Listening. A key practice for improving your English.

Who’s this for?

English Learners, especially learners at a basic or immediate level.

Why?

Because this will make English easier to understand. You will get use to the sounds and the patterns of English and this will also help your speaking skills. You will find it easier to hold conversations in English.

Listening and English

Listen more. Listening is the forgot skill in language learning. It’s also easy to do these days. You can have English on your smart phone, your MP3 player, your computer and TV

Listen to Simple English

Listen to simple English because you will learn faster that way. Many people listen to CNN and BBC news when it’s far too difficult for them. They would learn faster by listening to simpler English.

Simple English Resources

Lingq - Listening and Reading materials

Lingq has lots of short stories and texts with audio. Most of the listening and reading material is free. They have a big library of listening material at all levels. Join them and you will be able to download a lot of useful listening material for English (and other languages).



This YouTube channel has lots of stories for children. They are simple to understand and you can read along as well.

British Council - Simple Short Stories

A collection of short stories in video. The stories are easy to understand and use basic language.

Base Your Learning on What you Enjoy

Enjoy what you Learning. Free Photos!





















Today's message is simple.

Get language material on;

• What you enjoy
• What you know
• What you love to spent time doing

For me this is getting language on;

• Travel
• Cooking
• Entertainment
• Art
• Stuff that comprehensible from first viewing

That's it for today.

Be Your Language Learning Boss!

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The good old days

Once upon a time it was difficult to get language resources. We relied on language schools to get them and to show us how to learn. We used textbooks as an entrance to a new language. Reading and writing were important activities in learning a language.

You were a student. The teacher was your Boss. The teacher’s boss was the curriculum and the curriculum was usually decided by some nerd who liked to write textbooks.

Progress was measured by exams and the level of text book that you reached. It didn’t matter whether or not you could understand a native speaker of that language.

The much better new days

Language schools are still around and thriving. Some have moved away from textbooks and offer real choice for the students.

Whether or not you choose a language school, you have much more choice now than before to be the boss of your language learning.

What’s new!

The internet.

This has allowed several things to change with language learning.

• Learners can talk to each other.
• It’s much easier to get in contact with someone who speaks the language you’re learning.
• It’s much easier to get resources.
• Language learning communities have developed based on ‘sharing’.

Learners talk to each other

This is important. The old advice was work hard and get through the text book. This simply didn’t and doesn’t work for a lot of people.

The new advice from learners

• Listen more
• Get ‘real’ language materials. Youtube has tonnes of language material, though at the moment it’s a pain to find useful stuff.
• Focus on your language Environment.
• Get resources that you enjoy.
• Involve people
• Use space repetition to help remember
• Use Audio Books.
• You can find out which language schools have been recommended by other learners.

Get in contact

Facebook, Lingq, Skype, LiveMocha and Meetup are some of the ways you can use to meet native speakers.

New Resources

Free

• Examples of using Youtube - English Dutch
• Lingq (lots of free listening resources)
• Dutch Resources

Paying Resources
• Yabla TV - Yabla English TV
• Podcasts - Germanpod101

Community learning

Lingq has lots of listening and reading material avai
lable for downloading. The community created the content. I find this approach very interesting and a forebearer of things to come in the language learning world.

Livemocha and Buusu are other language learning communities. Though I’m not sure what exactly they offer.

Narrow Listening - Dutch

This is for Dutch Learners

An alternative to Vocabulary Lists

What is Narrow Listening?

Narrow listening is listening to lots of material based on the same subject. An example will be watching 10 videos on the weather.

Why?

Listen to lots of material on the same subject will mean lots of repetition of vocabulary. This makes it easier to guess the meaning of words. Also you get to hear the words in context.

How?

Google translate can give you the basic words you need to do a search. I do my searches on Youtube.

For Best Results.

Watch videos on things that really interest you. Also, if you know the subject well in your own language, then it will make it easier to learn in another language. Remember fun (interest) makes you learn faster.

It was much harder finding groups of similar videos in Dutch than it was in English. Anyway, below are a few examples.


Some Examples

Veggiebende is a channel on vegetables. There are several videoes on the life of a plant. I find these very easy to understand. There are 26 videos on the Channel but some videos are not in Dutch - best to skip these.

