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How to Improve Your Listening 如何提高英语听力 Hey guys, I’m Wang Ba Dan from America. Today I’m going to answer a question many of you have asked me: How to improve listening. 大家好，我是王霸胆，来自美国。 今天我要来回答一个，你们许多人已经问过我的问题：如何提高听力？ Real quick, just to be sure we’re on the same page, let’s define listening: 我们先快速来确定一下，即将讨论的东西的一致性。先来定义一下“听力”： What is Listening 听力是什么 Listening is the act of distinguishing and comprehending input received through your ears. There are essentially two steps to listening: we must first distinguish the sounds we hear, then match those sounds with the sounds stored in our brain. 听是一种将你耳朵所接受到的输入内容，进行分辨和理解的动作。听力大致分为两步进行：我们必须先分辨出听到的声音，然后再将这些声音，匹配到我们大脑存储过的声音中。 If we cannot understand something, there are two reasons for this: We can’t distinguish between different sounds, or we cannot match those sounds in our brain’s database. 如果我们有什么听不明白的，说明有两个原因：我们无法分辨出声音中的不同，或者我们无法在我们的大脑数据库中，找到相匹配的声音。 So if we want to improve our listening, we need to focus on two core skills: distinguishing sounds, and enlarging our database of words.Today I’m going to teach you some methods you can use to improve these skills. 那么如果我们要提高听力，需要专注在两个核心技能：分辨声音以及扩大大脑中的词汇数据库。今天我会教你一些技巧，让你用来提高以上这些技能。 Distinguishing Sounds 分辨声音 English has many sounds that are not found in Chinese, such as “th”, “dJ”, “L” and so on. The first step to improving your listening is becoming aware of these “new” sounds and learning how to distinguish them. I’ve done several videos that cover English phonetics. You can use those videos, and other online resources, to fully understand the sounds of English. 英语中有许多音，在中文里是找不到的，比如说 “th”, “dJ”, “L” 等等：提高你听力的第一步，就是让自己变得容易注意到这些“新”的发音，然后学习如何来分辨出它们。我在之前做了许多关于英语音标的视频，你可以利用那些视频，以及网上的其他资源，来完整地了解英语中的发音。 Learning how to distinguish the sounds of English has another great benefit: it will improve your pronunciation. Just like a piano player who trains her ear for different notes in order to sing better, as you train your ear to distinguish the sounds of English, your own pronunciation will naturally improve. 学会如何来分辨英语中的音，有着另外一个巨大的好处，就是它会提高你的发音。就好比钢琴演奏者通过耳朵来分辨不同的音符，让自己歌唱得更好一样。当你在训练耳朵对英语发音的分辨时，你的发音自然也会提高。 Improving your listening, and therefore your pronunciation, is one of the fastest ways to improve your overall English level. When people ask me what’s a quick way to improve English, I always tell them to focus on pronunciation and listening. 通过提高你的听力，来提高你的发音，是一个最快的方式来改善你的英语的综合水平。当人们问我最快提高英语的方式是什么？我总是告诉他们把重点放在发音和听力上。 At this point, I really recommend you don’t worry about speaking English with other people. Just focus on training your ear to distinguish the sounds. If you do this, the future payoff will be enormous. 在这点上，我强烈建议你，不要再总想着要去和其他人练习说英语。先注重在训练你的耳朵，如何来分辨声音。如果你这么做的话，未来你会得到巨大的回报。 Once you have mastered the sounds of English, you should then, and only then, start moving on to the next step. 一旦你掌握了英语的发音，你就能、也应该只能开始下一步： Comprehending Sounds 理解声音 So you can tell the difference between “th voiced” and “th unvoiced”, and you can pronounce L easily. Half of the battle of learning English is over. 那么现在你已经能分辨出“th”清辅音和浊辅音的区别，你也可以轻松发出L的音。那么你学习英语的战斗就已经完成一半了。 To return to the gaming metaphor from a few weeks ago, imagine you’re a character in WOW or LOL. The first few levels up always come quickly. You can go from Level 1 to Level 10 in just a few hours. Same with English. Learning pronunciation doesn’t take much time. Learning to comprehend that pronunciation in its myriad forms, becoming Level 99, is what takes months or even years. 