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  • I can, can't.

  • Hi. James from engVid.

  • This lesson, what I want to do is help you...

  • Well, I want to help you improve two things at once, your pronunciation and your listening.

  • Really, I will be focusing on the listening part, but if you do this right, your pronunciation

  • will also get better.

  • You ready?

  • Let's go to the board.

  • As you can see, Mr. E has a big ear.

  • Listening is one of those things when people are learning a language they don't really

  • pay attention to.

  • It's quite funny because I hear many people say right away: "I listen to English all the time.

  • I listen to videos at home.

  • Why?

  • I don't need anyone to tell me about...

  • Help me with listening."

  • And usually the same people will say something like: "My pronunciation's not very good.

  • I really don't understand when people speak to me", and so on and so forth.

  • And you're trying to explain: Listening is a skill that is natural.

  • Actually, there's a difference between hearing and listening, and we're going to go to the

  • board right now and talk about that so that we can get to what I call "active listening".

  • You ready? Let's go.

  • So, E, as you can see, has a big ear because he is now listening because he wants to improve

  • on his listening skills and his pronunciation, and he's come to the right place.

  • All right, so the first thing I want to look at here is "hear".

  • When we use the word "hear" in English it's for sound, it really is.

  • It's just for sound. Like...

  • [Drops marker] Did you hear that?

  • Right?

  • You don't say: "Did you listen to that?"

  • You can't listen to that.

  • You can hear that. All right?

  • So that would be music, when people are speaking, because if you can't hear...

  • And here I wrote this: "If you don't hear it, it doesn't exist", and that's true.

  • Listening...

  • Or hearing is physical. Okay?

  • The ear actually has to work, or you have to make it work.

  • There are two things you have to be careful on, that your ear is good, so get a hearing

  • test if necessary, if you need one; but also we can make it better, if physically everything

  • works, sometimes people don't pay attention so they miss the sounds.

  • And when you miss a sound, it changes the word and sometimes the meaning.

  • And that's when we look over here, to "listen".

  • "Listening" makes us focus and gives us meaning.

  • So, when you're listening to someone, you will look at them and you will pay attention,

  • and that's how you get the meaning.

  • You need to be able to physically hear the sound, which is true, but if you don't listen,

  • you won't get the meaning of what they say. Okay?

  • So we need a combination.

  • And luckily for us, when the ear works, we can use our listening or our focus skills

  • to improve how this works so we can get better at learning language and learn faster.

  • If you remember what I said here: If you don't hear, it doesn't exist.

  • That's the physical part.

  • If you cannot hear it, it doesn't exist.

  • Right?

  • Which will lead to bad pronunciation, because if you cannot hear a T, you won't say the

  • T. "Huh? Hmm?" Yeah.

  • For many Spanish people, the "d" sound is a "th".

  • They cannot actually hear us when we say "duh", so they say: "the", right?

  • So they go: "I stanthe", "I stanthe" instead of: "I stand".

  • When they can hear it, because when I make them say the sound "d", they can do it, and

  • "duh", they can say it, then all of a sudden they're like: "I can stand.

  • He wanted".

  • Not: "I wantith".

  • -"I wanted".

  • -"Oh, it's a different sound."

  • By focusing and listening we're able to make them realize there are different sounds being

  • said and improve on their pronunciation. Okay?

  • Now, if we use active listening, which is what I will teach you now, it will help us

  • retrain the ear.

  • "Retrain" means make the ear go back to the beginning and then start again, and retrain

  • to make it better.

  • Now, I have a little game we're going to play, which is a fun game because you can do it

  • by yourself, -- I will give you an example in a second -- but you can also do it with

  • a friend.

  • "Huh?"

  • So you can both help each other improve.

  • So, I'm going to read something to you. Okay?

  • And I want you to close your eyes and I want you to listen. Okay?

  • Now, I want you to look for the words with the letter C. All right?

  • So you're going to close your eyes, like I'm closing my eyes now.

  • And I'm going to read this to you, and I want you to count how many C words are in this

  • sentence.

  • Are you ready?

  • Are your eyes closed?

  • Okay, do it now.

  • "The cat quickly came to the couch and caught sight of the kite in the tree and kept quiet."

  • Okay?

  • How many letter Cs?

  • I'll read it one more time for you, so focus on the words.

  • How many words with C in them?

  • "The cat quickly came to the couch and caught sight of the kite in the tree and kept quiet."

