Tara’s ESL VLOG: Why Listening is NOT Enough!
Hello everybody! my name is Tara Musich and I am a teacher of American English, currently teaching online while living abroad. Today I am going to talk to you about a topic that many of my students and I discuss together. The topic that we often discuss is “Why listening is not enough.” Now, when I say that to you, you might think “Hey wait teacher what do you mean listening is not enough? Everybody tells me I should listen like a baby and I should just be listening all the time and then this will help me speak”…and in many ways listening does help you, but let me give you an example of why it is not the best way to start speaking.
So, imagine you want to learn to swim, swim, right? In the pool or in the ocean. You know you start reading books and watching documentaries about swimming. Maybe you watch some sporting events about swimming. Maybe you decide to talk to someone about swimming. Someone who is a good swimmer, for example …And they can give you some advice about how to swim correctly and how not to make mistakes and things like that. Maybe you join a special group guided by an experienced swimmer and you know, you can discuss all of your worries and difficulties in regard to swimming. After you’ve done all of these activities, have you learned to swim? …Well the same is true for speaking, truly. You can read about it, and you can watch movies and you can think about it, do all of these things, but unless you truly use it and practice with it, you’ll never really be able to speak in a foreign language, any foreign language, if you don’t really start speaking.
