411. Strategies to Improve your Listening in English

Hey, everyone, it's Adar. Thank you so much for joining me. Do you feel like listening is an important part of your English studies? Do you feel like you struggle understanding native speakers of English or other speakers of English and you'd like to improve? If the answer is yes, then this episode is absolutely for you. Because today I'm going to interview Jennifer Forest from Jforrest English, the YouTube channel. And Jennifer is committed to helping her students and. And viewers improve their listening skills. And by doing that, improve their confidence, their fluency and pronunciation in English. So today she's going to share with us her story, her strategies, and why she thinks listening is so important for her students. And yes, it has to do with her own experience learning French. So I'm super excited to introduce you to Jennifer and to share with you our conversation. Let's listen. Hi, Jennifer. How are you doing?

I'm doing great, Hadar. I'm so excited to be here with you.

I'm so happy that you're here and I'm excited for our conversation. For those who don't know you and are now watching, would you like to introduce yourself the way you talk about what you do?

Yeah. Thank you so much. So my name is Jennifer. I run the YouTube channel called Jforrest English. And, and my approach is really to help people understand how the language is used in the real world. So to study native speakers and to help make sure my students understand native speakers and feel confident because they also sound like a native speaker. They're using the language fluently but naturally as well.

What got you into teaching and what compelled you to start. Start a YouTube channel and start doing what. What you do?

Oh, I'm glad you asked because I actually got into teaching mainly because I was a failed language learner. I was always interested in languages and I started learning French as a second language because at the time I was working for the government of Canada, which is bilingual French and English, and. And I was very dedicated to improving my French. At that time, I had never taught a language, and I really loved the language. I loved studying the language. I learned so much about languages. And then I decided I wanted to travel, explore the world, and I turned that into teaching English. And I started my YouTube channel just to help the students I was working with. And then as the channel grew, I decided, wow, I have this opportunity to help people from all over the world, even if they're not my direct student.

I love it, like, how for most of the teachers that I know, like, there's always this sense of mission and impact in their work. And I could definitely see it in your work. And now that you share your background story, I can see why you do what you do. I love that. What is something that you do now as a teacher that you wish you had as a student and you didn't have because you said a failed learned language learning experience. So what was missing?

Well, I would say definitely focusing on listening skills and trying to understand native speakers because after five years of studying French very aggressively, I could pass any grammar test. Which gave you this false sense of fluency because I'm passing the most advanced grammar test easily yet. I would go out to a restaurant and try something simple like ordering a meal in French, and it was a disaster. I couldn't understand what they were saying. To me. It didn't under. It didn't sound like the French I was learning in classrooms, in textbooks. And I didn't really know how to take all my knowledge of verb tenses and vocabulary and turn that into a natural sentence that could communicate my idea. So I had a lot of knowledge, but I couldn't actually use that knowledge to understand people or to speak. Speak. And really I've. I focus a lot on listening because if you can't understand what someone is saying to you, you can't have a conversation. And if you under, if you improve your listening skills, it means you're also improving your accent, you're expanding your vocabulary, you're learning natural sentence structure, natural speech as well. So I feel like it really improves other areas of your, of your language a hundred percent.

Like I always say that there is this gap between the English that we know or the language that we know and the language that we speak. And the more we learn without putting it into practice, practicing listening and actually speaking, we just make that gap bigger and bigger and bigger and then the frustration goes up with it because it's exactly the experience you were talking about. And it's really important to put it into practice, whether it's with listening or, or with speaking. So. So definitely I would say, looking at your content, that listening is important to you. And now I understand why. By the way, is there like a specific story or something, a situation that you remember where you struggled with understanding a French speaker and that caused a situation?

