Nguyễn Tùng Anh
Listening Is The Key
To get English fluency, you must have a lot of understandable repetitive listening. That is the ONLY way. To be a FANTASTIC English speaker, you must learn English with your ears, not with your eyes. In other words, you must listen. Your ears are the key to excellent speaking.
What kind of listening is best? Well, it must be understandable and must be repetitive. Both of those words are important - Understandable and Repetitive.
If you don't understand, you learn nothing. You will not improve. That's why listening to English TV does not help you. You don't understand most of it. It is too difficult. Is is too fast.
Its obvious right? If you do not understand, you will not improve. So, the best listening material is EASY. That's right, you should listen mostly to easy English. Most students listen to English that is much too difficult. They don't understand enough, and so they learn slowly. Listen to easier English, and your speaking will improve faster !
Understanding is Only Half The Formula
Understanding is not enough. You must also have a lot of repetition. If you hear a new word only once, you will soon forget it. If you hear it 5 times, you will still probably forget it !
You must hear new words and new grammar many times before you will understand them instantly.
How many times is necessary? Most people must hear a new word 30 times to remember it forever. To know a word and instantly understand it, you probably need to hear it 50 - 100 times!
That's why I tell my students to listen to all of my lessons many times. I tell them to listen to the Mini-Stories, the Vocab Lessons, The Point of View Stories, and the Audio articles everyday. I recommend that they listen to each lesson a total of 30 times (for example, 2 times a day for two weeks).
So, the two most important points are: listen to easier English and listen to each thing many times !
Excerpts of AJ Hoge