Sound like a native speaker Just like a saxophone can make sounds that the piano can't, languages have different registers and frequencies. For instance, English uses a lot of high pitch sounds. If you listen carefully, you will be able to distinguish these high pitch tones. Listen to all the S's (as in SeSSionS) and to the "TH" sounds (as in THanks). French, on the other hand, rarely uses such high pitched sounds. For example, the S at the end of a French word is hardly ever pronounced. Most languages have different sets of overtones. Our ears, by constantly listening to ourselves and to those around us, are most attuned to the frequencies of our native tongue. For the foreign frequencies, we are, so to speak, deaf. Because we cannot hear foreign tones, we cannot pronounce them correctly and we cannot memorize them easily. By having our ears trained first, we can reduce significantly the time required to learn a new language. Once our ears have been trained, we will be able to hear the new language correctly. Therefore, we will be able to memorize the words quickly and pronounce them well.