Yeah, I remember it so well because I was studying French very aggressively and I enrolled in this five week intensive French program which took place in French speaking Canada. So there's parts of Canada that are predominantly French. And So I spent 8am to 5pm in the classroom in a University classroom environment. Just in French with a teacher. With a French teacher. And then after class I went to cafe and I wanted to order a coffee and a piece of pie. And I could not communicate that I wasn't able to express what I wanted. The person asked me I wanted a coffee, I ordered the coffee. But then the person asked me a lot of follow up questions probably about do you want it here to go? What do you take in your coffee? What size do you want? And I didn't understand anything that this person said. And it was just like a deer in a headlight situation where I just. Deer in a headlight for people who might not know that expression. But it was so frustrating because I literally just spent eight hours for, you know, maybe the second or third week in a row studying the language and then just the most basic conversation I could not have and I felt so ashamed and embarrassed and frustrated and it was just not a good situation. So when I'm working with students, I have that feeling in me. I know what it's like to really struggle and I know what it's like to feel like you're not making progress. But then I also have that perspective of maybe what, what's missing and because if I were to go back and learn a language again, I would approach it completely differently today, which is what I try to do with my YouTube channel to help my students.

Amazing. So if we're talking about using your experience and turning it into practical opportunities for students to learn in a non conventional way like you would in a traditional language school, what would you say the best method or strategy is to improve listening?

Listening to very short clips of, of shows, whether it's a TV show, a movie. I mean we watch our content on social media these days, so even just take a YouTube video, but take a very short clip. And I like to focus on short clips because committing to a 30 minute TV show or a two hour movie I feel is overwhelming for, for a learner at one time. And if you're just, if you have it on in the background and it's more passive entertainment and you're not trying to necessarily learn from it, you're just exposing yourself to the language, that's fine. But, but if you are trying to work on improving specific skills, then you don't need a 30 minute TV show or a two hour movie, you just need a, even a 30 second clip, a two minute clip. But really analyze it, listen to one sentence, perhaps you can focus on different areas. You can focus first on just listening to the sounds Which I know you do a lot with your students, listening to how the words flow together or listening for pronunciation, or you can learn vocabulary from it, you can analyze the sentence structure, or you can take this one very short clip and do all three things and really just go deep into that clip and learn a lot from such a small piece of content. And it's fun, it's engaging. Students really enjoy this approach as well. And it makes, it makes you feel at the end of this exercise like you really, truly have improved your English.

That's amazing. And, and I so agree with that concept of quality over quantity. You don't need to do it for five hours and then not even remember what you gained out of it. You're just like, I'm done with it. But you really go deep in that broad. And I think that's what learners need. And I do think that you can learn so much like, just like you said, from a short piece of content. So it's a great approach. Why do you think native speakers are so hard to understand for students who are learning the language, especially learners who don't have a lot of experience being around people who speak the language natively?

Yeah, I think there are quite a few reasons. First of all, just basing this on my experience with learning French as a second language is it's not what you study. So the language you study in a traditional classroom or textbook setting is, you know, the speech is a lot slower. They don't necessarily connect their sounds. They over enunciate individual sounds for the purpose of helping you learn it because they know you're learning this as a non native, which great, great strategy behind that in the sense that they want you to understand what they're saying, but it doesn't help you when you're in the real world. So you're learning from a style of speech that just is not very typically used in the real world. And it can also be just things like right now you're listening. Students are listening to very high quality audio with zero background noise. But then when you watch a TV show or a movie, there's lots of background noise. The scenes take place in restaurants, on the streets. You hear a lot of background noise, which makes the speech a little more difficult. The there are multiple people talking at the same time, so just other noises are introduced as well. So this is a very clear audio environment that you're experiencing right now as well. So that could be it. And then one thing I've noticed also, it's the lack of, of knowledge of the Natural expressions that native speakers use. Sure. In a language exam, the they'll tell you to use advanced vocabulary. And absolutely, native speakers know advanced vocabulary. And we use it as well, but we use it in very specific situations. But 90% of the time, perhaps we're using just natural speech, phrasal verbs, idioms, expressions like I said deer in a headlight. But then I explained what that is, because students probably might not know that expression. But a native speaker isn't going to stop and explain, explain what these expressions are. They're just going to assume you know them.

And I think a lot of listening can help you understand it, even if you do it on your own without having someone facilitate it, which is always good. But sometimes we don't have access to it and we hear new phrases. I think that when you hear it in context again and again like it, it eventually makes sense. So really exposing yourself to a lot of the spoken language is also important for this kind of work. Now, I have a question, like, how do you balance between consumption. Right. Like. Or passive learning, which is listening, even though it's not really passive, because you're constantly focused on things. And if you repeat it out loud, then of course it's not just passive. But how do you balance between receiving the language and producing the language? Because I'm assuming that you would want your students to practice both.