  • Count them up.

  • All right.

  • Now, probably the first time you did it, you were like: "What?" and it just went by very

  • quickly.

  • But the second time you probably noticed you were catching, grabbing.

  • This will help with pronunciation, but it also does another little thing I didn't explain

  • to you but you would find: You started to make breaks in the words so you can understand

  • much more clearly what I was saying.

  • Cool, huh?

  • When you're actively focused on catching one sound, your brain has to separate things to

  • make it clearer for you.

  • Continually practicing this, you're going to start noticing when English speakers put

  • breaks in the word, so your speech will flow much more naturally, and you'll catch the

  • actual pronunciation that we say.

  • Cool?

  • Yeah, I thought so.

  • Let's try another one for you.

  • Are you ready?

  • Now I want you to count the number of words with S this time, the number of words with

  • S. Listen carefully.

  • "She shopped at many sites in the city that seemed strange.

  • The cellphone that she used and took pictures of the sites was not hers."

  • Ready?

  • I'll do it again, so pay attention.

  • "She shopped at many sites in the city that seemed strange.

  • The cellphone that she used and took pictures of the sites was not hers."

  • This time you probably noticed you got the letter S or the words with S a little faster

  • because you were able to go: "S, s, s, s".

  • If you missed out, there's a second thing.

  • Remember I told you about the speed of English and the breaks, and proper pronunciation?

  • You're also probably going: "What is a site?"

  • Good.

  • We work on vocabulary.

  • In listening, when you're able to catch the words, because you probably caught the word

  • "site" from me, you learned a new vocabulary word.

  • English people cannot explain these words to you when you say: "I heard the word 'sia',

  • 'siaseealja'."

  • It's nothing.

  • But when you say: "I heard this word 'site', what is it?"

  • I go: -"Oh, that's one of two things.

  • 'Sight', the ability to see, and 'site' is an area that we look at things, like a city

  • can be a site, a place, an area."

  • -"Oh, nobody told me that."

  • -"And they're spelt two different ways."

  • -"Cool."

  • So, in learning to listen you can pick up new vocabulary that you've probably missed

  • because you weren't able to hear it.

  • Remember?

  • What you don't hear, it doesn't exist.

  • But by focusing on one sound or one letter-we talked about one letter-you're able to pick it up.

  • All right?

  • Take it out, and then it makes the other things clearer that you were probably missing.

  • Pretty cool, huh?

  • Now I'm going to teach you something else in a second, I'm going to teach you a little

  • bit more advanced because right now I'm asking you to look for the words, or sorry, the letters

  • that you know: A, B, C, D, or E, what have you.

  • Right?

  • We haven't worked on sounds, just the letter name.

  • So, C, the letter C you're looking for, but now we're going to work on sounds to improve

  • your listening ability.

  • Are you ready?

  • It gets to be fun now.

  • Okay, so I gave you a little exercise to try and we practiced it.

  • I'm going to make that exercise a little bit more difficult now because we worked on the

  • name, I call it the...

  • You could say the capital letter, and I say it's the name of the letter.

  • So, an example would be: This is a capital letter, the big...

  • The big size.

  • But this is the sound.

  • I would say this is the name of the letter and this is the sound.

  • So, the sound might be here.

  • Name is B, the letter B, but the sound-right?-would be "b", "b".

  • Now, we worked on letter name, right?

  • Like, how many words have the letter in it.

  • We didn't care about the sound that it makes, we just cared that the letter exists in the word.

  • That's the first step.

  • Then I'm going to have to work on sounds because you need to be able to tell the difference

  • between sounds.

  • But before we do that, let me give you a little bit of help with working with consonants.

  • Now, I'm just assuming everybody knows a consonant, but in case you don't: A, E, I, O, U, U are

  • sometimes strong...

  • Oops, sorry.

  • That's an old song.

  • Those are vowels.

  • Okay, so I'm not talking about vowels, to be honest with you.

  • Vowels are really hard to do because we mix vowels, we put E and I together to make an

  • "a" sound or an "e" sound, so I don't want to start with that, and nor should you.

  • Best to start with the consonants because they're hard sounds.

  • Also, many Latin languages, Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish don't end in hard sounds, the

  • hard consonants, so it's a good idea to bring your mind to it so you can practice.

  • Also, Japanese people have a little difficulty with this.

  • So, working with the consonants will almost instantly improve your pronunciation by 5

  • to 10% just by listening and knowing how to listen.

