ or ‘make sense of ‘ what they are supposed to be learning.
How can we replace this negative habit of listening for, or reading, only ’one word at a time’ you ask? The new habit or skill you need to develop is to learn to hear ‘phrases’. Phrases are groups of words whose meaning comes from the combination of the words when used together. Even if you know the meaning of each individual [separate] word in a phrase such as ’at the bus stop’. [at; the; bus and ’stop’], you will NOT understand the meaning of the phrase ’at the bus stop’. It is only when your brain can ‘decode’ this phrase as meaning ‘a place where busses stop’ that you can understand what is being said [or written] AND what it really means.
How can you learn to recognize groups of words as ‘phrases‘? A really good place to begin learning this skill is by using English songs. It is worth mentioning here that a ’song’ is just a ‘poem‘ [a form of written or spoken language used for story telling] which has been put to music. The musical rhythm of the song can actually help us learn to ‘hear’ or ‘identify’ the phrases more clearly.
Let’s use an example of a song that I have used quite successfully in my oral English classes during my 7 years as an English teacher in Chinese universities. It is called ‘My Heart Will Go On’ and is sung by Celine Dion.
It begins-
‘Every night in my dreams I see you I feel you.’
Put into phrases we get -
/every night/ in my dreams/ i see you/ I feel you/
The first phrase- ’every night’ - tells us WHEN something happens.
The second phrase- ‘in my dreams’ -tells us WHERE it happens
The third phrase -’I see you’ and the fourth’-I feel you’ tell us WHAT happens.
So, the words are converted into meaning as our brain converts the phrases into a ’story’ about somebody . We could retell this by saying- ‘The lady in the story dreams about someone every night and her dreams are so vivid she actually sees the person and feels their presence.’
Another good song for the purpose of learning to hear whole phrases when we listen to or read English is the song-
‘Right Here Waiting For You’ by Richard Marx
It begins -‘Oceans apart day after day and I slowly go insane.’ ’I hear your voice on the line but it doesn’t stop the pain.’
The phrase are: /oceans apart[where]/ day after day[when]/ and I slowly[how]/ go insane[what]/.
I hear your voice[what]/ on the line[where]/ but it doesn’t[how]/ stop the pain[what]/
Get the idea?
If you have some slow English songs like these two at home, listen to them for a while as you read their words and break the sentences [or lines as they are called in a song] into phrases. I have the lyrics[words] enlarged onto A4 paper for easy reference. These can be found at www.absolutelyrics.com
Practice ‘hearing’ the separate phrases as ‘groups of words’ rather than breaking the sentences into /individual /separate/ words/ as you have been doing- by habit.
If you do this for a short time with ‘conscious attention’ and ‘the desire to improve your skills’ I KNOW that this will help you eliminate your old negative habit and replace it with a new positive skill. Let me know how you are progressing.
This is John - trying to make sense out of English for YOU.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Hey John, I love the English songs idea. And actually that’s how I’m making progress all the time. I started with a song called ‘Bridge Over The Troubled Water’ by Simon&Garfunkel and ‘You Are Not Alone’ by Michael Jackson, both are slow songs. And later I come into ‘She’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain’ (I really underestimated the difficulty of this song, since it’s for children.), which was fast enough to make my tongue twisted. Anyway, that’s my 14-years’ old story. I check the lyrics website and believe me, I got a better one -www.sing365.com- Let me explain why this is better. I like Lene Marlin’s songs. You cannot find ‘Still Here’ on the former one, but you can find it on the latter one. By the way, the learning ‘phrases’ instead of ’one word at a time’ is also part of theory of Li Yang’s. So I insist that simply saying ’shut up’ to him is a little bit unfair, what do you say John?
Sincerely
Michael Yang
February 13th, 2008 at 10:40 am
John, you must be an amazing teacher! You have a great idea on how to explain everything in an interesting and challenging way.
I didn’t know about this before, to tell you honestly, from now on your recommendation will be my guiding star as I continue to learn more. By the way, I do love and know the complete lyrics of that two songs, which makes more interesting to me.