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Hi everyone, my name is Nick and welcome back to Natural English with Nick, a podcast for learning English in a stress free way by developing your intuition for the language through listening and reading. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss some language learning techniques, all of which I’ve tried out ( tested) personally and that have been super effective in allowing me to improve in the languages I’m learning in half the time. Do you know what else is a very effective language learning method? Listening and reading to interesting content that is adapted to your level of comprehension.This is why I really recommend, if you haven’t already, to go check out my website where you can find free transcripts for many of the episodes that I make, so you can apply some of these techniques that we’re going to talk about today as well as being able to follow along to what I’m saying, which in itself is a powerful language learning ability to develop. Okay now that I’ve talked your ear off (I’ve talked to you too much), we can get started!
#1 "Transcribe simple dialogues"
When you are listening to something slow and simple enough that you can hear and understand the individual words of a dialogue, my advice would be to get a pen and paper and begin to write down what you hear. I will make episodes in the future for those of you at say an A2 level, so you can apply this technique in a simpler way. But even if you don’t understand everything or you’re not able to get every word, it can be an extremely helpful exercise, not only because you’re combining listening, reading and writing, you’re also being active. Listening to podcasts or consuming content in the language you are learning is very useful for picking up on( beginning to understand) sentence structure, pronunciation and developing natural speech, but it’s a passive activity. In order to be an efficient language learner, you also have to incorporate other activities that make you think and produce ideas in the language. This is very important. Before you begin to transcribe simple dialogues, think to yourself: how often do I write in English? What kind of content am I most interested in? What do I think is an appropriate level of difficulty for current knowledge of English? These questions will help you better understand what to look for when it comes to implementing this new activity into your language learning routine. When it comes to actually doing it, here is what I would do: get a pen and paper, find yourself a comfortable place away from distractions ( but not too comfortable like your bed for example), make yourself a non-alcoholic beverage of choice, maybe a nice herbal tea or a coffee, wear or buy yourself a nice headphones so you can clearly hear the sounds of the language, super important, really great investment. Listen to the audio in 2-3 minute increments, take notes of the general ideas of the audio, repeat and repeat again until you can gradually add more detail to the ideas. Do your best to match the dialogues as well as possible to the original speech. Afterwards be sure to read the transcript over while you listen to the audio a final time. And then if you go as far as to ( if you take the initiative to) repeat the text to yourself by reading aloud, you will be combining all areas of language on which students are tested formally, which are listening and reading production and comprehension, plus speaking and writing production and clarity. My suggestion would be to start simple (*simply) and incrementally increase the difficulty as you improve. Follow these tips and I’m sure you will see noticeable improvement over a matter of weeks.
#2 “Bilateral Translation”
This next one I got inspired to try after watching one of the famous Italian polyglot Luca Lampariello(*’s) videos and that is a technique called bilateral translation. I will link a video down below where Luca explains exactly how he does it, but for the podcast, I’ll simplify and tell you how I have used it for my language learning. Say for example, you are already able to read at least simple articles in English, what I recommend to try at this stage is to take a text in English and translate it manually into your native language. While doing this, you are able to actively use your brain to transmit the idea in English to your native language and by doing this you are allowing your brain to notice the differences in structure between English and your native language. After you finish the first translation, be sure to underline any unfamiliar structures or vocabulary that you had to look up, adjust the text so it sounds as natural as possible in your native language. Once you have read over and analysed the text, here comes the challenging part. the part that really requires brain power. Try to translate your translatio in your native languages to English without looking at the orignal. Of course you can use the original text in English as a reference, and when you’re unsure, be sure to refer to the original to a dictionary as well. But do your best to transmit those ideas in English. This is a powerful technique and can do wonders for( greatly benefit) your language learning. Grazie Luca! (Italian for thank you)
#3 "Shadowing"
The final technique for today is that of shadowing. This is definitely the technique that I use the most. First off, what the heck is shadowing? Well, shadowing is something that we have all done for years of our lives but maybe have realized it until now. and is perhaps the most natural way to learn languages. Shadowing simply means to copy or imitate a native speaker’s speech. Say for example, you are watching a show on Netflix in English. You simply read the words out after the native speaker says them if you’re watching with subtitles.. Of course you can do this without reading, actually I encourage that, especially if you’ve gotten past a basic level of English. Here let’s try it out, simply repeat after me: “Today, I went to the store to buy some things with my friend. I go to the market on Thursday because everything is cheaper.” See what I mean. I do this everyday and here are some reasons why you should too. First, it’s easy to do, all you need to do is find content like mine and repeat after me copying my pronunciation. The next thing is that you’re being active, it’s much more effective than just listening because you are also training your pronunciation and since you’re saying it aloud, it’s more probable that you will retain more of the information. I will definitely dedicate more episodes in the future to this specific topic and make them so that you can more easily shadow me, sound good?
Thanks all for today guys, I hope you enjoyed it. Be sure to follow me on instagram @naturalenglishwithnick and send me an email @natural.englishwithnick@outlook.com if you have any questions or suggestions for future episodes. Check out my website through the link below to book a lesson with me one-on-one to help me help you bring your English to the next level in no time! You will also find the link to my Paypal and Patreon pages where you can contribute to keeping this project going, because as much as I love doing it, it does take an enormous amount of my time, so really any compensation for that would be so greatly appreciated. Thank you so much for listening and take care, bye bye.
Luca Lampariello Bilateral Translation Method