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Hamed
Is there anyone here who could have improved their English by just listening to short stories books? Is it possible to improve English just by listening to books such as 'Oxford Bookworms' or 'Oxford Dominoes'?
20 de abr de 2017 14:33
Comentários · 4
2
Thank you very much for your nice comments, L P Waters and Dan Smith. I always wonder if it's possible to learn English WITHOUT studying all those confusing grammar rules. It appears that audio books and the shadowing technique that you are talking about can be a nice idea for learning English. After years of studying grammar, I feel like I have wasted my life. I don't want to be a linguist. I just want to be able to understand what English-speaking people say.
20 de abril de 2017

Hamed, on the grammar: English is my native language, and I speak it well etc. but have never studied the grammar rules. We are actually not taught them in England. I think that that shows that learning them systematically is not necessary. I 'learned' them by speaking, reading and writing, very slowly over many years. Remember that the 'grammar' of the written language is often very different from the grammar of the spoken language: that is part of the reason why we have to 'correct' children's written grammar so much. 

The same thing happened to me: I spend three months 'studying Greek' in Greece, and left not being able even to order a coffee. Why? Because I was not learning Greek, I was learning Greek grammar. Believe me, no body ever asked me at the bus station to recite all of the forms of the verb 'to go' for them.

So I decided to not study any grammar, and only to listen, read, speak and write. It was only then then I started enjoying the language and have not stopped. My grammar could be better... but now I have a reason to go back to it.

I came up with a rule: do not learn any grammar rule that does not clarify something that you have desperately wanted to know. In other words I now only open the grammar book when I have been saying to myself 'I wish I knew how THAT works'.

Good luck

26 de abril de 2017

I'm learning Spanish, and everything I try helps. I think that reading, writing, listening, and speaking are four different skills and I need to work on all of them. 

Some people have claimed good results from "shadowing," which is listening and trying to repeat out loud what you are listening to at almost the same time as you hear it. I sometimes try this when I am listening to "The News in Slow Spanish," which is slow enough for me to do it. I'm not sure it's magic, but I do think it is a different kind of activity from listening passively. 

20 de abril de 2017
Of course you can improve your English by listening to audio books. But remember that you will only be improving your listening, not your speaking, reading or writing. Also remember that the vocabulary and linguistic variety of those recordings will be limited. The best way to learn is by reading, speaking, writing all together, and to cover various types of language: talk to children, read the news, listen to music etc. 
20 de abril de 2017