if you're just starting with a language and you don't understand much of what you're listening or reading what should you focus on first should you read first or listen first luckily there is a scientific explanation we can rely on to help our brains navigate better should I read first or listen first there is a phenomenon called sub vocalization or inner speech a form of Silent articulation in reading it means that when you're reading a sentence silently your vocal chords are still activated I found research that says that sentence reading involves the mental construction of sound
images that include speech Tempo and voice quality I don't know if you guys have ever experienced that but I have sometimes when I'm reading a book and there is a very strong emotion attached to a specific word I feel like my tongue is moving or like it feels like I'm saying this word even though I'm not actually speaking out loud we can actually test the right now it happens when we see a question or an exclamation mark or when some words are written in bold or italic first of all it's really important to bring your
attention to your mouth and your tongue in particular first notice how you feel right now your eyes and ears are active because you're listening to me and you're watching this video but your jaw muscles and tongue are most likely relaxed now I'm going to show you a piece of a dialogue read it to yourself and observe if there's any movement inside your mouth going on imagine you're an actor and read it with a very good intonation I'm going to read it out loud but you please read it to yourself why did you buy this stuff
she asked what do you mean we need those things but why did you have to buy blue tissues and flower patterned toilet paper they were on sale what's the big deal it's a big deal I hate blue tissues and flower patterned toilet paper didn't you know that so while reading all of this to yourself did you notice anything if not that's okay because it takes a little bit of practice and awareness most likely you will feel your tongue go up a little bit when you say the words this and blue there are two reasons for
that first of all these words are visually highlighting so that makes us stress them a lot even when we're reading them to ourselves and probably when you were reading the letter L in the word blue your tongue moved up a little bit to touch the upper palette and in this sound this your tongue wanted to touch your teeth to produce the sound the it happens involuntarily this means that when we read we produce inner voice but here's the trick what if it's a new language and you don't know the pronunciation of words will your vocal
chords be engaged well in theory you will be vocalizing if you're trying to guess pronunciation let's say in this new language the letters the alphabet is very similar to the alphabet in your native language let's say your native language is Italian and you're trying to read in Spanish but in reality you won't go very far with that you have to learn how each sound is pronounced and how words are pronounced in this language this means that if you're a beginner you absolutely have to start with listening you have to create a mental picture of what
every single sound in this language sounds like later in this video I'm going to provide you with resources so please stick around and now let's talk about the importance of listening even if you're not a beginner you might be quite aware of pronunciation of different words but reading and listening at the same time can help you pick up on the intonation patterns and learn connected speech let's take the last sentence from the dialogue didn't you know that first of all you will bring your voice higher in Pitch because it is a question and also the
person saying that sounds a little bit disappointed secondly you will connect didn't and you and you will get this CH sound didn't you so if you said it English in this traditional way at a school you didn't have audio exercises where you analyzed speech connected speech is probably an absolute nightmare for you and I completely understand you because it's something that I experienced in the past I studied in Russia at a regular school and we didn't analyze speech at all I didn't even know that connected speech existed I thought I had to pronounce every single
word separately and that's how you're supposed to to speak but then I decided to take language learning in my own hands and I took full responsibility what helped me at that stage with Spanish is learning it on life XP life XP is a language learning platform where you can take classes with native speaking teachers and improve your speaking skills this way there are over 30 languages to choose from and you will definitely find your favorite teacher LAX spe has a lot of different plans to offer and you will definitely find the one that works best
for you and one amazing thing that I love about life XP and it works great for me because I'm learning multiple foreign languages is that all the teachers have the same prices if you subscribe to live XP so once you create an account it's very easy to choose a teacher to check the schedule to book new lessons and track your progress and while choosing a tutor you can use their filter and let's say choose a country or maybe the interest that you have in common with this teacher let's say on the website I choose English
and then I click on interests for me it's eating out and traveling and here are all the teachers who are interested in eating out and traveling too so this way I know that is going to be a lot more interesting for me to talk to these tutors because I know that we have something in common while studying on life XP and taking your first class you will probably notice that you're going to write down a lot of new vocabulary and how should you learn them if you download the lxp app you can use their word
trainer that is built on the space repetition algorithm this tool will help you learn all the words super fast and you'll be able to use them later in conversations so if you use the link in my description you'll be able to give live XP try with a 30% discount so make sure to check out the link in the description and the pin comment improve your speaking skills by reading and listening and that leads me to my next question how can reading and listening help you become fluent if you're already listening to a lot of podcasts
