How to improve your English listening and speaking skills in a short time

Many friends who are preparing to study abroad will encounter such problems: how to effectively improve their spoken English level in a short period of time, understand the means of expression to communicate with foreigners, and gain experience in living, studying and studying abroad. Required cultural background knowledge for work, rapid integration into the society of the destination country, and overcoming fear and uneasiness before leaving.

In response to the needs of this group of users, New Oriental Education Online has proposed systematic, economical, scientific and fast solutions. This is New Oriental's classic "4 1 Listening and Listening Express" oral online course.

This article will provide learning suggestions for users with different levels and needs.

First of all, let’s introduce the “4 1 Listening and Speaking Crash Course”:

New Oriental’s “4 1” teaching method is to address the five major difficulties that Chinese people have in learning spoken English: pronunciation, vocabulary, and sentence patterns. , thinking, and language environment. From the comprehensive perspective of "breaking through pronunciation, mastering vocabulary, maturing sentence patterns, and mastering thinking, watching, listening, speaking, and watching movies (language environment)", it guides Chinese people to systematically, economically, scientifically, and quickly cultivate listening and speaking skills. Law. This classic oral English tutorial was founded by Du Wei, Vice President of Beijing New Oriental. It is guided by the oral teaching theories of Wang Qiang, the godfather of American oral English, Du Zihua, a famous listening and speaking teaching expert and dean of the New Oriental School of Practical English, and is based on the class experience of 100,000 students. Base.

Corresponding to the "4 1" oral teaching method, New Oriental has established the "4 1 Listening and Listening Crash Comprehensive Course" (including five parts: pronunciation and intonation, oral vocabulary, oral sentence patterns, American English thinking, and movie listening and speaking). Users can either study "4 1 Listening and Speaking Express" in full, or choose individual courses based on their own weak areas: "4 1 Pronunciation and Intonation", "4 1 Oral Vocabulary", "4 1 Oral Sentence Patterns", "4 1 American English Thinking" ”, “4 1 Movie Heard”.

So, how should users with different levels and needs learn spoken English?

1. For those whose spoken pronunciation is inaccurate, not fluent, and have an accent:

Among our Chinese students, there are relatively few whose spoken pronunciation is fluent and accurate and even praised by foreigners. Many people often dare not talk to others because of their inaccurate pronunciation.

Voice is like a person’s appearance. A fluent and pure voice will help you re-establish your confidence in communicating with others, make you more approachable, and easily open up the gaps between people during communication. door.

The "4 1 Pronunciation and Intonation" course points out the difficulties and pronunciation difficulties that Chinese people have in learning and listening to English pronunciation. It aims to grasp both "pronunciation" and "intonation and rhythm" to take into account the headaches of Chinese students. The sound changes of continuous, abbreviated and weak pronunciation can enable you to break through pronunciation in a short period of time, greatly improve your listening and speaking skills, and lay a solid foundation for daily communication.

This course lasts for 30 hours. It is recommended that those who choose this course study 1-2 hours a day, plus appropriate review and practice, to achieve great results within 2-4 weeks.

2. For those who lack the spoken vocabulary and authentic idioms and sentence patterns commonly used by foreigners, and whose spoken English is not authentic

When communicating with foreigners, they often encounter the following embarrassments: We are accustomed to speaking written spoken English, but foreigners speak authentic idioms, so that when they speak idioms, we simply cannot understand them. Especially after you go abroad, the people you interact with and the TV you watch use a lot of idioms. Leave you with nothing to do.

China's university education often creates this phenomenon: after graduating with a bachelor's or master's degree, reading and writing English materials is not a problem, but they just cannot speak or understand authentic spoken English. This cannot be blamed on the student, because he has not received training in how to speak authentically and fluently, and has not learned or practiced idioms commonly used by foreigners. This is just like when a foreigner comes to Beijing. If you say "very good" in Chinese, he will probably understand it, but if you say "blocked", he will not understand. Of course we Chinese know that both mean the same thing.

It is recommended that these students learn "4 1 Oral Vocabulary" and "4 1 Oral Sentence Patterns".

The two courses are derived from the famous "900 English Sentences" course taught by New Oriental. This course is one of the most classic oral English courses in the world. It has been praised by Mr. Wang Qiang, the "godfather" of American oral English, as one of the few classic oral English textbooks today. .

