English Podcasts | What is going on in these sequences

What is going on in these sequences

What is going on in these sequences – can you tell just by listening to the sounds?

The best language learners are a combination of people who are curious, who keep asking themselves questions and are actively involved in their own learning proces, and those that can hear well, and I’m not talking about hearing well versus hearing impairment – that is an altogether different subject.

What I am talking about is those learners that can hear the sounds that are specifically English sounds (as in the language and not the nationality).

This includes things such as; elision, glottals, liaisons between words, low and high tones, pitch, volume, rate and intonations etc.

The story goes that if you can’t hear the sounds in a language, you will never be able to understand nor be able to produce accurate language through speech.

This takes a lot of time and perseverance and does not, in any way mean that a learner has to understand every single word in a sentence or a section of speech, because sometimes we don’t even do this in their own native language – sometimes we listen to parts of what are said to us, sometimes we lose concentration or we drift off.

This activity is designed to train your ears to sounds and not words.

Sounds will often give a lot of clues about the context of a conversation – where the people are for example.

See if you can work out what is happening and send your answers through the comments at the bottom of the page or you can comment on Facebook.

Developing listening skills is a language is at times difficult, often frustrating, rarely made up of shortcuts and always rewarding – at the end.

Try listening to a video or DvD in English without looking at the picture, now pause the video and without looking at the screen, try to imagine :

Where the scene takes place?
How many people are in the scene?
How they are dressed?
How old they are?
Are they men women, or children?
What relationship are they to each other? etc. etc.

Now turn around and look at the paused image – How close did you get?

The more of this type of activity you do, the more you will sharpen your hearing skills and thus your listening skills – give it a try, you have nothing to lose!