Mastering the Four Language Skills in English

How My Bad Listening in English Nearly Cost Me My First Job

Today, I want to share a short story that happened on my first good job and nearly got me fired.

Listening Skill

Let me talk about the second input skill which is much more challenging than reading. I am learning my third language now, Spanish (and trust me you can learn something new at any age!). I am already quite good at reading, but my listening is still hopeless.

Listening is challenging because it is fleeting, which means that generally, you cannot listen twice whereas you can read a text again and have the time to use a dictionary.

Native speakers deal with listening tasks the following ways:

1. They prepare themselves for the task, mostly subconsciously, anticipating the contents and vocabulary that will be used.

2. Native speakers have learned what to concentrate on. They understand only about 80% and are capable of filling in the gaps.

3. The English language is built using structure and contents words. A simple example: The book is blue. 'Book' and 'blue' are contents words whereas 'the' and 'is' are structure words to help understand the language easier. Therefore, it is important to focus on the contents words.

Here is my promised story:

In my first job as a pool contract expert working for the shipping company Hapag-Lloyd in Hamburg, I had to negotiate contracts with the other partners in the pool. My most important pool was called TRIO as three nationalities were in it: 2 British lines, 2 Japanese lines, and I represented the only German shipping company.

Therefore, I traveled to London on a regular basis as the Japanese lines both had branch offices there. The Japanese had British assistants who were negotiating for them. So, in essence, I was the only non-native speaker at the negotiation table (and the only woman but more about working with Japanese as a woman later in the culture section).

Naturally, the British negotiators talked at their normal speed with complex shipping jargon. I tried my best to understand everything. In one of my first meetings, I misunderstood an important aspect and misstated the decision in the report to my boss.

When the minutes of the meeting finally came about a week later, my superior was understandably furious because he had already reported to top management.

Lucky me, I had a very god boss who was willing to give me a second chance under the premise to improve my listening dramatically and quickly.

Achieving Best Results in Listening

DOs

Choose material at your level:

Material that is too easy doesn't teach you anything, and material that is too difficult will discourage you from further listening. Choosing the adequate material for your level is probably the single most important rule for success in listening.

Listen to as much material as you can:

Make it a habit of listening to some stuff every day. At ITI in Taiwan, we had the BBC news every day. The advantage of following the news on a regular basis is the fact that news stories continue to unfold and over time develop (see some websites below). Therefore, the same topics will come up again and again. The beginning of doing this is difficult, but the improvement in listening will soon show.

Focus on keywords:

Keywords or contents words provide enough information to achieve the listening task. It is fruitless to try to understand every word.

DON'Ts

Listen on an irregular basis:

Your improvement will be very slow and demotivates you, and you might give up quickly.

Try to understand every word:

Carefully listening to every word will lead to not being able to follow a listening task at normal speed.  Nevertheless, I have listed some websites that allow you to listen to slowed down material at the beginning.

Look up every word you don't know:

It is unnecessary to understand every word as it slows you down and checking a dictionary interrupts the flow of listening (more under techniques).

Techniques for Successful Listening

The following techniques can be used to increase listening success.

Listen regularly every day and listen to different types of material. 

Movies or TV Series

The advantage is that you can see the people who are talking which might help you understand better.

Furthermore, some come with subtitles. A word of caution with subtitles, though: we read faster than we speak. So in the end, you hone your reading skills instead of listening. I have to confess that every time I watch a movie with subtitles, I read them even if it is a movie in German, my mother tongue. Therefore, you can start with subtitles but should get away quickly from using them to truly listen to the spoken word.

Watch different accents e.g. Audrey Hepburn (Breakfast at Tiffany's) had a lovely, clear accent as she spoke 5 languages.

Actors in classic movies, in general, have a clearer pronunciation. Modern movies have more and more the reputation that the actors tend to mumble.

Furthermore, I still like the series Friends because they spoke in a natural way with an American accent. YouTube has plenty of 5-minute clips with subtitles.

Avoid action movies for listening tasks as they are mainly noisy.

