Get ready for a special treat! In this episode, I talk with Cara Leopold, an English Teacher known as the Listening Expert. We covered a lot of topics, so this will be the first of two episodes with our conversation. The main theme of our conversation was building great listening skills in another language. In this first episode, we talk about the importance of listening when learning another language, including pronunciation, and what to do when you don’t understand your colleagues in meetings.  Here are some gems from this episode:

“People might think, “I spend most of my time speaking.” But listening is actually the skill that dominates. So by that logic, the foundation for also learning future languages should be listening.”

“So what’s really helped me to get fluent in French is observing what people say, understanding them, and then copying them.”

“Notice the expressions that people keep using and then use them. You will sound more authentic because you'll be using what the people around you actually say, as opposed to what you read in a book or what you got out of a list of 100 idioms.”

Tune in to get more valuable insights from Cara, so you’ll understand more of what people say around you! The second part of our conversation will be released in the next episode. 

Read the transcript here. 

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Original theme music by Lucas Knutter