English Recordings

Deep listening occurs when your mind is quiet. Your thoughts are flowing rather than crowding your mind with distractions, interpretations, judgments, conclusions, or assumptions. Your mind is open, curious, interested -- as though you were hearing this person for the first time. Deep listening applies not only to communication with another, but also to listening to ourselves and to life in general. The goal of deep listening is to hear beyond the words of the other person and yourself, to the essence of what the words and feelings are pointing to. Your mind and heart are joined in union -- you are listening wholeheartedly.

Deep listening is effortless; it is more like listening lightly to your favorite music, the sound of a stream rushing by, or a bird singing. When we listen to these delightful sounds we are under no pressure, we aren’t analyzing or figuring out -- we are simply letting the feelings and sounds affect us. Deep listening is not defensive, argumentative, or intrusive. It is not about struggling to analyze or interpret. It is a purely receptive state of mind. In a state of deep listening, we realize our oneness. We realize that we are not separate, but truly one spirit -- we are connected.

Active listening is the most important in applying this method. Imagine that you can hear decode text while at the same time you’re reading it.

At this stage the one's native language is uniting with foreign language. Through listening to the second language at simultaneous reading decode text both languages are joined inseparably. That’s the great difference between standard methods and Birkenbihl method. You should take notice of it. You can learn using this method every language you want to. It’s very simple. You’ll see.

Thanks to decoding you’ll be able to understand the whole text that you’re listening. Apart from that you always listen to something interesting what you’ve found by yourself. You are creating the context which is a food of the right hemisphere of the brain thanks to that.

Never learn vocabulary without context. For our mind decoded text in a foreign language is the same correct as the text in your language. Active listening is effective because it remains the learning of mother language. When words are being met in the semantic connection. At connecting the first and second stage a process of the comprehensive learning is coming into existence because when you’re listening and reading decoded text your right hemisphere can do many different things for example:

*you are getting to know about the pronunciation

*you are getting to know about the accent

*you can “hear” language, his melody

Thank you for giving me a chance to introduce myself.
My name is SeongHyun Lee. And I'm Korean.
I was born in a little country town named TongYung in 1986, and grew up in Busan and Seoul.
I came to Japan when I was 21.
I was empressed about Tokyo's modern architecture and a variety of pretty shops.
So I was decided to enter the college ICS for study interior.

Of course, if you are really serious about learning the words in an active way, use an SRS (Spaced Repetition), Word lists or whatever method you prefer. This is, however, not something you automatically have to do just because you study the language in which you are reading a book. A lot of words will stick anyway. If you do choose to make more of an effort, be careful with classics. Before you spend time on memorizing 50 new words, make sure they are actually in use today and not something that was scrapped two centuries ago.

Detailed reading adapted to your leve:

If you cannot stand to not understand everything, choose your book with care. If you aren't very advanced yet, you will most likely just abandon an unabridged novel after ten pages when you have to look up words every 10 seconds. If an easy reader is what you need, then get an easy reader! Progress will most likely be fast anyway, and after a few easy readers, you can perhaps go ahead and read a full novel and enjoy it. As you read, underline all the words you want to look up, but since these won't be a majority of the words in the text, don't do it straight away. You are supposed to understand what you read anyway, take or give a few nuances. When you finish a page (or half a page), go back to the top and start finding out what those odd words actually meant. Stopping for every word and reaching for the dictionary/the computer will just make it more "study" than "pleasurable reading". You are, after all, first and foremost reading a book, right? It just happens to be written in your target language...

Detailed reading with parallel texts:

If you are reading a parallel text, you have the luxury of already having all the words explained on the opposite side, so you can go well above your current level and still benefit from it with not very much frustration. Also, you do not risk misinterpreting phrases due to different uses of tenses or word order in different languages. Do as above, just read and underline all the things you find interesting. Phrases that you think you may actually use or that you think you ought to recognize, words that just please you, or whatever you wish. After one full page, go back to the top. Work through your underlined words and phrases. Can you remember what they meant? Think before glancing at the translation again, and then write down the translation in the margins.

Carefree reading:

If you are one of the lucky carefree ones and happy with only getting the gist of the text, then just try reading without doing anything. It may prove more effective than obsessing about every word that you can't understand. The first page or two pages or perhaps even ten pages may be tedious, but just like you can't always expect a novel to be breathtaking from page one, you've got to give this some time as well. Just be patient, continue reading, and see what happens. Words that are very important and that you don't understand at first will most likely reveal their own meaning by repeated appearance in context.

Kato Lomb's way:

Kato Lomb was a Hungarian polyglot who strongly advocated using books as a tool for learning languages. You can read about her method in her book "How I Learn Languages", but the main point is to choose a book where you just have to continue to read in order to find out what happens next. A detective story, a silly love story (Harlequin is okay if it is used for language learning!), anything you want, but don't obsess about single words. Kato Lomb's method is mainly just "Carefree reading" with a pen in your hand. Scribble away all you want in the margins of your book, but write down the things you actually understand and can figure out by yourself, "Base your progress on the known, not the unknown". Lomb advocates using books early on in your learning.

When you reach a certain level in your target language, you can start to read books without having to look up every other word. How soon you reach this point obviously depends on what book you want to read, and you can just as well start with children's books as with unabridged novels, depending on your current level. Simply pick a book that you think will interest you, no matter what it is about, and start reading it. It is a sure way to increase your vocabulary quickly.

These are just a couple of suggestions about how you can work with your book.

Do you feel embarrassed when you speak English? Is your pronunciation bad? Do you make a lot of grammar mistakes when you speak?

Do people have trouble understanding you? Do they seem confused when you speak English?

Is it difficult for you to understand native speakers? Do you feel frustrated because you still can’t understand English speakers easily?

You have studied English for years. You read English well, but when its time to speak– you feel nervous, foolish, embarrassed, and shy when speaking English.

Is it possible that you will never speak English well?

Are you angry that you studied for years but still cannot speak English easily?

What is wrong? Have you wasted all of your study time? Have you wasted all of your English vocabulary? Will you ever speak English easily?

Will you ever feel relaxed and happy when you speak English?

Most programs are modeled like learning with flashcards: items to memorize are entered into the program as question-answer pairs; when a pair is due to be reviewed, the question is displayed on screen, and the user is supposed to attempt to remember the answer; when the user has succeeded or failed, he manually reveals the answer, and then tells the program how easily he recalled the answer or failed to. The program schedules pairs based on spaced repetition algorithms. Without a program the user has to schedule flashcards; this takes time and restricts to simple algorithms like the Leitner system.

Jingle A: From early on , three thoroughly surly, thirsty Thugs thought they could take baths throughout the night.