That's a really great point because that ratio is generally out of bounds or out of proportion, I should say, for students, it certainly was for me. As a language Learner, I spent 90% of my time absorbing the language and a very small percent of the time actually using the language. So I encourage my students to use their language in every way they can. It depends on their goal. So a lot of students will use speaking as an example, because that's something that most students want to improve. So I encourage my students to just speak. Speak every day, even five minutes. Breakfast, lunch, dinner before bed. So that's a combination of 15 to 25 minutes. As you're having a shower, you can speak. You don't need someone to speak to. You can improve your. Your speaking skills just by opening your mouth and speaking. So definitely start doing that. It might seem a little awkward just talking to yourself, but it's very beneficial.

Fan of this strategy?

Yes. And eventually you'll enjoy talking to yourself. You'll become your own friend. I talk to myself all the time. And not to improve a language just because I'm so. It's just something I do a lot, is talk to myself. So just Vocalize thoughts to help me clarify or help me plan things, help me think things through. I just vocalize things. So if you just start vocalizing and there are certain, you can summarize your day. You can tell, tell yourself what you're going to do tomorrow. You can summarize a TV show you just watch. You can do anything. Just have fun with it. But of course, I understand you also want to speak with other people. But I think students have this idea that it's very hard to find people to speak with. So if you approach it thinking, oh, it's too hard, I'll never find someone, you just probably won't put in the effort because you've already decided it's too hard. But there are, there's websites like meetup to specifically help you find language partners. There's, there's so many websites. Just do a simple Google search, ask, chat, GPT. You'll have more than enough resources to find a speaking partner. But in the meantime, you can get 20 to 30 minutes a day easily by speaking to yourself. And it won't take any time out because you can do it while you're showering, while you're making breakfast, while you're getting ready, while you're doing anything.

I agree and I encourage my students to do the same. And I just want to say, really, because I think this is so important, like to do the work on your own, speak on your own, and then find the right people. And we do actually have, we have a free community on Facebook called the Influency community where people connect with each other and, and practice. And it's free. Like, so they practice in conversation groups. So really there are. And I think what you're saying that people are not open to the idea of even searching because they think it's like it's going to either cost them money or it's going to be boring. And no, like, you know, there are amazing solutions out there. So you started. You kind of like mentioned something that got me excited about. You said if you decide that it's going to be hard, then you will want you. You won't do the things that you need to do to get the results that you want. And you're, you're talking about mindset here and attitude. So what would. And I definitely love talking about it. So I'm curious to hear from you. What do you think are the biggest mindset blocks or negative thoughts or limiting beliefs that students have that you have heard and seen that you know that if they were to overcome this type of thinking their performance or their fluency will improve as well.

Well, I'm glad you got excited about it, because I. I do as well, because there has just been such a profound impact when you help a student with their mindset. And generally, it's not something that they think of when they want to improve their language. They don't think they need to work on their mindset. But so much of speaking a language is your mindset. It's incredibly influential on your success or failure as a language learner. And I just hear a lot of defeatist mindsets or more negativity in the. I read all the comments on my YouTube videos, and I do quizzes, quiz quite a lot. And a student will get 9 out of 10 on a quiz and then. And then berate themselves as. As doing a terrible job. And, oh, I can't believe I only got nine out of ten. And. And it's just. They go on about it and it's like nine out of ten. That's amazing. You got nine right and one wrong. But they function. Focus on that one.

They got so easy to focus on the negative.

Exactly, exactly. And so just little things like that. Like, I find that students in general, they just, they approach. They see themselves as a language learner from a very negative perspective. Whereas I'll meet a student who is convinced that their. I know you focus on accent and pronunciation. So sometimes I'll meet a student and they're convinced that their accent is terrible and their pronunciation is terrible. But then I listen to them and I think, wow, I think they sound really good. I think they sound great. But it's hard to convince students to see themselves in a positive way or to celebrate their progress. They're always focused on what they. They don't know. Oh, I just learned modal verbs, but I don't know how to use the present perfect. Rather than celebrating, you just learned. I learned how to use the modal. These modal verbs. Now I feel more confident with this. So, yeah, just in general, I find they're overly negative and there is this more defeatist attitude. Oh, I'll never be able to improve. I'll never reach my goal. I can't do it.