Songs

If you like music, listen to songs and check the lyrics. A nice exercise after a while is to try to guess the lyrics and then check them on the Internet. The advantage is that you can listen while you are doing something else like exercising or cooking.

Podcasts

Podcasts are a good source because you can download them to e.g. your phone and again listen while you are doing something else that doesn't need too much attention. Podcasts are widely available for free and cover almost every topic.

TED

The website TED shows presentations from about 5 to 16 minutes length with a wide range of topics. At the same time, you can brush up on your presentation skills although not all presentations on TED are of good quality.

News

As mentioned under DOs, news can be a great source, and you will also become an informed person on world matters. I introduce 4 websites at the end of this blog post.

Audiobooks

These books offer the advantage that you can follow a whole story having the possibility of getting to know the characters and the storyline. Many sources for free audiobooks are available.

Using a dictionary (repetition from the previous post)

I have been asked many times by my students about the most important step to becoming truly bilingual.

My answer: I had to stop translating and constantly using a dictionary.

Breaking the habit of referring to a dictionary every time you hear an unfamiliar expression is important especially at a time where electronic or online dictionaries are readily available. It is essential to take the 'leap of faith' and trust yourself using English to become confident and fluent.

With few exceptions (specific terminology), an English - English dictionary with sample phrases is the best choice (see Resource Section).

Here is important advice. Unfortunately, I could not find the original source.

Don't worry if you don't understand everything when listening or reading; a lot of listening and reading understood partly will help you much more than a small quantity where you have understood every word.

Good luck with your listening improvement!

Sources for Listening Material in Order of Difficulty

http://newsineasyenglish.com/  

(2 versions with slow and fast delivery / with text)

http://learningenglish.voanews.com/

(slow US news with text and quiz)

http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/multi-speed-listening.html  

(1 min news in 5 different speed levels about all kinds of topics)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02nq0gn/episodes/downloads

(5 minutes downloadable world news)

http://ted.com/talks

(between 5 and about 16-minute talks about any topics possible / native speakers and non-native ones / also good for presentations)

http://www.openculture.com/freeaudiobooks

(over 900 free audiobooks / advantage: continuity of the story)

http://www.learnoutloud.com/Free-Audio-Video

(audio and video learning)

Please comment on whether you have other tips and like the blog post. As this is my second post, I want every help to improve.

Mastering the Four Language Skills in English

How Reading in English Helped Me Save a Year of My Life

Today, I want to share a story that happened to me with my great, inspiring English teacher almost half a century ago helping me to move forward and onto university.

Four Skills

Before I do so, let's talk about the four skills of the English language. They are on the intake side: reading and listening and on the output side: speaking and writing.

For the longest time, more emphasis was put on the intake side. Even the TOEIC Test introduced in 1979 in Japan with a reading and a listening part, added a writing and speaking part only in 2006 on an optional basis probably because a computer is necessary.

Nevertheless, mastering all four skills is essential to enable us to acquire more sophisticated communication skills.

My Tips Acquiring the Four Skills

Over the next four blog posts, I will share my journey to become not only a proficient communicator in my second language, English but also a highly skilled Business English Communication Coach.

Ineffective Language Acquisition

Before I get started, let me mention methods that do NOT work in language acquisition.

My first English teacher (not the one from the story) would tell me, "You only need to learn five words every day and a few grammar rules." Everybody who ever tried this knows very well that this method does not work.

One of the very few participants who dropped out of one of my company classes thought going over a few pages of a dictionary every day teaches you the language. Of course, I begged to differ.

Examples

Why are these approaches doomed to fail? Language is more than just a few grammar rules and some vocabulary. Take the rule 'nouns and verbs go together and can form the simplest of sentences.' Some examples:

1. Cats bark. (Okay, that was obvious.)

2. A car flies. (Okay, there are some prototypes, but maybe Elon Musk is working on it.)

3. These were obviously wrong examples, but what about these sentences:

    The company is thriving.

OR:

    The company is going up.

For non-native speakers, the decision which sentence is correct and which is not can be difficult.

Solution: 'The company is thriving' is a correct combination meaning that the company is successful. 'The company is going up' is not correct. Stocks can go up but not companies.

