Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 140 of the Listening Time Podcast.
I hope you're all doing great today.
I hope that your brain is in English mode and that you're ready to practice your listening and And in today's episode, we're going to talk about a really interesting and relevant topic for all of you.
I think you'll all appreciate this one.
We're going to talk about why it seems so hard to go from an intermediate to an advanced level in English or in any other language, of course.
But since you're learning English, I'm using that language as an example.
So we'll talk about why the process seems so difficult to go from an intermediate English learner and speaker to an advanced English speaker.
So why is that?
We're going to talk about that today and I'll offer some suggestions about how to help you out with that process.
These tips aren't going to solve all of your problems instantly, of course, but I think that they can help.
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That's patreon.com slash listening time.
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All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
Okay, so let's talk about why it's so hard once you reach an intermediate level in English or any other language.
So I'm going to talk about the main reason, in my opinion.
There are multiple reasons, of course, but I want to focus on three.
The really big one, the one that really makes a difference in the process when you're a beginner or an intermediate learner.
So I'm sure you've felt this before.
If you're already at an intermediate level, you've probably felt the difference between when you first started learning English Maybe not at the very beginning, because you probably learned in high school in those terrible classes.
So just ignore that.
But maybe as an adult or whatever, when you started learning more seriously, it might have seemed like you were improving relatively quickly.
But once you reach an intermediate level, this progress seems to slow down a lot.
And right now, I'm learning Italian, as I mentioned in the last episode.
And I started from scratch, from zero, and it seems like I'm learning a ton of things right now.
But I know that once I reach an intermediate level in Italian, I will also feel this progress slow down a lot.
It's going to happen to me.
So I'm just enjoying the beginning stages when it's really fun and I feel like I'm learning a lot.
So I'm sure a lot of you have felt this before and you might wonder why.
Well, the main reason why, in my opinion, is because of the frequency of of the words that you're seeing, that you're hearing or reading.
So the 100 most common words in English.
They come up, they appear much, much more frequently than the next 100 words or the next 1000 words or whatever.
So why is that important?
So the words that are the most common in a language like English are very, very common.
You can't construct many sentences without these words.
So they show up over and over and over again in types of sentences.
It doesn't matter what the subject is, who's talking, where the person is from.
These words are gonna show up time and time again from the first day that you start learning English.
So when you first start, you're gonna see these common words again and again and And you're going to learn them pretty quickly because they're repeated just over and over again.
And that helps you to learn them fast.
They become essential words for you.
So, for example, the word the in English that's an extremely common word, one of the most common words.
And you can't really say much at all without that word.
That word is everywhere.
So you probably learned the word the very quickly without even trying.
What's another example?
Maybe the word and or the word because.
These are function words that are so incredibly necessary to the language that they show up in many, many sentences, so you're gonna learn them, no matter what.
In English, when we say the phrase no matter what, we're saying with no exceptions.
It's definitely gonna happen.
So you're going to learn words like and and the and because no matter what.
You can't get very far without those words.
So this is great, because when we first start learning a language, these words show up time and time again and you learn them really quickly and you quickly go from zero words to 100 words or whatever, because you've seen those words so many times.
You've gotten so much repetition with those words.
So that means that you can go from zero to a high beginner or low intermediate level relatively quickly, because you're gonna establish the basics of English pretty quickly as long as you practice, as long as you dedicate some time and energy to this.
And you're gonna establish these basics with the foundation of these common words, right?
If you have those 100 common words, or 200 most common words in English, you're going to have some foundation to build upon.
And that's great.
However, once you reach that high beginner level or that low intermediate level, probably what's going to happen is that you already have those common words, they're already in your brain and now you don't have many other really common words that are new for you.
So the words that are new now are words that are less common, much less common, so they aren't going to show up very often.
You're not gonna get a lot of repetition and exposure to those words.
So for example, let's take the word frame.
This is that thing where you put a picture so that you can hang it on the wall or put it on your desk.
It's that square or rectangular thing around a picture.
That's the frame.
So that's something that a lot of us or most of us have in our houses.
It's a pretty common object if you think about it, right?
A picture frame.
That's something you see everywhere.
However, do you really hear that word every day?
Absolutely not.
Do you even hear that word once a week or even once a month?
Probably not.
Unless you're someone who works with pictures and frames, you probably don't even hear that word more than once a month.
And that's because of the frequency of these words.
So once you're at this intermediate level and you have the basics, everything that is new or that isn't very familiar to you is gonna show up and then go away, And you don't know when you're going to see it again, unfortunately.
So you see a word and then you try to memorize that word.
OK, frame.
And then you don't see that word again for two months.
And then by that time, you've already forgotten what it means.
And then it shows up again and you think hmm, that word looks familiar, but I don't remember what it means.
And then you have to look it up again.
This happens to me all the time.
It happens to me constantly.
And it's very, very frustrating, because many times you even recognize the word and say hey, I remember learning this word.
I remember this. looking up the meaning, but I still don't remember what it means.
And because of that, you have to look it up again and you're probably going to forget it again.
And so this is just a reality. once you reach an intermediate level.
You're not gonna see all of these new words very frequently, so it's gonna feel like you're making much less progress.
You're not learning as much. as you did when you first started.
You're not gonna understand a lot of things, because a lot of words will be said that you don't know well yet.
Maybe you've heard them before, that you haven't heard them repeated hundreds or thousands of times, like you have with the words and and for, and because, etc.
So progress is going to seem very slow and you're going to be improving, as long as you keep on practicing because, of course, you're still solidifying the basics.
To solidify something means that you establish it with more strength, right?
You'll still be solidifying the basics and you'll still be getting that exposure to new words and phrases, but It will be very slow.
