Study listening Before You Study Abroad With These Best Tips
Summary:
- The most important skill when studying abroad is listening
- Continuous conversation with native speakers
- Pronounciate, dictation and shadowing and broaden your range
“I want my study abroad experience to be a success.”
If you are going to study abroad, you want to have a fruitfull study abroad experience in both classes and relationships.
Many of you may be working hard to study English for this purpose.
By the way, do you know which study should be prioritized?
In fact, if you want to study English before you study abroad, “listening” is the most important.
- Why should you study listening before you study abroad?
- What is the most effective way to study?
I will now tell you these things from my study abroad experience as an English language student for more than 10 years.
Please read this article if you want to have a meaningful study abroad experience.
Why should I study listening before I study abroad?
Table of Contents
The most important thing to study before you study abroad is “listening”.
This is because you will have a lot of trouble from the first day you study abroad.
For example
- Can’t understand important information about school life at the orientation on the first day.
- Don’t understand what is happening in class.
- Can’t understand what is going on in class.
- Struggle with procedures such as opening a bank account. You will have to take classes.
When you study abroad, you will take classes, and if you cannot listen, it will be difficult to understand the lessons.
You may not understand what is being said in the textbook, you may not understand what your classmates are saying in class, and you may not know if there is homework. You feel as if you are the only one left behind while everyone around you is making progress.
You have spent a lot of time and money to come to Japan to study, but you are losing time because you cannot get used to the classes and relationships.
If this vicious cycle continues, you may become disenchanted with your classes, and your study abroad experience itself may become less enjoyable.
then, how should you study listening?
Three effective study methods for listening before studying abroad
It is not easy to improve your listening skills, but if you continue to follow effective study methods, you will gradually improve your listening skills. To what extent should you improve your listening skill? The answer is to a point where you can keep up with the class, that is, to the point where you can hear what is being said if you pay attention to it.
Also, some people may find it difficult to listen to movies and videos without practice. It is effective if you study in the following order. If you would like to read about five ways to improve your English , explore here.
Step 1: Pronunciation Study
First of all, to be able to listen, you need to have some knowledge of English pronunciation.
English has many pronunciations that do not exist in Japanese. It is said “you can’t hear a sound you can’t pronounce,” and it is nearly impossible to listen to English without knowledge of its pronunciation.
For example.
- The difference in pronunciation between v and b, r and l, etc.
- The mouth’s use of vowels (aiueo).
- The difference between katakana English and actual pronunciation.
You can learn from books and videos, but in my experience, it is better to learn directly from native speakers. You can listen to the natural pronunciation and have your own pronunciation corrected.
Other well-known books include “English Ear” and “The World’s Most Easy-to-understand English Pronunciation Lessons”.
Studying pronunciation takes patience, but you can get out of katakana English and increase the number of sounds you can pronounce and hear.
Step 2: Dictation and shadowing
Once you have acquired pronunciation knowledge, it’s time to practice. Practice listening by dictating and shadowing.
The trick is to try to understand the meaning while listening. Even if you can understand a word, it is useless if you cannot understand the meaning of the whole sentence.
- Dictation: writing down the English you hear on a piece of paper or another medium.
- Shadowing: Imitating the English you hear out loud.
Any audio of English is fine, but use “scripted” English to check your answers.
It is important not to leave out the parts you did not understand.
Listen to the audio over and over again until you understand it, and after you understand it, practice it over and over again, so that the sound of English becomes ingrained in your body.
If you can understand about 80% of what you hear, you are doing well.
Step 3: Broaden your range with other tools
Once you are comfortable with listening, proceed with listening practice with other tools.
Scripts are preferred here, too, if possible.
For example
- Movies (Japanese audio with English subtitles → English audio with English subtitles)
- English learning apps (e.g. Study Supplement)
- Youtube (Ted, Crash Course, etc.)
- Podcasts
- Conversation with native speakers
These are just a few examples.
All of these tools have one thing in common: watching them over and over again.
It will be difficult to understand the English audio perfectly the first time.
It is effective to stop the audio and check the audio each time you find a part you didn’t understand or a word you don’t understand to deepen your understanding.
Personally, I believe that “continuing to speak with native speakers” is the most effective way to learn English. In fact, even though I studied abroad, my listening skills were not very good, but when I started speaking with native speakers every day, I could hear native English unbelievably well and conversations became smoother. It is my personal opinion, but if you know a native speaker, you can try to have a conversation with him or her.
Study listening and have an effective study abroad experience!
We told you why and how you should study listening before you study abroad.
Reason: Because I often have trouble from the first day I study abroad.
Methods:①Pronunciation study.② Dictation and shadowing. ③Other tool (I recommend you to talk with native speakers every day.)
It is not possible to learn English just by going abroad to study.
In addition to your efforts during your study abroad, not to wasing your time during your study abroad it is important to study before your study abroad especially listening.
We encourage you to study listening before you study abroad and have a fruitful study abroad experience.
