skills and comprehension

(hint emotion!)

Today I'm going to show you how you can? leverage your

EMOTIONS

to improve your English listening.

You’re going to learn:

Why listening does not always improve your listening skills

How you can improve your listening skills EFFECTIVELY

What to do if (like me) you are too lazy to search for good listening material

… and some ‘emotion’ words =)

Sound good? Give this video a thumbs up! =)

Basically A LOT of people ask me things like

“How can I improve my English listening?"

or

How can I improve my English listening comprehension?"?

Improving your English listening is really easy.

All you've got to do is listen to a lot of English!?

… right?

Well, yes.

But also no.

The thing is, there are some problems with this way of thinking ...?

For example…

… do you find that you listen to English, but quickly stop paying attention?

… you don’t even realize it, but several minutes have gone past and you’ve been thinking

about something completely different!

Of course, you don't remember any of the English words or grammar that you heard …

… or maybe even what the thing you were listening to was about!

This is probably because?you’re not really listening …

… your mind wanders and you can't concentrate.

Obviously, this is not going to help you improve your English listening skills!

So, why does this happen?

Well, this happens because probably ...

The material is too hard (and you don’t understand it)

It’s not interesting to you (and you don’t care)

It’s boring!!?(and you don’t really want to listen)

If you are listening to things which have any one (or more!) of these qualities it's

only natural you can't concentrate or suck up the English like a sponge!

What you need is audio that has three things which are the OPPOSITE to the three things

listed above:

The material is easy (and you understand) It’s interesting to you (and you care)

It’s exciting!!?(and you want to listen)

First, let’s talk about material which is easy.

Try to listen to things that are easy for you.

This is NOT a waste of time like many people think!

Basically you should already understand 90%

... listen repeatedly until you understand 99% or 100% and then find something new at

90%.

Always just a tiny bit more difficult.

It’s better to listen to five things which are a ‘tiny’ bit difficult once than it

is to listen to something really difficult five times.

… it’s even better to listen to something a ‘tiny’ bit difficult five times!!

Second you need to listen to things which are interesting TO YOU.?

An audiobook or radio show for native speakers that you've picked because you like the subject

matter?is ALWAYS going to be better to than the CD stuck to the back of a textbook which

has content which you ‘should’ learn, but don’t really want to.

Forget about “should” learn.

If you don’t WANT to learn it, forget it.

Even if it’s really useful, if you don't like it just get rid of it!

This might seem illogical, but believe me, this will speed up your learning A LOT.

The third thing is EMOTION.

This is something really important.

Even if the content is interesting and useful and everything else,

if the recording is boring and ... recorded ..... like ....... this .......

it's useless!

Useless useless

useless

This is why 90% of the CDs which come with textbooks are a total waste of time

... emotion always seems to be missing from English learning materials.

(Possibly the only exception that I know of is the Effortless English lessons which are

DESIGNED to be emotional.)

Our minds are programmed to react to emotion.?

Whether it’s ....

Happiness

Rage

Love

Sadness

Frustration

shock

WE ARE DRAWN TO EMOTION.

.... It’s hard to ignore emotional content and it’s?hard for our minds to wander when

we're listening.

Even better, this kind of lesson and audio is?EASY TO REMEMBER and?ADDICTIVE.

so you always want to listen to more and more …

… just like you always want to see more and more of your favourite TV drama.

OK, so in summary, if you really want to improve your English listening, listen to audio that

…

Is easy

Is interesting to you

Moves you

If you’re lazy, like me, I recommend just picking up a copy of the Effortless English

audio lessons.

(which are designed to be ‘emotional’)

I don’t need to practise my English listening

but when I reviewed Effortless English about a year ago

I ended up listening to the lessons all the way through

… just because they’re so great to listen to!

Ok, that’s it from me today.

… I’d love to know what you think of today’s lesson.

Also, I’d love to know if you have any tips for practising English listening of your own!

(please leave them in the comments so everyone can benefit!)