Collocations

The secret is word combinations that are used by native speakers called collocations (see below for some sources for collocations).

Collocations are formed over time when some native speakers start to use e certain word combination (e.g. adjective + noun, verb + noun, etc.), and other native speakers pick it up. Collocations are a natural development of language but difficult for non-native speakers especially when they still translate from their native language.

A good English - English dictionary will provide you with some collocations without being exhaustive.

Therefore, I am tweeting business English collocations fives days of the week under @verafingertips at #bizcollocations.

Four Skills

Let's come to the four skills, where I will start with the input skills and move on to the more difficult output skills in later posts.

Here is my promised story:

If you have read my About page, you know that I have the equivalent of an M.Ed. in mathematics and physics. Language learning was always a true challenge for me.

Late in high school, my English score was so low that I was in danger of failing the year just before my final exam.

I went up to my English teacher and asked her what I could do. She looked at me long and hard, and I started thinking that she deemed me a lost cause. I still remember that my heart started racing.

Finally, she spoke, "For you, I only know one thing, reading, reading, reading." "And NO dictionary!" she added. I drew a sigh of relief as I love to read. I asked what she would recommend, and she answered that she would suggest starting with Agatha Christie. It seemed very interesting, and I started right away.

After having read three books, I was ready to give up. The rule not to use a dictionary seemed too hard. I went back to my teacher and cried out, "It is not working!"

She encouraged me to continue reading novels WITHOUT a dictionary. I learned a little trick to overcome my problems with this rule, which I will mention later and continued with renewed motivation.

After six months of avid reading, I had improved my score by two levels. This extent of progress was nearly unheard of at this advanced level, but I was saved and passed all my exams as planned.

The curious fact was that now my teacher was in trouble because she had a hard time to explain to her colleagues what had happened to the girl with the talent in math and physics but the disastrous score in English.

Without my teacher's advice, I would have had to repeat the grade and lost a year of my life.

By the way, I still like to read Agatha Christie as she wrote a clear and correct English and her stories are attractive to me as a mathematician.

Reading Skills

Therefore, let me talk about the magic of reading and how to make the most out of this fantastic tool.

Reading Materials

We need first to define that there are two distinctly different types of reading material. Let us call short stories, novels, and similar materials to (1) read for pleasure, whereas academic texts, business related articles and other newspaper reports, and for example technical descriptions is material that is (2) dense in information and thus, needs different reading techniques. 

Achieving Best Results in Reading

DOs

Choose material at your level:

material that is too easy doesn't teach you anything and material that is too difficult will discourage you from further reading. Choosing material for your adequate level is probably the single most important rule for success in reading.

Read as fast as you can:

the reading speed is essential for success. In most cases, it is not necessary to read every single word. Reading fast will enable you to take in a considerable amount of content, which in turn teaches you more about the language as reading at a lower speed.

Focus on keywords:

generally, keywords give enough information to achieve the reading task.

 

DON'Ts

Read out loud:

reading out loud will slow you down, and you will rather 'listen' to your own voice instead of taking in the content. Reading out loud is only useful to correct pronunciation recording your voice (further tips see in the blog post about listening.

Read every word:

carefully reading every word slows you down without providing a much higher degree of success or understanding.

Look up every word you don't know:

it is unnecessary to understand every word as it slows you down and checking a dictionary interrupts the flow of reading (more under techniques).

 

Techniques for Successful Reading

The following techniques can be used to increase reading success. I will point out specifically to which type material i.e. (1) pleasure reading and/or (2) material with dense information content the specific technique applies.

Skimming (1 & 2)

Remember skimmed milk. The best, the cream is taken away and sold extra. In reading, the cream is the main idea (or gist).

The main idea is the opinion of the writer about the topic. The topic can be found in the headline, whereas the main idea is often mentioned in the first sentence of the first paragraph.

Scanning (1 & 2)

Remember when the pirate scanned the horizon for the arriving ship. In reading, this means looking for specific information.

The most important step is to identify the information to look for before you start reading the text.

