The story of cover:The first word in vacabulary list of CET4
The content of the post is from a youtube video I watched recently which is about English learning. After watching, I’m totally agree with the idea from the youtuber, so I organized the content to words. Although he talks about English learning, I think the method could be using on other language learning as well.
It is worth noting that this post cannot help people who are preparing for English test.
Unbalanced learning
All language have 4 types of ability: Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writting. In most situations, we thought they are the same important(At least, they have the same value in English test), but, in fact, it is wrong.
language beginners are just like a baby who just borned, so they don’t know anything.
Imaging how does baby learn a language so fast?
I think the key is listening. This way is not emphasize the balance between 4 types of ability, so I called it unbalanced learning.
Listing first
What’s the benifits of listening first:
- Listening is passive, so it’s easy to accept
- You can build your vocabulary by listening more (you can recognize which word appears for many times, and remember it)
- If you can understand what others said, you can communicate with others
- The core of language is listening and speaking (characters are based on language) rather than reading and writting, you can use listening to build your mindset of the language you learn
- You can start a conversation with others, and get feedback instantly, which encourages you to learn more
- It’s very easy to build your own listening environment
- Listening can help other 3 abilities:
- For speaking: you can learn fron other’s words
- For reading: you can read content scilently, build your reflect to word
- For writting: Phonics
So it’s very critical to build a good ability of listening, that’s why listening first.
Listen to what?
As a good listening material, it should meet:
- It has specific scene
- It’s long enough, which could provide enough time to practise
Some episodes with specific scene and professional youtuber are good choices.
Usually when you have watched 10 American dramas (each with several seasons), you already have excellent English listening skills.
Once your ability improved, you can challenge higher difficulty, like: speed up, podcast
For the word you don’t know, don’t worry, you can build the ability of understanding with the word you already known
If you have no time
- It’s not necessary to manage your time, because it’s not your nature
- Moving your study to your entertainment (watching the content you want)
- If you want to learn how to write better, novels are better than videos
- Unhappiness is from voidness, and we need to be driven by sense of accomplishment