Do you want to learn English? Start it “Listen more”

    For several weeks now I have been studying English using the methodology that has hooked me. The essence of the method More listen and read material that is of interest to you in the target language.

    This technique is used by many. I grabbed onto it, seeing a couple of times here on habrahabr, a link to Lingq.com (ref.) And watching a video with startup author Steve Kaufman.

    Steve himself has already mastered 11 languages, including Russian.

    In this video, he briefly describes how to learn the language:



    I registered on his site about a year ago, but during this time my counter of learned words did not increase much. Why did it happen?

    I neglected the main part of the “ Listen more ” method , I only read the articles that I threw onto the site. (By the way, there’s a great way to highlight unfamiliar words , and a counter of learned words )

    Once I signed up for a voice lesson with Steve, at the end of which I received recommendations to build up my dictionary and read his book .

    The book turned out to be useful, the technique was chewed in it. Here are some of its subtleties:

    • The most important A) Listen more B) Listen to the material you are interested in.
      Point A - helps to build up the vocabulary; Point B - stimulates learning.

    • Forget the "school" methodology, where you immediately "hammer" with grammar. Grammar is a barrier to learning a language. You are losing interest. You will need it, but later.

    • The language needs to be allocated an intensive period of study. The first stage: daily listen to the material for 60-90 minutes for 3 months.

    • Try to listen to material that contains no more than 20% of unknown words.

    • In video content, the picture distracts from the text. At the initial stage, listen better to podcasts.

    • Make your own phrases from the material you’ve listened to.
      You can then easily remember them.

    • Memorizing texts / words - yes, there is an effect. But this pushes away from the language, just listen more, often repeated words themselves will be remembered.

    • Passive dictionary that allows you to freely communicate in English: 8000-12000 words.


    For the second week now I have been listening to podcasts, and the words, indeed, are themselves remembered.

    But my example is not yet indicative, here is a more advanced result, according to the method “Listen more” gasc.livejournal.com/1386.html
    here is the experience of several more people engle.ru/forum/4
    translation of an article by Steve gasc.livejournal.com/ 634.html
    and this is Steve’s blog www.thelinguist.blogs.com

    Good luck learning the language!

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