Yeah. And so how do you. And, and is there something specific that you do to kind of like, shake them off or you just say, hey, look at the negative at the positive and be able to celebrate. How would you help them change that mindset?

First of all, most of them don't even notice that they, they say stuff like that. They don't they're not even aware of the fact that they do approach their.

Their.

Their progress or their English from a negative perspective. So just simply making them aware of the fact that, hey, you got it. You got nine. Right? That's really great. And then sometimes they'll reply back in the comments and be like, yeah, you're right. I did get nine. Right.

So just sometimes it's just awareness.

Yes. Yeah, yeah. Because they have this. This track in their head, and they're just. It's so comfortable to them because it's in their own voice that they don't even hear this track in their head. And then one strategy I really like doing with my students, because it's 100% true, is reminding them how many mistakes I make with English. Or I might have a conversation with someone and not hear what they said and a native speaker and ask them to repeat themselves for whatever reason, or. Or I learn new words. I realize I've been saying a word incorrectly for 30 years and just reminding them that I don't speak the language perfectly. I find that really helps them feel better about it. Yes.

Yeah, definitely. And also, it's their second or third or fourth language, so it doesn't need to be perfect. Like, it's certain that one will make mistakes if they speak in their second language. And that happens in your first language as well. Absolutely. We like to celebrate small wins, so we kind of, like, get our students to always find something to celebrate so that they. Because you're right. Like, people tend to berate themselves and to focus on the negative, but also, if you give similar airtime to the good things and to kind of, like, force yourself to come up with something, something that you can celebrate. I think we find it also helpful in getting our students to be like, okay, I have these negative thoughts. I'm aware of them. But also there is this going on, which is really important. And this is really what you do as well. The first time I came across one of your videos was on YouTube, I was, like, searching for something else. You know how there are all the suggested videos. And the first video that came up was Learn English with the news. And that kind of, like, grabbed my attention because, like, oh, I haven't seen that yet. Right. Like, I do shadowing and exercise, and, like, you have all these scenes and TV shows and, like, with the news. I like that. And then, you know, I watched the video, and I was like, this is really, really good and so helpful. So tell me why you decided to have this series of videos about learning with the news. Why do you think it's beneficial for students and how is the response to this type of content?

I really enjoy making these videos mainly because I see how helpful they are to my students. So I really love this content. I know people read the news as part of their daily routine, so I wanted to take content that they're already using and turn it into something educational. But then at the same time they're learning about the world. So I try to be very strategic about the news articles I review because I know they're also learning about the world and part of learning languages because you want to feel connected to. To the world. So I feel like for one, the content is interesting and if you're engaged, if you enjoy the process, then you're going to be more likely to keep doing it. So I wanted to make sure the content choice was interesting. And some people might have this view that because it's the news, it's very academic or uses very advanced vocabulary, whereas in fact that's not true. The news is meant to appeal to a general audience and is written in a very natural way. So the news is not academic English. It's everyday English. It's the English that we use in the real world. They use free phrasal verbs, idioms, expressions. They use natural style of writing as well.

Would you say that depends on the source? Like would you say that for some magazines or newspapers the language would be heightened or less conversational than other sources?

That's very true. It does depend on the news source. For example, the, the New York Times is known as to be at a higher reading level. And then magazines would be. Or celebrity news, magazines, entertainment news would be at an even more. Maybe they use more colloquial language or even bordering on slang language. So there is a degree of. Of level. But your, your general news, the ones that people think of the most in, in North America at least would be at that, that intermediate level, I would say.

And that is your go to when you teach. And if you were to suggest to students to practice with the news, that is what you would recommend generally.