  • Cool?

  • So, for a bonus little lesson: Do only the consonants first, I just explained why. Okay?

  • And I'm going to give you a specific consonant to work on because it will help you improve

  • faster and immediately.

  • The most used consonant in the English language is the letter T. Kind of strange, huh?

  • Some people would say the...

  • When I used to teach it I would say it's "s", "d", "t", and "th", not that these are...

  • TH is a consonant, but most people would have difficulty saying these sounds, especially

  • at the end of words, so I would make students use this exercise and practice with this again

  • and again while watching movies, so they got really good at hearing and they also found

  • they could understand more of what the people were saying.

  • Okay?

  • So it's best to know that T is the most used consonant in English, so it's best to start

  • with that.

  • Now, practice first before you even do the listening exercise of putting on...

  • I wouldn't start with music.

  • Go for a movie or TV program to start with first.

  • Okay?

  • First practicing saying T, and you could do it like this: "t, t, t, t", it's to get the

  • brain to become aware of it.

  • If you have difficulty with T, T is done by this: Your throat back here, you kind of close

  • it a little bit, like swallow, swallow, and then at the tip of your tongue... See?

  • Tip tongue, two Ts.

  • Your tongue...

  • Tip of the tongue goes to the front of the teeth, so: "t, t, t, t, t, t, t, t".

  • That's how you make the T. All right?

  • So T: "t". Got it? Cool.

  • Now we're ready to start.

  • I'm going to give you, by the way, the same two sentences I gave you before.

  • "Huh, so what's the challenge, man? I just did it.

  • You told me, right?"

  • Now, remember I told you how many...

  • Oh, did I tell you how many words or did I leave you hanging?

  • So, before I do it again: How many words did you find with the letter C?

  • Remember the first sentence with the cat?

  • If you said five, congratulations, you're correct.

  • There were five words with the letter C. "Cat", "quickly", "came", "couch", and "caught".

  • Good on you.

  • How about the second sentence?

  • How many words with the letter S?

  • This was a little bit tougher, so I hope you were paying attention.

  • Remember I did it twice and you had to focus on just that "s", right?

  • That "s" sound, S-word.

  • So, what do we have?

  • "She", "shopped", "sites", "seemed", "strange", "she", I said "she" again, "used", "pictures",

  • "site" again, but I said "sites", "was", and "hers".

  • Pretty cool. Right?

  • That was 11 words with an S in it, if you were paying attention.

  • All right?

  • Now, remember I'm going to repeat the same sentences this time, but we're going to do

  • a different job.

  • This time, instead of concentrating on the name of the letter, I want to concentrate

  • on the sound.

  • So, the first thing we have to look at is: The letter C can make two sounds.

  • It can make a "s" sound or a "k" sound.

  • I'm going to concentrate on this, and we're not going to concentrate on the letter C,

  • we're going to concentrate on one thing it can do.

  • I want to hear how many words have the letter "k"...

  • Or, sorry, the "k" sound. All right?

  • How many of them?

  • So I'm going to read the same sentences as before.

  • Now, don't rewind the video to go check it out, I'm going to read it to you anyway, but

  • this time look for a "k" sound that could be the letter C. Are you ready?

  • Let's do it.

  • "The cat quickly came to the couch and caught sight of the kite in the tree and kept quiet."

  • Okay, how many "k" sounds did you hear?

  • Let's try again.

  • "The cat quickly came to the couch and caught sight of the kite in the tree and kept quiet."

  • Yeah.

  • Now, you remember before I said there were five words with the letter C, but the "k"

  • sound, there are actually seven words with the "k" sound.

  • Whoa, yeah, extra.

  • Because remember "k-kite"-right?-and "kept" or "keep" have a "k" sound.

  • And sometimes the C sounds like a K, and that's what I mean by you have to start being able to...

  • The first thing is: How many words are there?

  • We work on vocabulary and listening.

  • The second time we're listening to grabbing sounds, taking sounds out of sentences.

  • And in order to do that we can actually start noticing there are breaks between words, and

  • when you start noticing the breaks, you can start catching the words afterwards and understanding

  • even better.

  • All right?

  • Okay, now we've done with the C, I want to work on the letter S. If you remember the

  • sentence I did earlier with S, I told you there were 11 words with S. The words were:

  • "she", "shot", "sites"-right?-"seemed", "strange", "she", because I said "she" twice, "used",

  • "pictures", "sites" again, "was", and "hers".

