When you study English or any other language, it's good to mix it up. To "mix it up" means to do something different. For example, if I always use a textbook to study English, maybe today I can find a song on YouTube with lyrics and try to sing along. That way, I can practice English pronunciation and intonation. Studying in a variety of ways is good for your English because you can develop different skills. Of course, the main skills you need are speaking and listening, but you also need reading and writing. But let's break it down even more.
To put it simply, improving your English is a matter of input and output. Today I will talk about input.
"Input" means what you put into your brain, what you see or hear or smell or touch. The most common inputs for studying a language are probably listening to something and seeing something.
Listening to a song is input. Listening to a podcast is input. Listening to someone speak is input. Something goes INTO your ears and if you really think about what you hear, your brain will start to process it.
Reading a book is input. Reading news online is input. Reading a poster on the wall is input. Something goes INTO your eyes and if you really think about what you see, your brain will process it and save the information.
Watching a movie or TV drama is input, too. And if you watch it with ENGLISH SUBTITLES, you will use your EYES and your EARS a lot! You will be practicing listening and reading at the same time. Even if you don't understand many words or expressions in the movie, you will become more familiar with English spelling and you will SEE and HEAR the word at the same time. This will increase the chances of getting it into your long-term memory, ESPECIALLY IF YOU WATCH MANY TIMES in this way. You may not understand the word or expression yet, but it will be in your mind. You will become familiar with it. You will know how it sounds and how it is spelled. Then when you hear it in another movie in a different context, your understanding of the word and how the word is used may become more clear. It's also possible that you will read the word somewhere and when you see it, you will understand more about how it is used in a sentence. Of course it's great if you check the word in your dictionary and write it down in a notebook, but not every time. EVEN NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKERS continue to watch a movie or read a news article even though they don't understand a few words.
In addition, if you have a book with an audio CD, you can read it while you listen to the CD. Again, you will be practicing reading and listening at the same time. If you have a book that includes pictures (a comic book, a children's story book, or a good ESL book), you will also increase the chances of remembering because of the visual stimulation, ESPECIALLY IF THE PICTURES ARE UNIQUE OR INTERESTING. There is also a high chance that if you see the picture and read the word at the same time, you can understand the meaning without checking a dictionary. Furthermore, if you read it with a CD or audio track, you will quickly know how it's pronounced, too.
Getting a lot of input is your first step on the road to improving your English skills, and it's good to get the input in many ways. That's why I decided to start this blog. I want to introduce you to all kinds of songs, movies, stories, learning sites, and other things you can use to study. Of course one of those main forms of input will be entries you find here.
Next time I'll talk about output and what you can do with the things you see and hear (input) to make learning more effective.
Until next time, take it easy. See you soon!
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