Yeah, sometimes I will pick a news source that is a little more academic because I know a lot of students, they do. They are studying for formal purposes to take their Ielts or for. For more academic purposes. So I do try to have a variety and some more beginner news choices as well. But for the most part it's. It's that intermediate level. And then when you, you start with content that's interesting, it's every day it's how native speakers communicate. And then from that, you can look at a paragraph, even one sentence, and you can see how the language is being used in context, which is very helpful because if you see one, if you study one phrasal verb, that phrasal verb has five different meanings depending on how it's used. But in this sentence, it has one meaning because it depends on the context of the sentence. And then at the same time, you can still study the grammar of it, but you're learning grammar very naturally to help you communicate. And because I read the news, it's also helpful for pronunciation. Whereas if a student were to read the news on their own, they're. They're reading it based on how they pronounce it. So it might be influenced by their native language. But because I read it to them, they hear the sounds and the connected speech. Speech as well. So I find it's a great way to focus on all areas in a engaging and educational way.

Yeah, I love that. It's really interesting. The news could be controversial at like, specific situations. So I'm also thinking, like, as a teacher, you're probably doing a, a lot of work in finding the right piece of content so that it wouldn't trigger people.

I think that's actually the hardest part because coming back to mindset, and once you start to become aware of how much negativity there is and you look at the news, you open it and it's just very negative. And like you said, there are a lot of topics that I just would not want to cover. So probably the hardest part for me is finding an appropriate news article that would appeal to a wide range of students, be interesting, teach them a natural speech as well. So the actual teaching part for me is easy because that's my area of expertise. But finding the news article is very challenging.

I can imagine. You know, as a content creator, I'm like, I find it really hard to find the right piece of content. Content, especially the news. So this is a good opportunity to show people, like the background work that a person, a content creator has to do to come up with, you know, like what ended up being a 10, 20, 30 minute video. But there is so much more that goes into it and so much thought. So thank you for sharing.

Absolutely.

That experience. So before we wrap up, if. If you had to give someone who is just starting to learn English or they want to improve to move to a higher level, what would be your best piece of advice?

Yeah, my best piece of advice is to find a method of learning that that you really enjoy. Because if you start with a method of learning that you enjoy, it will make the process so much easier. You might watch one of my learn English with the news lessons and not enjoy it because maybe you're. You don't like reading the news. So in that case, definitely don't use that because it will be tedious. You won't want to do it, you won't want to repeat it. So that's just one style. There are so many great teachers out there. There are so many great resources out there, most of them for free. So first, really spend the time and ask yourself, what, what is my learning style? What approach do I really like? And then find something that matches your learning style and then commit to it. Commit to spending a certain amount of time, whatever is realistic for your schedule, how many days of week, whatever is realistic for your goals or your schedule, and just commit to that. Give it 90 days before you even ask yourself, am I improving? Because improvement takes time. So find a method that works, commit to the time and wait a minimum of 90 days to actually see your results because it takes time.

That's such great advice. And I really resonate with what you said about find something that makes you happy that you enjoy. Because I think a lot of times people, when they don't like something, they feel it's their problem, like it's their fault. They just don't get it. And sometimes, no, it's a personal preference and style. Give yourself permission to actually enjoy it, which is what you're saying. And I love that.

Yeah, absolutely. And if you, if you enjoy doing something, you're going to do it more. So it will help you in the long run.

And you learn better when there is a positive emotion attached to the experience of learning. Like your brain retains information better when you are. When you enjoy it.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

So, Jennifer, where can people find you to work with your content and work with you? Tell us everything. And I'm going to also link everything in the description. So tell us.

Well, I'd love to have you come over to my YouTube channel. It's Jforrest English. And like Hadar said, we learn English with the news, we learn English with TV shows, movies, and we do other fun stuff as well. So come join me on Jforrest English YouTube channel.

Amazing. And we are going to have an interview on your channel, Jennifer. So we're going to send people there as well to go and watch it. If you want to hear me talk about pronunciation and teaching, we had a great conversation. So that's it. Jennifer, thank you so, so much for joining me today and for sharing your knowledge and your experience. It was really great talking to you and very valuable. So thank you so much.

It was such a pleasure. Thank you.

All right. Thank you so much for watching our interview. All the links to Jennifer's channel and website are in the description below. If you enjoyed, then share it and like it and definitely go check out her channel. Have a beautiful, beautiful rest of the day and I will see you next week in the next video. Bye.