in your target language see if they have transcripts more often than not they are going to have transcripts available to you this is great because this way you can listen to the show and follow along Sam and I have a podcast too it's called the bridging bers podcast and we have transcripts too so while listening to our show you can look at the script and learn a lot of new things because when we listen and read the same parts of the brain are involved but when we speak a different part of the brain becomes activated
that means that in order to train your speaking skills you have to say everything out loud out when you repeat after somebody when you Shadow somebody you're focused on Pro which is intonation Rhythm and pronunciation one helps the other the more shadowing exercises you do the more you're going to feel like you are in control you're in control of your own speech and you feel a lot more confident this practice of repeating after a native speaker will affect your fluency tremendously how to Shadow now get prepared because I'm going to share with you some resources
you can use to try shadowing one is called talkenglish.com where you can play a phrase and listen to it so when we go to edms and phrases we can choose the phrase you've got to be kidding me we'll see many dialogues that we can click on and listen to so here's the first dialogue we click on the first phrase hey Jared mom told me to tell you that you shouldn't stay out too late and then we repeat after the speaker hey Jared mom told me to tell you that you shouldn't stay out too late then
we click on the second phrase you've got to be kidding me I'm 30 years old you've got to be kidding me I'm 30 years old when you listen enough you will start hearing that you don't actually have to say you have got to be kidding me and sometimes people just say you got to be kidding me I'm 30 years old without the word have another resource is hello I really hope I'm pronouncing it correctly with natural speech conversations please ignore the outdated design these websites both have the best authentic materials you can find for free
on the internet right now so what you do is you choose your level let's say low intermediate natural listening you open a conversation Nepal travel tips you say an audio and a script I would suggest listening to it first with your eyes closed to get an idea of what they're talking about then I would listen a few more times and write down the parts that I didn't catch then I would look at the script and find those parts and try to analyze why why I didn't understand them was it a word I didn't know was
it reduced speech then I would play the audio again and this time read along with the speaker I would try to copy their intonation and the way the stress wordss bunge jumping bunge jumping kaying kayaking water balloon water balloon all right hi Jen hi Adam how you doing I'm doing good I'm doing good uh you're from Nepal right yes I am how to work with podcasts and Audi books so now let me share some resources to practice reading and listening simultaneously podcast audiobooks and meditations are all great as for audiobooks at the very beginning I
highly recommend trying graded readers because you will choose the difficulty of the language depending on your current level you can start with short stories children's books something that you have already read in your native language or in a different language for example for me I have read a lot of books in Russian a lot of books in English and now I'm trying to read the same books in Spanish because especially at the very beginning it's a lot easier for me because I'm more familiar with the story especially if it's a nice cozy wholesome children's book
in the description under this video I will leave a link to a website that shares a lot of different resources you can use a lot of different websites where you can listen to books for free you're already on YouTube right now and you can listen to audiobooks right here too type and search short stories in English or short stories in Spanish or whatever language you're learning and you will find a lot of videos now podcasts let's go through some podcasts that are related to language learning we'll start from beginner friendly and move our way up
to intermediate Upper Intermediate and advanced the espresso English podcast covers many common problems ESL Learners run into the looks English podcast is so fun as he has an awesome sense of humor episodes vary from from Story Time quizzes natural conversations interviews to book reading and so much more all ears English where two professional teachers discuss American culture and explain confusing English expressions in a friendly and fun way Grammar Girl is for all of you language nerds who love to explore different aspects of English this podcast isn't necessarily made for non-native speakers but for everybody who
just enjoys all things about the language English learning for curious minds by Leonardo English it covers a wide range of topics from history to philosophy politics to technology each episode is about 20 minutes long and comes with a transcript vocabulary list and subtitles if you want to learn about the mindset of a learner how to work with fears limiting beliefs and practice pronunciation check out the influency podcast and if you didn't know I run a podcast with Sam called bridging borders we explore diverse topics from productivity dating cultures language learning and everything in between so
you can practice with us too if you're a more advanced learner you might want to check out podcasts that have nothing to do with language learning but that are just interesting for you like what are your interests and start using this language as a tool The Moth uploads an 8-minute episode where people tell short stories about their lives usually some transformative experiences some say that jokes are one of the last things you can expect to master if you want to test this theory try the Comedy Bang Bang podcast you may listen to or watch Ellen
