![]() ![]() How To Do Less Passive Listening And More Active Listening ![]() It’s just not feasible if you have a life. You probably can’t lock yourself in your bedroom from 4pm every day when you get home from school and just listen to hours of English. I even discussed this with Olly Richards.But this is my question: are you a Scandinavian teenager who has hours a day to dedicate to listening to English? No! Probably not! I know that there are teenagers in Scandinavian countries like Norway listening to hours of TV in English every day when they get home from school. So if you’ve got a normal life, you don’t have the time to do hours and hours of passive listening every day. You also need to eat and sleep and things like this. You probably also like to take some time to sit around and relax sometimes. I’m assuming that you have a job, you have a life away from learning English, possibly a family. The thing is though, I’ve found that this passive listening doesn’t work. It’s so tempting! Who wouldn’t want that? No more subtitles when you stick on a film, no matter what film, and all that with 0 effort required. There will be no more awkward conversations with native speakers where you don’t understand why everyone finds that joke so funny and you’re a bit lost. It’s nice to dream that and think “wow! If I just listen enough, it will magically happen and all my problems will be solved!” Once you do enough passive listening, you can listen to anything you want and it’ll all be effortless. It appeals to us – this idea that it’ll be just like in your first language. It’s obviously popular because the idea is that you can just put on a podcast or the radio in the background and soak everything up like a little sponge, with no effort required.Įveryone wants to buy into and believe that idea because we’d all love to reach our goals and do hard things with the minimum of effort, wouldn’t we? I can totally see the temptation to believe in this idea of passive listening. So if you get enough volume and you listen for long enough, one day everything will magically click and you’ll understand it all. ![]() So one of the issues that I’m addressing here is a popular myth in the domain of listening skills, which is this idea that you can just passively listen to loads of English and that will improve your listening skills. That way, you can improve your listening skills as you watch your favourite movies and TV shows. ![]() It’s a printed book with listening and writing exercises that you can put on your couch as a gentle reminder to make your listening active. Keep scrolling to read the article or click play on the video below if you prefer watching videos.īy the way, if you want to make your listening active, not passive, I recommend the Active Listening Workbook. They’re fundamental points that are true and that are going to help you out. They’re not just to help you break free from the subtitles, the goal is really to help you understand anything you want to understand in English. I’ve been doing some videos recently which are about some listening fundamentals. It’s Cara here from Leo Listening where I help advanced English learners fall back in love with their favourite films and TV series by teaching them how to break free from the subtitles. Wondering if passive listening works? I hate to disappoint you but if you want to understand fast-talking native speakers and sound more like a native speakers yourself, then you’ll need to become an active listener. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |