Transcript:

Mary: So the next thing we want to talk about is how can you improve your listening skills? And Seth has some good ideas for us.

Seth: Yes. So, while I was in Portugal learning Portuguese, I had the thought that came to me is why don't you listen to what people are saying and then repeat it under, like, not verbally. But I would repeat it kind of under my breath and see if I could understand because I would have time to think about, forming those phrases in my own mouth.

So if someone said a phrase in Portuguese than I would mimic it under my breath and then eventually I was able to when someone would speak to me and I understood what they were saying, I was able to respond in a way that I thought that I had heard them say it or someone say it previously. So, I guess mimicking what people are saying I think can help us listen, help our listening skills. Another thing that I've done to help me understand Portuguese more is to listen to the radio. People don't really listen to the radio anymore these days. But some sort of recording of native speakers speaking to each other because then you can hear like you were saying the cadence like, when want someone's talking another persons talking. You kind of get more of the feeling of the meaning. You hear people communicate.

Mary: Yeah, I mean, we'll talk about this in the next question, too. But you can always improve your listening skills by speaking more, that goes back to the last one.

But also, throughout your day, always engaging in any thing that you can where the language that you were trying to learn is being spoken. If you're going to school and that's the only time you're ever speaking the language in this case English. Yeah, that any practice is going to be good practice. But if you're in school for two hours a day learning English, but then you're spending eight hours speaking your native speaking your native language, the ability to retain what you have learned in English diminishes so much, extremely.

And so it's not every day, if you're going to school, like if you guys were listening to this two times a week but then you're speaking your native language, you know, 16 hours a day. You are not going to learn a language very quickly because you're not listening to it enough. So you should be practicing your English. You should be finding ways to listen to English. You should be practicing all the time with people who are also trying to learn the language. In that way, you're gonna have so much more practice and experience with the language.