How often do you use lack of time as an excuse for not improving your language skills? We all do it, but the truth is you have far more time available to you than you realise. The trick is doubling up.
Whilst it’s true that in order to improve your speaking skills you need to practice speaking, you can improve your foreign language comprehension simply by listening more – and the great news is, you can often do this at the same time as doing something else. Think of all the extra time you reclaim if you were to listen whilst:
- gardening
- commuting to work
- cooking
- cleaning
- washing up
- exercising
- walking
- shopping at the supermarket
- having lunch
- during a coffee break
There are dozens of hidden pockets of valuable time secreted throughout your day, you just need to get some content on your phone or MP3 player and keep your earphones with you in order to use them.
One final tip: put your audio player on loop. Repetition is the key to comprehension!
Of course you can transfer our Free Word of the Day onto your phone as one source of audio content, but in my next post, I’ll be giving you some ideas for getting hold of more substantial samples to work with – without spending a penny.
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This is a good idea! I do it when I go to the gym all the time.
I set my ipod to repeat and time flies by while I’m listening over and over.
Is there an easy way to convert the ‘mp3′ to ‘wav’ files?
I use another software to study and listen to phrases, but it only supports wav files.
@Jose Yes, I find the gym is one of the best places also – you can get fit in mind and body at the same time!
There are lots of free utilities that can help convert formats. One I’m familiar with is called Audacity which I believe is very good.
Gareth
Great thanks Gareth!!!
This is a wonderful tool to manage and record my language files!
Obrigado! ¡Gracias! Danke! Merci!
I agree with Jose, this is a great way to practice language learning.
To: Jose.
Ola! Hola! Hallo! Bonjour! Buon giorno! – ciao! Ohayo gozaimasu; and finally Ni hao (sorry I do not have the correct accent marks on my keyboard for Japanese and Mandarin.