Intensive Listening Part 1

What is intensive listening?

Often, the advice you get as a language learner is the quantity is the most important. That doing MORE with the language will help you improve faster. If you want to be a better speaker, speak more! If you want to be a better listener, listen more! The accompanying idea is that there should be a variety of speaking, writing, listening, and reading opportunities. This is great advice. We call this extensive language practice. This means that the purpose is contact with the language. The whole purpose is to expose you to as much language as often as we can. This can be extremely helpful for students, especially when they aren't studying the language in a place where it is used frequently.

However, there is another approach to language practice. We call this intensive language practice. This means that instead of a lot of very different practice, the focus is on taking one practice and looking at it very closely. This is usually done with listening and reading. Rather than a quantity is best approach, you take a quality is best approach. In this lesson, we will practice taking ONE listening passage and discussing it in detail. We will use this one listening passage to apply everything we have learned so far.

This may sound repetitive and possibly boring to you. The idea isn't that you will do this every time you listen to something. The idea is that you learn to take a deep look at the language every once in a while to practice the skills you are developing. When you repeat the same recording for these activities, you are able to focus on strategies you want to practice instead of having to develop a general understanding of the content, organization, vocabulary, speaker's accent, etc.

Think of it like these binoculars. You can see and appreciate the view of the city with just your eyes. This is like extensive listening. It's great! You have an experience of seeing the city. You will remember the most important details of what it looks like. However, if you look in the binoculars, you will be able to focus your view on individual buildings. You might notice something you couldn't see with your eyes alone. It adds a little to your experience. Maybe it helps you understand where the buildings are in relation to each other a little better (organization). Maybe you recognize a building you couldn't see clearly before (new vocabulary or major details). Or perhaps you just find yourself appreciating how beautiful something complex can be (grammar).

Background Knowledge Practice

The topic of this TED Talk is "10 ways to have a better conversation." Before you listen to the speaker, think about how you would describe a good conversation. What do the participants of a good conversation do or avoid?

Consider what type of vocabulary you would expect to hear in this TED Talk.

Think about the speaker's purpose and audience. How might her speaking be influenced by those factors?