fer podcast to learn more about nutrition slow parenting relationships and Mind Body Connection don't forget that podcast can be played at slower speeds if you feel like someone is speaking way too fast just slow it down there's nothing wrong with missing a few words you can slow everything down go back and play the segment again if you want to get the most out of your practice of course it's better if you're fully focused and also if you do something with all the information you're hearing what I like to do sometimes is write everything down maybe
I heard a cool expression in English or in Spanish and I actually want to use it myself maybe I just learned a cool fact and I think it's going to be important for me to implement it especially when it's connected to health and nutrition what I usually do is I have a notebook where I write everything down and I don't put everything into ankey every single day usually I have a day a week where I just opened my notebook with all of these words and phrases from a lot of different resources and then I create
myy cards this way it's a lot faster it's a little bit more systemized and I personally like it a lot more and quite frankly I don't have enough time to create ankey cards every single day the idea is to let your brain become used to this language to the way it sounds to the intonation patterns to the phrases and words that people use the most of course you can also listen to something while doing chores you don't always have to be actively engaged and actively listening to podcasts by habit stacking you can get a lot
of benefits and it's something that I do every single morning I wake up and I listen to a show while getting ready making breakfast and then eating this breakfast watch me practice so now let me show you how I practice with a podcast I'm listening to right now so the first thing that I do is I make sure I have the transcript in front of me so I have it right here all of the words that the speakers are going to be saying first of all I need to play this part like what what happens
for me this became about my experience is I'm accused all the time of being judgmental and not open-minded and rigid and cerebral and too emotional because I often hold people to extremely high standards because I hold myself to extremely high standards no I do the exact same thing M I've never heard of anyone actually relate to my experience as much as you just summarized I mean that's exactly it I hold myself up to my standards and I would love to see other people hold themselves up to their standards not mine they don't before I start
shadowing I need to make sure I know all of these words and I can already say that the word cerebral is very interesting for me like first of all I really need to make sure I remember the pronunciation because originally I thought that this word is supposed to be pronounced as cerebral or something like that and now I know that I'm wrong and it's okay first of all I'm going to check the pronunciation I'm going to check the meaning I'm going to make sure I can use the word correctly and freely I don't have to
think about it too much obviously I'm going to take some notes and make sure I add this word to ankey later because I think it's a cool word it's definitely Advanced but at the same time of course I'm ready for that my English is pretty Advanced so I need to make sure I can introduce this word into my life I know what it means when it comes to my passive vocabulary but to be honest right now I cannot imagine actually using this word in conversation and I want to change that okay cerebral pronunciation cerebral cerebral
cerebral okay cerebral okay so now let's listen to it again from the very beginning however for me this became about my experience is I'm accused all the time of is I'm accused all the time being judgmental of being judgmental and not open-minded and not open-minded okay here I need to focus on this very important thing not open-minded I need to make sure I actually kind of combine all of these words together and I don't say and not open-minded because that's not how she said it right and I'm trying to repeat everything after her and not
open-minded and rigid and and rigid and cerebral and cerebral and too emotional and too emotional it's even better if you use your body language she did this so that's why I'm doing the exact same thing and too emotional because I often hold people because I often hold people to extremely high standards to extremely high standards because I hold myself to extremely high standards because I hold myself to extremely high standards here she stressed the word myself right because I hold myself to extremely high standards no I do the exact same thing M no I do
the exact same thing mayam never heard anyone actually relate to I've never heard anyone actually relate to my experience as you just summarized as much as you just summarized in this phrase I can hear that he didn't actually say just as much as you just summarized he said it something like as much as you just summarized as much as you just something like and that's it just summarize actually just the sound J so let's listen to this part again same thing M I've never heard anyone actually relate to my experience as much as you just
summar as much as you just summarize so it was so quick as much as you just summarize just summarize interesting I mean that's exactly it I I mean that's exactly it from this little part I can learn that I don't actually have to say I mean that's exactly it right no he said I mean that's exactly it exactly it exactly it so you get the point so here's how I Shadow and it's a great exercise that I really hope you will try to if you want to take classes with a native speaking teacher make sure
to give LAX a try you can use the link in my description and get 30% off if you subscribe to life XP if you're thinking about what to watch next make sure to click right here and check out my video on how to read in English effectively there I Shar some my amazing books that I love so make sure to click right here and I'll see you there
