5 Secrets to Improve Your English Listening and Speaking Skills
hi everybody I'm Gabby Wallace and this
is a go natural English lesson this
video is a sneak preview of my full
video course online that's available for
instant viewing as soon as you sign up
on my website go natural English comm
17 secrets to improving your listening
skills in English and yes there are
really seventeen secrets plus five
practice videos there is also a bonus
video so you have a few hours of course
materials that will improve your
listening skills and you can ask me
questions there as well but in this
video I want to share five of these
strategies or secrets for improving your
listening skills so let's get right to
it number one your mindset the way that
you think whether it's positive or
negative makes a huge difference in your
abilities to take action or to
understand what you're hearing so if you
go into a situation with a negative
mindset trust me you won't do as well
and you won't feel as confident if you
go into a situation with a positive
mindset yes I can do it I am able to
understand what I hear in English I do
have the skills and I have the
motivation to improve my skills I see
myself improving every day these are the
kinds of phrases these are the kinds of
ideas that I want for you to have in
your mind as you approach situations in
English where you want to understand
what you hear so my first tip is to
start with a positive mindset I believe
you can do it you can understand what
you hear in English and I'm here to help
you so that you can even improve even
more and build your confidence so that
interact with success in any English
all right that's why we're here let's
take a look at the second strategy
listen read speak when you listen it's
very helpful if you can use other
activities to develop your listening
for a sport let's say you want to be
right and the rest of the world football
but in the u.s. we call it soccer so you
might play a lot of soccer to get good
of course that's obvious right but some
people will encourage you to cross-train
maybe try a different sport that would
increase your endurance or your
breathing your your lung capacity maybe
you want to try swimming it's a totally
different sport but it should help your
overall physical capabilities so I
recommend finding materials where you
can listen and read them so this video
is a material that you can listen to and
you can read the subtitles right so you
could start by listening only don't read
the subtitles and then the second time
that you watch the video you can listen
and read so pay attention to the
subtitles other materials you could use
include my podcast project all yours
English you could use of The Voice of
America news they often have listening
and reading that you can do together
alright the third is speak so what I
want you to try with this video or with
my podcast is to first listen then
listen and read then try a speaking
technique that's called shadowing I have
another video that describes how to
shadow but I'll quickly describe it here
what you do is you listen and as soon as
you can possibly repeat what you hear I
you to say it okay so you're going to be
mimicking what you hear as fast as you
can right after you hear it all right
so in these three ways you're going to
develop your listening skills because
reading will help you identify the
connection between what you hear and
what you read okay and speaking well if
you can say a sound you'll be able to
hear it better I hope that makes sense
but trust me that this kind of
cross-training will really help your
listening skills next diversity I
encourage you to listen to a diverse set
of materials try some listening
materials that are short two minutes
three minutes five minutes and then as
you advance try materials that are
longer 20 minutes 30 minutes a full
movie of an hour or two so a diversity
of lengths of materials and shorter
length materials are better for
repeating over and over if you have a
three-minute video you could repeat that
five times and you still only studied
for 15 minutes so it's very easy to do
another point about diversity is I
encourage you to begin listening to
materials that are interesting to you
that fit within your interests so if
you're interested in soccer listen to
material about soccer or listen to an
actual soccer game with English sports
casters or announcers but I want you to
push yourself to go outside of your
interest and listen to a diverse range
of materials okay if you are an artist I
want you to find science materials to
listen to you could listen to the NPR
radio that's the National Public Radio
there you're going to find topics on
science technology business health all
different kinds of topics that you can
explore to listen to our diverse range
of materials why should you do this
because of vocabulary I want you to be
familiar with a wide range of vocabulary
so again begin with topics that motivate
you that you're really interested in but
when you're ready for a challenge try
materials that you wouldn't naturally be
drawn to maybe something in a different
field or a different topic then you
would usually choose and that will keep
things fresh that will challenge you
okay next guess first why would you
guess first we want to be sure we want
to have concrete 100% confidence in what
we're hearing right well actually no I
want you to guess what you think you're
going to hear based on the situation or
the materials that you expect so let's
say you are listening to one of my video
lessons I want you to look at the title
first and take three seconds to guess
what you are going to hear in that video
this activates your brain and you start
thinking about vocabulary that you can
expect and that way that vocabulary is
fresh in your mind and your brain
doesn't have to work so hard to dig it
up so before you enter a conversation at
a specific event or a specific place
with a certain person I want you to
guess what do you think that person
might want to talk about that will help
you to be prepared mentally for that
or for the material like my videos last
points understand the big ideas what I
mean by this is I want to help you to
understand what's special about the
structure of English and the way that we
if we can start to identify the patterns
of English then when you want to
understand a specific conversation a
specific phrase or a specific word
you're going to be able to place that
within the framework or the structure of
English and you'll be able to organize
these new learnings much more easily
you'll have a place to put all the the
new ideas the new vocabulary and the new
phrases so the first thing that I want
you to think about is the big picture or
the framework of English and in my
course I describe this in more detail
but what I mean is we have to get used
to things like the rhythm of English how
we chunk phrases together and sometimes
it has nothing to do with punctuation
like periods or comments although
sometimes it does we have to get used to
the stress that we put on certain parts
of a phrase the stress that we put on
certain syllables in a word we have to
get used to how in English we have key
content words and we have weaker
function words I'll explain all this in
my full course we have to get used to
also the sounds that we're going to hear
within the words that maybe you don't
have in your native language like the th
sound or the R or the L or maybe the P
or the B sounds I know in other
languages these may not exist so this is
what I call getting used to the big
picture or understanding the big picture
so that you have a framework to
understand how English is special and
when you learn new ideas or new words
you can organize all of these things in
your brain and when we organize it helps
us to remember all right so these are
five secrets for listening success I
would love it if you would come join me
for my full course the 17 secrets
to improving your listening skills in
English which you can find on my website
at go natural English dot-com under