回到我一周前的视频中提到的，英语与游戏的比喻。想象下你就是WOW或者LOL中的一个角色，刚开始总是特别容易升级。 1级到10级只需要一会会就行了。英语也一样，发音真的不用花太多时间就能学会。学会如何分辨在无数的形式当中，去分辨发音，就好比升到99级一样，才是让你花上年月的时间的事。 I’ve talked about this before, and today I will tell you again. The fastest way to improve your English vocabulary is by using a spaced repetition software such as Anki to memorize words and example sentences. 我之前就说过这个，今天我会再强调一次。最快的方法提高你的英语生词，是利用带有“记忆曲线”功能的软件——譬如Anki，来背单词以及例句。 Since you’ve already mastered pronunciation, you can be confident that you are practicing correctly. Start with words that *you* want to learn, and learn no more than 20 each day. If done properly, that’s 600 words a month that you’ve solidly memorized. 7200 words and examples in a year! 从你能掌握发音开始，你就能变得自信，正确地去开始练习那些“你”想学的单词。然后每天学习20个生词，如果做得好的话，那么就是每个月学600个单词。因此你就会在一年中，牢固地记住7200个单词和例句。 Some people also ask me: how long does it take to learn English? I’m going to rephrase that to “How long does it take to become conversational in English”. The answer is, on average, 6-12 months. If you learn English using the proper methods, mastering pronunciation first before moving on to learning words, you can easily become conversational within 6 months. 一些人也会问我，多久才能学会英语啊？我会把这个问题这么理解：“多久我才能用英语进行对话啊？”答案是，平均下来，6到12个月！如果你用合适的方法学习英语，先掌握发音，再学习单词，你可以轻松在6个月内进行对话。 In fact, I’ll even give you a timetable: Month 1-2: Master pronunciation Months 4-12 Memorize words, phrases, and grammar points 其实，我甚至可以给出一张时间表：第1~2个月，掌握发音。第4~12个月，背诵单词、短语和语法点。 You may say, wait a second? Isn’t today’s topic about “How to Improve Listening?” 你也许会说，等等，今天话题不是关于“如何提高听力的吗？” Yes, yes it is. It turns out, you don’t really need to “practice listening“ very often. Listening practice happens naturally as you learn new words and examples. 是啊，只是它现在已经变成：你不需要“特地”去“练习听力”了。当你学习了新的单词、新的句子，你的听力自然就在练习当中了。 On the contrary, if you watch English TV shows passively, while pretending to “practice listening” you are just fooling yourself and wasting time. If you’re going to watch English TV shows or movies, you should use the method I described in my series on Anki. 反过来说，如果你被动地去看英语电视节目，然后你说你在“练习听力”，那么其实你只是在浪费时间，骗你自己。如果你想要看英语电视和电影，你应该去用我在Anki系列中提到的方法去进行。 Even if you are an “advanced” speaker of English, I highly highly recommend you spend one to two weeks practicing and perfecting your pronunciation. The benefits you will gain are tremendous: More confidence speaking English，better spoken English，better listening and more. 就算你已经是一个“进阶”的英语学习者。我也会十分强烈地推荐你，花上一两周去练习，并且让你的发音变得更完美。你会获得的好处是巨大的：说英语时更加自信、获得更好的英语口语水平、获得更好的听力水平，还有许多许多。 Recently I’ve started learning Korean for fun in my spare time. I’m following the steps I’ve outlined here, to prove that it works. With only 20 minutes of practice a day, I expect that within 3 months I will be able to have basic conversations in Korean, and within 6 months speak to a fairly advanced level. 最近我开始在我自己空闲的时候，学着韩语玩玩。我也是用着我在这里提到的方法学习，以此来证明它们的效果。我每天练习20分钟，我打算是在3个月内，可以用韩语进行基本的对话。然后在6个月能，能基本达到进阶的水平。 So that’s it for today’s article. I truly hope that you can take my advice and apply it to your English learning. In my opinion, the greatest skill you can acquire is a good ear. 那么这就是今天的文章。我真心希望你能接受我的这些建议，并且把它们运用到你的英语学习当中。在我看来，我觉得最好技能是——能有一对接受建议的耳朵。 Okay, I’ll see you next time! Peace out 好的，那么就下次见咯！拜！ |
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