How to Use the Learning Guide: Part 3

Our story so far…

We talked about how we pick up languages (by understanding them), and what the principal (main) parts of the Learning Guide are. Today I’ll tell you all you ever wanted to know about the final section of the Guide, the transcript of everything we say on the episode.

Note: If you missed the first two parts of this series, you can find Part 1 here
and Part 2 here.
The most common question I get about the transcript is WHEN to use it. Here are your choices:
–Read the transcript first, then listen to the audio;
–Listen to the audio first, then read the transcript; or
–Read and listen at the same time.

What should you do?

I would be lying to you if I said that *one* way has been shown to be more effective than another way. To decide what’s right for you, we need to talk a little bit more about that one BIG thing from Part I of this series, that the key to language acquisition is understanding the message.

Here’s another way to look at this: To really acquire (pick up) a language, you need to get “lost” in the episode (or book or article or television show) so much that you “forget” you’re listening or reading in another language. In other words, you need to be so interested in what you are reading or listening to that you don’t even realize that you are not reading or listening in your own language, but in English. You are so completely focused on what the person is saying that you don’t think about the fact that it is in English.

When that happens, you are acquiring the language.

My own experience with students (and with acquiring languages myself) is that for most things, you need to understand at least 85-90% to really feel like you are understanding what you are reading so well that you forget that you are reading or listening in another language.

So my suggestion is to experiment with an approach that gets you to that “forgetting” stage with the episodes.

If you can understand 95% of the audio without looking at the transcript, then I would listen first, then read the glossary and cultural notes afterwards, looking quickly at the transcript at the end for anything I may have missed.

If you are only understanding 60-80% (or less) of the audio when you listen to it the first time, then I would probably either read along with the transcript while listening, or read the transcript over quickly and then listen.

You need to see what works best for you and your level of comfort and comprehension with the episodes.

It also may be different for listening to the dialog episodes versus the English Cafe. Try each method and see which seems to put you into that “lost” feeling, where you forgot you are even listening to English!

It would be nice if there were one, single “system” that every learner could follow to acquire languages, but there isn’t. However, if you follow or use some general principles that have been well-supported by the research in the past 30 years, you will greatly improve your abilities with significantly less pain. That’s the reason Lucy and I started ESL Podcast to begin with!

Okay, we’ve come to the end of our little tour of the Learning Guide. In Part 4, I’m going to talk about two issues that a lot of people ask me about: how often and in what order you should listen to the episodes.

Don’t miss the next email coming in a few days!

Until next time,
Jeff