Today we’ve got a guest post from Lucia Leite, a Portuguese native speaker who has a degree in English and German. At the moment she’s taking a Master’s degree in English as a second language for young learners, while improving her Spanish and French. I’ll leave you with her now…

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Listening is an important first step in learning a new language.  Some call this the silent period – when you listen to the spoken language to reinforce vocabulary structures and learn speech patterns.

When you are studying a second language it is a good idea to find examples that you can listen to from podcasts and television shows to movies and music.

Listening, believe it or not, is a skill that needs to be practiced.  Listening and hearing are not the same thing.  You may hear a television on in the background but you are not actually listening to the dialogue that is being spoken.

Listening is an art and one must hone their skills to be good at it.  Active listening requires you to focus on the speaker to distinguish words, tone, and meaning.

If you listen to a language before you try to learn to speak it you will have a much better grasp of the pronunciation.  If you start out pronouncing words incorrectly it can be difficult to try to fix the error later on.

It does not matter if you don’t understand what you are listening to at first – the first stage of listening is to get a feel for the rhythm of the language and how sounds are pronounced.
You will learn new vocabulary as you continue on your learning journey.

Listening to music when you are learning a second language can help you as a learner.  It can increase a listener’s ability to distinguish specific sounds in the spoken word.

One thing to remember is that listening to music activates more of the brain than language does so singing something can help you to remember it more easily than simply saying it.  Remember when you used to study for a test and you would make up a little song to remember details?  The same thing applies for learning a second language!

Look for music in the language you are learning that appeals to you.  You Tube is a good place to start and you may even find music videos with subtitles so that you know the meaning of the lyrics as well.

The lyrics will help visual learners by stimulating another sense rather than just auditory.

Using song lyrics to help build your language vocabulary is helpful too.  When you listen to a song repeatedly you will start to pick out vocabulary words related to the story of the song.  This is much easier than trying to learn vocabulary words from a list with no particular relation or meaning.  When you learn vocabulary words from a list they do not tend to transfer to long term memory the way they do if you hear words in context.

Another way to use music in language learning is to put phrases you need to remember to a familiar tune.  Choose a simple song such as Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star or Do-Re-Mi and substitute your phrase for the song lyrics.  Then you can sing the phrase over and over and it will be locked in your memory – the same way a catchy television commercial jingle stays in there forever!

Music also elevates your mood and we all know that learning is more fun when you are in a good mood and enjoying what you are doing.

There have been studies that show how music enhances creativity and also helps build vocabulary and writing skills – maybe that’s why musical parodies are so much fun!

Research has shown that adults who learn a second language by incorporating music speak the language twice as well as those not using music as a learning tool.  Singing when learning a language helps take advantage of the link between music and memory.

Those who sing when they learn a language have a better long term memory of the words and phrases that they learn.

The post Music as a Learning Tool: Sing Your Way to Fluency! appeared first on Learn a new language while having fun and exploring the world | Runaway Daydreamer.

I started learning English in school, at a very young age.  I was a little one and didn’t know a thing about language learning and fluency. Growing up, my interest for English intensified pretty quickly because I started watching American TV series and following American and British singers. I’m still into that stuff, as you can read from my About Me page.

However, I do recognize that I made some mistakes in the past:

1. For a very long  time, I watched American TV series dubbed in my native tongue, Italian, to sit back and enjoy completely the plot.
2. I read a lot without knowing how to pronounce the sentences or words that I was reading.
3. Besides songs, I never paid too much attention to listening.

I underestimated the importance of listening in language learning.
I wish I hadn’t!

I firmly believe that every single skill — writing, reading, speaking, listening — is vitally important and must be practiced in order to gain complete fluency.

Listening, however, is at the very core of language learning. Think about it. If you develop listening comprehension, the other skills will come much easier. One of them, in particular, will benefit from listening: speaking.
Here’s why:

• You have to absorb the language in order to reproduce it.
• You can’t reproduce sounds you have never heard before.
• Babies utter their first word after having heard their parents talking  repeatedly to them.
• If you’re not able to understand the spoken language, you won’t be able to reply to someone during a conversation.
• You wouldn’t mispronounce a word now if you had learned it correctly from the very first time.
• Listening will help you increase your vocabulary.

There’s another bonus…

Listening is such an easy task to arrange!

You can listen to podcasts or music while you’re stuck in the traffic, while you’re jogging or exercising, while you’re doing the dishes, while you’re browsing the web and so on.  All you really need is a computer, or an MP3 player, or an iPod or something like that.

Do you want to improve your skills in your target language? What are you waiting for? Listen to something new today!

Italiano

Ho cominciato ad apprendere l’inglese a scuola, da bambina. Ero molto piccola e non sapevo davvero cosa significasse imparare una lingua e parlarla fluentemente. Crescendo, il mio interesse per l’inglese si è intensificato sempre di più grazie alla visione di serie TV americane e all’ascolto di cantanti inglesi e americani. Coltivo ancora questi interessi, come si nota dalla mia pagina di presentazione.

Tuttavia, riconosco di aver commesso diversi errori in passato:

1. Per un sacco di tempo, ho seguito le serie tv americane doppiate in italiano per rilassarmi e godermi pienamente la trama.
2. Ho letto molto senza sapere come si pronunciassero le frasi o le parole che stavo leggendo.
3. Ad eccezione delle canzoni, non mi sono mai concentrata sull’ascolto.

Ho sottovalutato l’importanza dell’ascolto in una lingua straniera. Vorrei non averlo fatto!

Credo fermamente che ogni singola abilità — la scrittura, la lettura, l’ascolto e l’orale — sia d’importanza vitale e debba essere praticata per arrivare a parlare come un madrelingua.

Tuttavia, l’ascolto è alla base dell’apprendimento di una lingua. Pensaci. Se sei in grado di capire quando gli altri si esprimono in una lingua straniera, tutto il resto ti verrà più naturale. In particolare, ti risulterà più semplice parlare in quella determinata lingua.
Ecco perché:

• Devi assorbire una lingua prima di riuscire a riprodurla.
• Non puoi riprodurre suoni che non hai mai sentito prima.
• I bambini dicono la loro prima parola dopo aver sentito parlare ripetutamente i loro genitori.
• Se non sei in grado di capire quando gli altri parlano, non sarai nemmeno in grado di rispondergli durante una conversazione.
• Non sbaglieresti la pronuncia di una parola se l’avessi imparata correttamente sin dalla prima volta.
• L’ascolto ti aiuterà ad ampliare il tuo vocabolario.

C’è ancora un altro bonus…

È così facile praticare l’ascolto di una lingua straniera!

Puoi ascoltare i podcast o la musica mentre sei bloccato nel traffico, stai correndo o facendo attività fisica, stai lavando i piatti, stai navigando sul web e così via. Tutto ciò che ti occorre è un computer, oppure un lettore MP3, un iPod o qualcosa del genere.

Vuoi migliorare le tue capacità in una lingua straniera? Che cosa stai aspettando? Ascolta qualcosa di nuovo oggi!

The post Don’t make the same mistake I did. appeared first on Learn a new language while having fun and exploring the world | Runaway Daydreamer.