"4 1 Spoken Vocabulary" selects the most frequently used vocabulary in daily oral communication from the "BASIC English" vocabulary list (850 vocabulary words) compiled by British language expert C.K. Ogden, but is most commonly learned It covers 150 core vocabulary words that readers ignore and eliminates vocabulary barriers in basic oral communication.

"4 1 Oral Sentence Patterns" strengthens the accumulation of correct and authentic sentence patterns, improves the understanding of dialogues and paragraphs in the English listening and speaking test, trains students' comprehensive ability in English listening and speaking, and prepares for the test , go abroad, and work in foreign companies to develop good language skills.

The above two courses each have 30 class hours. It is recommended that students study 1-2 class hours every day, preview before class, practice after class, and complete it within 1-2 months.

3. For those who have certain listening and speaking skills, but do not understand the cultural differences between China and the United States, the differences between Chinese and American thinking styles, and cannot effectively communicate with foreigners.

There is a short story that illustrates the difference in thinking between China and the United States: During a morning jog, a Chinese student rescued an American child who fell into the river, and then called his mother to report the good news: "Madam, this morning I On my morning run, when I passed by the river, I saw your son fell into the river..." Before she could finish her sentence, the American mother fainted. Why? The American way of thinking is to talk about the results first and then the process. When the Chinese students said, "Your son fell into the river," the American mother thought that the final result was, "My son fell into the river. No need to listen anymore. He must have drowned. He will not Swimming!" Then he fainted.

If a middle school student understands the American way of thinking, he should say something like this: "Dear madam, I wish you congratulations. I rescued your son from the river. When I was running in the morning and passed by the river, "When we saw him falling into the water and calling for help" (of course this must be said in English, otherwise we would feel awkward saying it in Chinese, which just illustrates the difference in the way of thinking between China and the United States).

In this way, it is in line with American thinking habits and will not make a joke of "announcement of good news" instead of "announcement of mourning".

It is recommended that students study "4 1 American Thinking". This course focuses on the comparison of cultural differences between China and the United States and the different ways of thinking. It guides Chinese students in learning the maze of American spoken English and overcomes it from the perspective of thinking methods. Within a short period of time, you can effectively learn to think and express in pure and authentic American English. Overcome cultural barriers and thinking barriers when communicating with Americans.

This course has 30 lessons. It is recommended that students study 2-3 lessons every day and complete it in 10-15 days to acquire the necessary knowledge.

4. Those who have passed the pronunciation, vocabulary, sentence patterns, and American English thinking methods, or have a certain foundation in listening and speaking, but lack an effective language environment for comprehensive practice and application.

The language environment is like the blood of the human body. Only when you are "influenced by your ears and eyes" in the language environment can you truly learn and master pronunciation, vocabulary, sentence patterns and thinking; only by "doing as the locals do" in the language environment can you truly use it effectively. How to create a real language environment in China?

"4 1 Movie Listening" - provides you with a real language environment where you can hear "Authentic English" everywhere through movies.

This course creates a real language environment for you, so that your listening and speaking skills can be improved unconsciously, reaching a state where English listening and speaking is basically barrier-free. This will enable you to understand the means of expression used to communicate with foreigners and acquire the cultural background knowledge necessary for living, studying and working abroad. At the same time, it will make you familiar with the vocabulary, sentence patterns and scenes commonly tested in the listening part of TOEFL, College English Band 4 and Band 6 examinations.

This course has 30 hours. It is recommended that students study 1 class every day. Before studying, Read the textbook, watch the movie explaining the course, and then listen to the lecture. This course cannot be coveted for speed and should be completed in about one month.

Introduction to the "4 1 Listening and Listening Express" online oral course

In order to allow more students to learn this oral course more conveniently, quickly, efficiently and economically, New Oriental Online will launch the online course on 6 The "4 1 Listening and Listening Express" oral online course was officially launched in the middle to late month. As soon as the news came out, there were a large number of calls and emails inquiring about the course. Now let’s give a brief introduction to this article:

1. The teaching method of oral online courses: Many people already know the online teaching methods, but oral courses have innovative functions. Let’s briefly introduce them here.

Online listening: Listening to the teacher's lectures online, you can see the animated blackboard and hear the lecture sound. In each section, you can also listen to it repeatedly for free.

Online Q&A: Users can ask questions to the teacher via email, and the teacher will respond within 24 hours (free of charge).

Online lectures: New Oriental’s classic lectures over the years can be heard in online courses. (Free)

Interactive function: Students can read along and record while listening to the class. The system will automatically identify whether the pronunciation is accurate and give prompts, allowing you to speak easily and say goodbye to the embarrassment of "dumb English".

