Description

INSTRUCTIONS FOR USING THESE VIDEOS TO LEARN ENGLISH

Watching and listening to the songs and videos will help you to learn English having fun, and if you are exposed to the language while you are relaxed and enjoying, the learning process speeds up! so let's try to work with the videos without spoiling the fun ot it. Watching a video once is ok, but not enough if you really want to learn more of the language and improve a lot your hearing capabilities. Here are some basic 5 steps to enjoy the videos while learning:

1. Watch the video once and see how much you understand (a lot, a little, nothing? it's ok).
   
   
2. Listen to the video once or twice but this time reading the transcription (the text) at the same time.
   
   
3. Now forget about the video, just read the transcript and look up in the Explanation box below for any words or expressions you don't know.
   
   
4. Listen to the video again reading the script. This time you'll understand more, including some new things you just learned from the Comments.
   
   
5. Forget about the script and watch the video once or twice. See how much more you can understand this time. The important thing is not to understand a lot, but to understand more than in the beginning.

Come back another time on a different day and listen again without looking at the text (how much can you remember?). This way we're helping to fix things in your long-term memory, after a period of unconscious assimilation. We fix information during our sleep, that's why it is important to do this on a different day.

Make sure you sometimes go back to videos you have seen in the past, that way you'll help your long-term memory refreshing the input.

 When you listen to a video watching the images or closing your eyes (as when listening just to audio) or  when you listen reading the transcription, you are using your brain in different ways, processing information differently. Using these different ways will help you more than using just one. Some people find the images distracting and prefer to concentrate just on the sound, but then, when you listen to people speaking English you don't close your eyes! If you do, you should immediately stop doing so, it's very rude and disturbing .  Remember that here we are trying to prepare for real life, not for idealized English in idealized situations. Besides, the image of the video is giving you a visual context that will help you understand and learn faster (since your brain makes visual-auditory connections), and makes all the process much more fun.

Not all the videos come with transcriptions, though most do. Some videos come with a text version (not literal transcription), others with subtitles, or titles (like subtitles for help, but not literal), and others have no transcription (free listening). All these different kinds will help you to develop different abilities, so they are all good for your learning, use them all, but if you want to apply the 5 steps, you can only do so with videos which come with transcriptions and no subtitles.

Of course, you can abbreviate this procedure, forget about it, change it or adapt it to your personal taste. You can work exhaustively with some videos and then simply watch others quickly. We give you advice and the resources, the rest is up to you. Have fun and learn.

Remember that it is not possible to learn a lot of English in a little time, but follow these instructions, be constant and you'll see how your listening and your knowledge of English gets much better and far more prepared for the authentic real English used by natives. In a few months you will feel much more confident understanding natives.

Some more good advice in this methodological video series: Speak English Fluently (7 rules)

Explanation