What happens to your brain when you get thrown into a difficult listening situation?
You get First Listening Shock!
It overwhelms you and paralyzes you.
What is happening in your brain and how can you turn it around for connection?
Find out today.
When you freeze up in a nerve-wracking listening situation, the Affective Filter goes up.
This prevents information from getting in and it makes you unable to absorb and understand what the native speaker is saying.
Here is the question from a listener:
“I do listen to some English audiobooks. I have difficulty on the first listening like I get the First Listening Shock. When I go back to listen again I found they are just normal words.”
What is keeping this student from understanding words that he should understand?
His brain is crowded and overwhelmed.
There is probably a lot of inner dialogue that gets in the way.
You hear a voice that says:
“Oh I am listening to English now. It should be hard because it was hard last time.”
This voice takes up all of the space that you need to absorb what you hear.
What’s the solution?
You need a step by step way to practice being comfortable.
You need a way to build up to these difficult listening situations.
This is what we do in our course.
This student isn’t doing it right because he’s just diving into these new topics and new audiobooks without preparing for them.
There is no step-by-step strategy where you might prepare to understand by thinking about the topic first and previewing vocabulary.
What’s the bottom line?
“You can either practice understanding or practice not understanding” -Jessica
You have to go about this in a smart way like an adult.
The more negative experiences listening to native English that you have, the stronger your affective filter will be the next time you try listening.
This means that you need a step-by-step system that systematically and gradually brings you to the final goal of understanding and connecting.
What questions do you have from today?
Let us know in the comments below.