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RatatouilleTV have 100s of videos online. They have lots on Amsterdam.

Amsterdam Museum

Bruyters is a channel that have makeup demostrations and videos related to Miss Belgium. I've only seen one video in this servies.

http://youtu.be/M2JXXD1sOAo

Other Ideas

To see similar videos - use the suggestions column on the righthand side.

Weather Forecasts

Police stuff and bicycles

Narrow Listening - English

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This is for English Learners

An alternative to Vocabulary Lists

What is Narrow Listening?

Narrow listening is listening to lots of material based on the same subject. An example will be watching 10 videos on the weather.

Why?

Listen to lots of material on the same subject will mean lots of repetition of vocabulary. This makes it easier to guess the meaning of words. Also you get to hear the words in context.

How?

Google translate can give you the basic words you need to do a search. I do my searches on Youtube.

For Best Results.

Watch videos on things that really interest you. Also, if you know the subject well in your own language, then it will make it easier to learn in another language. Remember that fun and interesting stuff makes you learn faster.

Some Examples

Snapfactory Channel on Youtube.

They have a photography channel with 172 videos. They look at different aspects of photography from a photography shooting session to how to use a light meter.

Photography Video

TotalBeautyTV

This Channel is dedicated to makeup and doing your hair. They have 111 videos. Women will probably get more from this as many women use makeup on a daily bases.

Makeup Experts

DIY

This Channel is also dedicated to beauty but uses natural ingredients. They have a 158 videos.

Makeup the natural way

Scotty Kilmer

This Channel is about maintaining and fixing your car. If you’re a mechanic or really interested in cars then this is a channel for you. There are 122 videos in the channel.

Fixing your Car

Other ideas.

With these videos, you can use the ‘suggestions’ on the righthand side of the screen, to see more videos.

UK weather

UK Weather forecast


US weather

USA weather forecast

News earthquakes

News link on Earthquakes

How to play American Football

Learn how to play American Football

How to get a girlfriend

How to get a girlfriend if you're a nerd

Other articles for English Resources

Lingq English Reading Material

Easy English Videos - Watch and Learn

English Reading on Youtube

English - Reading on Youtube

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Some English reading resources that are on Youtube

Beginners and Elementary

Channel Appuseries

This Channel has lots of children stories and rhymes on video. There are pictures to help you understand and the text is read with a clear voice.

The Ginger Bread Man



Childrenworld2u

This channel has short videos conversations. The conversations use simple language.

Daily Conversation

World English Club

World English has everyday conversations on video. They only provide text.

Short conversations with text

Douglas King

This is from a book on rhymes. The meaning can be guessed from the pictures. The language flows easily and is good to read along to.



Teacher Phil

He has lots of videos on line. He reads and uses pictures to help with comprehension. He also describes the pictures.

Teacher Phil - vacations

Intermediate (possibly advance)

Easy Reader Jack

In this video Jack reads a book called 'Bicycle Shop Murder'. To read along with the video, you need to go to his website. Sound quality is not so good on this video.

Bicycle Shop Murder Video

Other articles for English Resources

Lingq English Reading Material

Easy English Videos - Watch and Learn

More Dutch Language Resources

There should be something for everyone here.


Dutch fun with Sesame Street or Sesamstraat. I find this hilarious.



Talking Website

Dutch culture in Audio. The Rijksmuseum has many of its pages put into audio. The audio follows the words, so it’s pretty useful. The voice is a little metallic but it's a Dutch voice.

Rijksmuseum website education page

Children Stories

Audio only

Mixture of audio children stories

Story and Audio

These two websites should be really good. They have lots of children stories and the audio. Though, I have a problem with the site. I can’t get the audio to work with some of the stories. The one story that I did get the audio to work with, didn't match the story exactly.

Grimm stories

Andersen Stories

Sexy Dutch

A story about the most beautiful bottom in the Netherlands.

The most beautiful bum in the Netherlands

There’s also a video of a journalist who isn’t a bottom man but a breast man. He goes round looking for the perfect breasts.

Journalist looks for perfect breast.

Previous Dutch Resources

Easy Dutch Youtube Videos


Songs, TV for Dutch learners and more