Predicting (1 & 2)

It can be helpful in understanding more complex texts to read the headline and try to predict the content or to stop after a paragraph and try to predict what the next paragraph will contain. A prediction can be verified later in the text (or in the future).

Inferring (1 & 2)

To understand the reading material more completely, 'reading between the lines' (i.e. what does the author want to tell me without specifically spelling it out) can be a helpful technique. This can generally not be proven as true or false. 

Previewing (2)

When the material is particularly challenging, I would always recommend previewing (quickly scanning) the text for unknown vocabulary. (Another focus of previewing could be what type of text is it, what do you expect to learn, etc.)

Summarizing (2)

Summarizing is a useful technique if it is important for you to retain as much information as possible or give an opinion as it helps to reflect on the material.

Highlighting or Underlining (mostly 2)

For dense information, always highlight or underline text that you want to review later. In fact, I believe reading a (2) text without using one of these tools right from the start is a waste of time.

Taking notes (2)

Taking notes is as useful a technique as summarizing for the same reasons. Furthermore, you can take notes about unknown vocabulary for better retention.

Using background knowledge (1 & 2)

In cases where you lack knowledge of certain vocabulary using knowledge that you already possess (background) in a similar context can help to guess / infer the meaning of the text in question. The use of a dictionary can be avoided, and the new vocabulary is better memorized as it is stored in context.

Using dictionary (1 & 2)

I have been asked many times by my students about the most important step to becoming truly bilingual. My answer: I had to stop translating and constantly using a dictionary.

Breaking the habit of referring to a dictionary every time you see an unfamiliar expression is important especially at a time where electronic and online dictionaries are readily available. It is essential to take the 'leap of faith' and trust yourself using English to become confident and fluent.

With few exceptions (specific terminology), an English - English dictionary with sample phrases is the best choice (see Resource Section). 

Use in Pleasure Reading

Remember that my teacher said, "And NO dictionary!"

I learned over time to trust myself more and more and also to get away from the notion that I had to understand every word or even every sentence in the novels I read.

Nevertheless, during my reading, I would come across a number of expressions that showed up again and again, and I still couldn't decipher their meaning.

My little trick to overcome this problem is Post-it notes (okay at my student time still a small writing pad). I write the words that I cannot understand but show up frequently on the note and continue reading. By the end of about 10 pages, I will have roughly 10 words on that note, and after I finished reading, I will look them up in a dictionary. This way, I don't lose the flow.

Note: Don't make the mistake of writing down every unknown word.

Use Material with Dense Information

Is the content very difficult use previewing as mentioned above. Otherwise, skim and scan as wanted using highlighting or underlining along the way. Check out difficult vocabulary after reading once or twice.

Note: If you are new to using an English - English dictionary, wikiHow can help (see Resource Section).

Notes to Different Types of Material

Pleasure Reading

Reading for pleasure can be an invaluable tool to learn not only new vocabulary but the structure (or as I like to call it the 'melody' or 'rhythm') of English. If you have read a certain combination like a phrasal verb (verb with preposition)  or a verb/noun combination a few hundred times, you have certainly memorized it. The same is true for sentence structure and tenses.

Read regularly even if only for a short time and if possible before bed for retention (this way, you can learn a language in your sleep).

Material with Dense Information

The process of reading material with dense information is slower but provides you with valuable information for example about business.

An important additional task for this type of material can be to distinguish fact and opinion. Facts can be proven.

"Don't worry about confusion and mistakes; they are a positive sign that you partly understand, not a negative one that you didn't understand anything."

Michael Lewis: Lexical Approach (collocations or chunks as M. Lewis called the word combinations)

 

The GREAT Advantage of Reading:

You can read anything and anywhere completely independent of co-operation with a teacher or other learners.

Resources:

Book: More Reading Power, B. Mikulecky & L. Jeffries  (We used this book at my institute in Taiwan)

Website: https://www.mindtools.com/rdstratg.html

Collocations:

Book: LTP Dictionary of Selected Collocations, J. Hill & M. Lewis

Website: http://flax.nzdl.org

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