Oye .... yes.. that's what a Punjabi would say to draw somebody's attention . But then it's what a spaniard would also say. Now, i am not telling you that Spanish is related to Punjabi or that if you speak Punjabi you already speak spanish . This is just a sweet linguistic coincidence.
Listening is a great source of knowledge. We often don't realise the importance of letting others speak. We are always in a hurry to give our opinions. Listen carefully; it not only makes us more patient but also more knowlegeable.
In case of a new language its all the more important to listen carefully. As toddlers, our parents used to repeat to us every single word of our mother tongue umpteen number of times. They longed to hear us utter a new word everday. Today we are so fluent in our own language thanks to that repetitiveness. So is language learning listening to the same word again and again ?
Yes , it is ..... but associating that word with some idea or thing is equally important. We can't imagine having learned what we call a "pen" without having seen it first. Lets leave this subject of visual association for the next post and only discuss the listening skill this time.
Learning Spanish is no different. Its like a toddler learning his own language. Unfortunately we lack the time and patience to learn the "toddler way". Coming to think about it ,thats the most appropriate way to learn any language i.e. through visual association, by using all our sensory powers at the same time ...
In a normal class, we either concentrate on reading or speaking or listening at a time. Not that it is totally useless to do so but we have better ways to speed up our learning process and learn effectively.
The main problem in language learning for any beginner is not being able to differentiate or identify the words in a sentence. For e.g. If someone says a sentence like "Tengo que hacer la comida ahora" (I have to make the food now) , a beginner would hear it as "Tengoquecerlacomidaora" Firstly, we are not even able to identify the words used.
We learn to do that by knowing that such words exist in the spanish language. In other words increasing our vocabulary helps us to overcome this problem. Now we hear the sentence as Tengo................ que..................... hacer................. la................. comida .....................ahora" . So , we identify the words but the gap in comprehension is so large that we understand the words individually . We know we heard Tengo , hacer, la comida, ahora but not the sentence as a whole. So we take a lot more time to derive the meaning of this sentence.
This is exactly what has to be overcome by effective listening . We should be able to identify words and then link them as fast as possible to comprehend the meaning of the entire sentence. and this takes a lot of practice ..... so listening carefully keeping these two points in mind will definately help to understand a native spanish speaker much faster than one could imagine.....
So dont just listen to the language you are learning. LISTEN!!! Use your ears but don't forget to use them effectively.
Sunday, 10 June 2007
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