  • There're 11 words, that's a lot of words.

  • That might have been difficult because I did read it at, you know, a decent speed.

  • Now we're going to redo that sentence again, but this time I don't care about the S. What

  • I want to work on is the sound, because S can have two sounds, it can have a "z" sound

  • or a "s, S" sound.

  • All right?

  • So your job now is to catch how many words have the "s" sound, not the letter S. Are

  • you ready? Let's do it.

  • "She shopped at many sites in the city that seemed strange.

  • The cellphone that she used to take the pictures of the sites was not hers."

  • You ready? One more time.

  • "She shopped at many sites in the city that seemed strange.

  • The cellphone that she used to take the pictures of the sites was not hers."

  • Okay, I'm smiling because I can see you go: "I got it.

  • I know how many words."

  • Some of you will say 11, right?

  • Careful.

  • Remember I said there's a difference between the name of the letter and the sound of the

  • letter, and the example I gave was the name of the letter B is B, the letter B, but the

  • sound it makes is "b".

  • In the case of S, S can be "s" as in "silent" or "z" as in "hers".

  • Now, some of you are going: "Oy vey!

  • He said 'hers'."

  • I'm like: Yeah, it's a "z" sound and you have to be careful.

  • All right?

  • So, in this case, how many sounds of S?

  • You'll be surprised, because it's not all the words you think.

  • "She" and "shopped" are a "sh" sound, not a "s" sound.

  • Mm-hmm.

  • Some of you who have trouble saying "ch" and "sh" are now noticing: "Oh, there's a difference."

  • So those don't count.

  • "Sites" count and "city", but some of you will go: "James, 'city' starts with a C."

  • Remember over here?

  • We said C sometimes can sound like "S, s".

  • And for proper pronunciation we need to be able to tell the difference.

  • So, we have: "sites", "city", "seemed", "strange", and the word "cellphone".

  • Starts with a C, but it sounds like an "s".

  • Right?

  • We can't say: "she", because it's a "sh" again, right?

  • And we can't say "used" because that is a "z" sound.

  • We can't say "pictures" because that's a "z" sound.

  • But we can say "sites" again.

  • So the number that we used dropped down dramatically.

  • I hope you were paying attention to that and I hope you got a lot out of the lesson, because

  • if you use this properly, you will find that you can improve greatly and quickly in your

  • pronunciation, but also your listening skills and understanding when you speak to other

  • people.

  • Now, of course I have homework for you, and this is very specific homework.

  • So for those of you who like The Matrix, I'm about to make you happy and it's only 18 seconds

  • long.

  • I need you to...

  • Well, you're probably on YouTube.

  • If you're not on engVid, you're on YouTube.

  • You can go to YouTube and you can look under: "Blue Pill or Red Pill?

  • The Matrix."

  • And I only want you to listen to 18 seconds.

  • In the first 18 seconds, Morpheus-we'll call him by his movie name-uses many words with

  • the letter W. I want you to count up how many times or how many words he uses with the letter

  • W, like: "which", "when", "window".

  • He uses many, many, many of them.

  • Your job is to do homework, go there.

  • It's 18 seconds.

  • You've watched me for about 15 minutes.

  • 18 seconds to improve is great.

  • Right?

  • Great that it's just a short amount of time to improve.

  • Count how many times Morpheus uses a W word when he's talking to Neo.

  • And when you're done, go pop at the website and see who got it right.

  • Was it 10?

  • Was it 15?

  • Was it 5?

  • Challenge yourself and challenge others.

  • Anyway, I've got to wrap this up, and that means I have to go.

  • I'm going to make this quick.

  • Please subscribe to our website, and if you want to get my latest video, you want to be

  • informed right away, be the first person to get it, what you have to do is hit the "Subscribe"

  • button which is usually...

  • It could be a red box, but it says: "Subscribe".

  • But don't forget you have to also hit the bell.

  • You have to hit the bell because then that will come to your email or on your cellphone,

  • you'll get instantly let aware when I have a new video.

  • Okay?

  • I'm looking forward to seeing you again.

  • Don't forget to go to the website.

  • Don't forget to subscribe.

  • Hit the bell, and have a great day.

  • See you soon.

  • And I want to know how many Ws happened with Neo and Morpheus.

  • Maybe I'll be the first one.

I can, can't.

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