You won't get as much repetition, So it will take you a lot longer to learn these other words And it won't seem like you're improving.
You are, like I mentioned, but it seems much, much slower.
And so that's not very fun, obviously, but that's kind of the reality of languages.
And I've even seen a statistic.
I can't verify if it's true or not, but I think if it's not true, it's probably pretty close to the truth.
And that is that the 100 most frequent frequent words in english make up 50 percent of all of what you will read in english.
When i use the phrasal verb make up in this context, i'm saying that they comprise right, they comprise 50 percent of all written english.
So imagine that the 100 most frequent words in english will be about 50 of everything that you see when you read and maybe even when you hear people speak English.
So that means that all the other thousands and thousands of words in English are only that other 50.
So you can see how infrequent those other words are going to be when you're learning English, right?
So that statistic just shows the reality of a word frequency, and why that makes it so hard once you've reached an intermediate level.
But what can you do to not solve this, but to help you out with this process?
If you're already at a lower intermediate level and you feel like progress is slow, what can you do?
Well, I thought of four things that you can do.
The first one is the one that's not the most interesting or fun, and that is simply to dedicate more time to your language learning, primarily listening and reading and having conversations.
So I thought of this because I have a student who might be listening to this episode.
I don't know.
But this student spends four hours a day listening to English.
That's a lot.
He spends three hours actively listening and and another hour passively listening, while he's multitasking and doing something else.
So the simple fact that he is listening so much gives him enough repetition to hear the less frequent words more often.
Because most of us, most of us language learners, do not spend four hours listening.
We might spend one hour listening and some of us might only spend 30 minutes listening.
Or maybe this podcast is your only listening today.
And this is what, 25, 30 minutes, maybe 25 minutes.
So if you compare that to 45, four hours, that's a big difference.
So the repetition of less frequent words won't be very high if you're only listening for 30 minutes a day.
But if you're listening for four hours a day, Those words that are new, the less common words, will actually show up more often, And that will give you a chance to learn them faster.
So it's pretty simple, obviously.
And most of us probably aren't going to find three or four hours just to dedicate to listening.
So that might not be the easiest thing for most of us.
But I wanted to mention it because my student does this and it works great for him.
He's improved a ton, even at the intermediate level.
So another way, another thing that can help you with this process is to use spaced repetition.
So there are many tools available and a lot of them are free that are designed to help you study words or whatever phrases, sentences or things from other subjects, not just language learning.
They help you practice memorizing these things, and then they will show you a certain word when you're probably about to forget it.
So these spaced repetition apps and websites are designed to help you get really good repetition of new words and you can put in your new words or new phrases and they will show these flashcards to you and you can practice with them and they will show you the same word at the optimal time, the perfect time before you're going to forget it, or right when you're forgetting that word.
And this is a very scientific approach based on how we forget things.
So apps and websites like Anki A-N-K-I this is a fantastic tool that you can use to help you out with that.
Of course, it's going to require some effort.
You have to input words that you want to remember, that you want to learn.
You're going to have to take some time to do that and to study these words.
But it's a way that you can get more repetition of new words that you want to learn.
So that's another thing you can do.
And the third thing you can do is to use normal repetition methods, like what I always propose that you do with this podcast or any other content that you consume that you listen multiple times to the same episode or the same content, right?
So you can listen to this episode three times or four times or five times.
And when you do that, you're going to get a lot of repetition of words and phrases that that you're unfamiliar with or that you're not quite comfortable with.
So if you listen to this episode five times, then one of the new words that I used here is going to replay five times into your ears.
And that's much more powerful than if you only hear it one time.
So that's pretty obvious, right?
So that's something pretty easy that you can do.
And I have one other tip that I think will really help you.
It's something that I incorporate into my language learning, and that is that I spend periods of time listening to content about the same subject.
So, for example, I might spend a full month listening to content specifically about, let's say, online business.
And I listen to multiple podcasts and watch multiple different YouTube channels that are all about this same subject.
And because they're all about the same subject, I hear them use very similar terminology and phrases and things like that.
These words and phrases show up again and again and again because they're very useful phrases and words for this topic.
And then maybe the next month I might spend more time listening to content about personal development and then a lot of the same words and phrases show up if I keep listening to content about that topic.
And so you can kind of cycle through different topics like this and consume a lot of content about these topics, and that will help you get more repetition with certain words and certain phrases.
And then you move on to another topic.
I really like doing this.
And I also like doing this with the same person, the same YouTuber or podcaster, because people tend to use the same words.
We all have our own speaking style.
So we repeat the same words and phrases over and over again.
And so I might spend a month really focusing on one podcast, for example, and I'll hear this podcaster say the same things time and time again and it really helps me get that repetition going for certain words and phrases that that person says.
And then I'll switch to another podcaster or YouTuber and they say different words and phrases that I'm not familiar with.
And then I get a lot of repetition with those ones.
So you see how that can work, right?
That's something that I've found to be very useful for me.
So those are four things that I was able to think of.
There are more, and I'm sure I'll do many more episodes in the future about language learning and different tips and things like that.
But I just wanted to share those ones today.
I hope this episode was interesting for you and I hope it encourages you to keep on practicing, even if the progress seems slow.
One way you can practice is by using my advanced podcast episodes, So if you're interested in that, make sure to click on the link in the episode description.
That's patreon.com slash listening time.
And another way you can practice is with my conversations that I have with other native speakers.
So if you're interested in that, sign up for my US Conversations podcast.
The link is also down below.
That's patreon.com slash US Conversations.
And as always, please share this podcast with anyone else you know who might find it useful.
And please give it a five-star rating on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever, and write a review.
All right, thank you for listening to this episode and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
