Don’t Look for Specific Audio Material for Improving Your English Listening Skills!

By Robby

If you are new here please read this first.

Improve Spoken English


Hi guys, hello boys and girls and welcome back to English Harmony video blog!

Today let’s talk about improving your English listening, right? Basically your comprehension. And the biggest mistake, by far the biggest one that all foreign English speakers make, is they search for specific listening material.

Very specific audios or whatnot specifically created with a single purpose of improving English learners’ comprehension. But it’s a big mistake and here’s why.

First of all, those materials, well, they are obviously designed in order to improve specifically your listening but then again it’s not necessarily something that you would be interested in, right?

The way I like to approach things is if you are serious about your English improvement, there’s no reason on Earth why you wouldn’t surround yourself with English in your daily life.

  • Watch English movies.
  • Watch English TV programs.
  • Listen to English radio.

Basically whatever you do, do it in English and then you won’t have to search for specific audio material for listening!

And if you’ve been following my blog for a good while, you’ll definitely remember that my main approach towards English listening is that you don’t have to train your listening separately. It all has to go hand in hand with your spoken English improvement. Basically, you do it all together, right?

When you watch a film, for example, or a TV program, there’s no reason why you wouldn’t do a self-practice session after that by discussing the main points made in that TV program or basically just recapping the events from the film and so on and so forth.

And it’s not just that there shouldn’t be any reason. There’s every reason for you to do so because you’re not going to improve your ability to speak unless you speak!

But anyway, let’s say for example you’re quite good at speaking and you still want to improve your listening, okay, which could be the case with you at the moment.

Please don’t be searching for specific audio material!

Just keep enjoying your life through English. There’s a gazillion options out there. Let’s take the same free resource which is YouTube, right? There’s everything on YouTube: films, TV programs, shows, everything. You can watch it for a hundred years and you won’t consume 1% of information that is there. You know what I mean?

And you can definitely find something that you find interesting on a personal level. But I have been receiving quite a few e-mails asking me “Robby, what audio material do you suggest I use to improve my English comprehension?” Then I’m like “Duh, why would you look for something specific for Christ’s sake?”

Yes, obviously, if your ability to understand is not as good you probably may want to find something that is simpler, right? But it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to go searching for something that is specifically designed with learners in mind.

You can actually start by watching my YouTube channel for example. When I speak I use quite simple language. You can actually turn the subtitles option on at the bottom of the video and you can use the subtitles to help your comprehension and then you can build on that.

So basically, yes, if your comprehension is not as good, there’s no point in trying to force yourself to listen to something that you just don’t understand. And you may want to read this article to help you understand that concept and realize why it’s nonsense to listen to fast speech.

You’re not going to force yourself into a position where you can understand everything all of a sudden. It has to be built gradually. And yes, you have to find some easier, simpler options. But there’s plenty of TV shows and programs and whatnot out there and YouTube just like I said, interviews, whatever. Basically, just surround yourself with English which is found in the media.

Media is the answer, right?

So yeah, that’s the message I wanted to convey to you my friends and if you have any questions in relation to this, please feel free to share them with everyone in the comment section below, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

All right, thanks for watching and talk to you soon! Bye bye!



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