Why Do I Need So Much English Listening Practice Ep 455

07/29/21 • 11 min

1 Listener

Our English Listening Practice = Comprehensible Input ✔Lesson transcript: https://adeptenglish.com/lessons/english-listening-practice-12/

With mobile phone ownership in the UK so high it makes perfect sense to use mobile phones in the fight against COVID19. In today’s English listening practice lesson we talk about the pros and cons of using technology to help the UK’s NHS reduce the spread of the coronavirus.

I’ve received a few e-mails recently asking why I talk about this or that topic in a podcast and why I don’t talk about something else or something they suggest. Listener suggestions are always welcome but our podcast content is always going to be a little random.

I am going to take a few steps back and explain what we are doing in our English podcast lessons and what is happening to you and your brain when you listen to our English lessons.

First, our audio lessons are for you to use as "comprehensible input" which you then use to acquire the English language. Comprehensible input is just a fancy way of saying "input a listener can understand despite not understanding all the words". Think of it as input that is just above or outside of your current English language understanding.

If I were to describe a great comprehensible input audio lesson for an English language learner, then that lesson would:

Be about 10 minutes or around 2000 words long (long enough to be of value but not drown you in new content)
Contain interesting content topics that can be listened to several times without being boring (repeat listening)
Have a printed transcript that allows listeners to look up any difficult or unknown words which can be used in a spaced repetition learning regime (efficiently discover what words cause you problems and efficiently learn these)
Contain some new and unknown English vocabulary, to have this explained with lots of contextual descriptions (increasing your vocabulary)
The input needs to be clear and high quality, with no distracting noises, ideally from a native English speaker (comprehensible) (There are many other things but I’ll keep the list short, this introduction is already too long!)

Finding content like this on the internet is difficult, and one of the main reasons Adept English exists. You need lots and lots of quality English listening to help train your brain’s ability to map what you want to say, into the English words and sentence structures needed to communicate those ideas.

The really cool part of learning a language through lots and lots of comprehensible input, is the whole thing works in reverse. Our amazing brains can easily turn all of that English input (listening) into output, which is our goal in helping you to speak fluently in English.

Learn more about our courses here: https://adeptenglish.com/language-courses/

Our English Listening Practice = Comprehensible Input ✔Lesson transcript: https://adeptenglish.com/lessons/english-listening-practice-12/

I am going to take a few steps back and explain what we are doing in our English podcast lessons and what is happening to you and your brain when you listen to our English lessons.

If I were to describe a great comprehensible input audio lesson for an English language learner, then that lesson would:

Be about 10 minutes or around 2000 words long (long enough to be of value but not drown you in new content)
Contain interesting content topics that can be listened to several times without being boring (repeat listening)
Have a printed transcript that allows listeners to look up any difficult or unknown words which can be used in a spaced repetition learning regime (efficiently discover what words cause you problems and efficiently learn these)
Contain some new and unknown English vocabulary, to have this explained with lots of contextual descriptions (increasing your vocabulary)
The input needs to be clear and high quality, with no distracting noises, ideally from a native English speaker (comprehensible) (There are many other things but I’ll keep the list short, this introduction is already too long!)

Learn more about our courses here: https://adeptenglish.com/language-courses/

Previous Episode

Common English Words Used In Job Interviews Ep 454

Common English Words Used In Job Interviews ✔Lesson transcript: https://adeptenglish.com/lessons/common-english-words-9/

Job interviews are super stressful at the best of times. Recently, the job interview challenges are even greater than usual. In today’s English language lesson we have the first in a series of English language learning podcasts on presenting yourself as a job applicant.

In this podcast we are starting with your résumé, and the English vocabulary and phrases used in and around a job application. I don’t think of applying for a job as easy, if you think it is then you probably have the wrong attitude. It’s stressful and much more so if you are going to be using your second language in your new job.

If you are using your second language during your job application, it is even more important to practise what you are going to say. And importantly, be confident with the English words and vocabulary that the interviewer is expecting to hear.

Preparation for an interview using a foreign language is going to take longer. You are going to have to focus on any specialised niche vocabulary required for the job. For example, if you are applying for job in accountancy, then you will need to learn and practise the vocabulary for accountancy, the same for software development or engineering, etc.

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
⭐ Confucius

There is a lot of information to cover, so we will start simple and build up to more advanced job interview topics and cover the unique challenges when using English as your second language. Like, how to respond to certain questions "What do you do in your spare time, for fun?" Well if your applying for a creative job you might talk about creative things like painting or gardening, if your applying to manage teams of people, then you might talk about managing people outside of work, maybe helping manage the school sports team or managing charitable events. Make sure you are always presenting relevant added value to the interviewer.

Learn more about our courses here: https://adeptenglish.com/language-courses/

Adept English is here to help with FREE English lessons and language courses that are unique, modern and deliver results. You can learn to speak English quickly using our specialised brain training. We get straight to the point of how you should learn to speak English. We teach you in a fun and simple way that delivers results. If you want to learn to speak English, our approach to learning through listening will improve your English fluency.

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Next Episode

More Irregular Verb Practice In This English Speaking Topic - Part 2 Ep 456

Tricky Irregular Verbs Part 2 In This English Speaking Topic ✔Lesson transcript: https://adeptenglish.com/lessons/english-speaking-topics-9/

Back in an English language lesson podcast in May I started talking about tricky irregular English verbs, and we used this to help with your English-speaking practice. Today’s podcast is a follow up to that English lesson with more English-speaking practice to help you with this area of English that some English language learners can find difficult.

In last weeks podcast introduction ( Podcast episode 455 ) I talked about comprehensible input which is a key component of learning a language through acquisition. Now obviously input is great, understanding another language is crucial but ultimately you're doing this so you can speak and write a language not just understand it right?

So building up your listening and comprehension of a new language helps to build a new language model in your brain targeting the new language. I mentioned that one of the cool parts of learning a language in this way is that once you have built your listening language model, it can be reversed and all that listening work suddenly becomes available for output i.e. a tool for speaking and writing in the new target language - English in our case.

To help swap this new language model form input to output, you are going to need to do two things.

Start mimicking what you hear and speaking out loud. This is to help build up the physical part of speaking in a new language, literally using muscles in your throat, mouth and face that are needed for the new language. So in our speaking English lessons we create content that we expect you to speak out aloud and copy what I’m saying as you listen.
Turn the listening ideas process around. The listening (input) model is taking other people’s ideas and concepts and turning them into something you understand. Now you need to take your ideas and concepts and turn them into language (from the listening model you have built in your brain). You can practice doing this by thinking of something you want to communicate and then write this down on paper in English.

Doing these two things will help reverse your input language model into and output language model.

Learn more about our courses here: https://adeptenglish.com/language-courses/

🎤 find us at... 🌎 https://adeptenglish.com 📺 https://adeptengli.sh/youtube 💜 https://adeptengli.sh/facebook