Voice chat: Students of online spoken English courses can also obtain free membership in the "Online Voice Chat Room", where they can chat with classmates and teachers in English and practice speaking in a relaxed and enjoyable way.

2. Lecture teachers: 13 senior spoken English star lecturers from Beijing New Oriental, they are: Zhao Dongpo, Wang Jinjie, Li Yuan, Wang Yongfeng, Huang Zhaodan, Zhang Ruiqing, Lu Wei, Li Chunyi, Li Xin, Li Miao, Wang Linan , Liu Huayang, Gao Song. Many people must have heard about their lively, humorous, lively, knowledgeable and efficient teaching characteristics, or have experienced them in face-to-face classes.

3. Price: "4 1 Pronunciation and Intonation", "4 1 Spoken Vocabulary", "4 1 Spoken Sentence Patterns", "4 1 American Thinking", "4 1 Movie Listening and Listening" oral online courses , each door is worth 450 yuan, but the selling price is only 350 yuan. The "4 1 Listening and Speaking Crash Comprehensive Course" oral online course is worth 2,250 yuan and sells for 1,500 yuan.

4. Purchase: Each course of "4 1 Listening and Speaking Crash Comprehensive Course" will be officially sold in mid-to-late June. Users can purchase it online, at various New Oriental schools, and at dealers in various places. Purchase, and users who have purchased recently will receive supporting textbooks, oral training software (including American accent recordings for the English part of the textbooks) and advanced teaching headsets!

5. To learn more about the course: Go to the TOL24 English Speaking Channel to check it out!

Shortcuts to improve your English listening level

Want to know where your English listening level is now? It’s very simple, you can take a test now and lock the TV to Central Channel 9 , when the English news is played, don’t look at the images, just listen, and see how much you can understand? If all you can understand are prepositions and adverbs besides the names of countries and people, then your listening level should be zero. That is, you have no listening skills. If you can understand about 20 words in each news item and roughly know what the news is about, it means that you are at the beginning level of English listening. If you can understand each piece of news If you can understand the exact content of this news with more than 30 words, it means that you are at the intermediate level of English listening. If you only cannot understand a few words and can understand every sentence without any obstacles, you should be at the advanced level. Level. How is it? Have you tried it? What level are you at?

People at different levels have different learning methods. Friends at intermediate and advanced levels can definitely improve by listening to English news programs every day. And consolidate listening skills. As a beginner, this method is useless. It doesn’t mean that you will feel English if you listen more. If you can’t exactly understand the meaning of the words you heard, even if If you listen to the word a thousand times, you still won't know what it means when you hear it. Therefore, for beginners, dictation is the best way to improve your listening level. By listening to each sentence repeatedly, ponder each word The meaning of the word is written on paper to deepen the memory of the pronunciation of the word. After training more, you can respond quickly to the word, thereby achieving the purpose of improving your listening level.

At present, dictation is basically the same. It is recognized as the best way to improve listening. The reason why many friends have studied it for a long time with little effect is mainly because the learning method is wrong and they cannot persist. Improving listening takes time, and there is no shortcut. If there is a shortcut If so, then maybe it should be considered dictation. As long as you insist on dictating English for a certain amount of time every day, your listening level will definitely improve. Many friends with high levels of proficiency only reached their current level after a lot of listening practice.

At present, New Concept 2, 3 and VOA's Special English are more suitable as dictation materials. These materials are slower in speech and easy to break sentences. They are very suitable for candidates, especially those with poor foundation. Specific methods It is:

4 listening materials of about 5 minutes. Use a repeater to listen to each sentence sentence by sentence. Listen and write at the same time. At first, you may have to listen to a sentence more than ten times or even dozens of times before you can understand it. It doesn’t matter. . In this way, I dictate two articles in the morning and two in the afternoon, which takes about 1 hour each. That is to say, on average, I practice listening for about 2 hours a day (it may take a little longer at the beginning). I listen to 4 articles in this way for 3 days, and then change to another one. 4 articles.

That’s 8 articles a week, don’t be greedy for more. The purpose is to dictate the same article for three consecutive days, so that the sound of the word will be repeatedly impressed in your mind, which is better than each article. The effect is much better if you only listen to it once. If you really don’t understand, you can read the original text.

The effect of learning with this method is very good. Of course, the beholder has different opinions and the wise have wisdom. The learning method may not be suitable for everyone , but the key is to try it, right?