What is a Listening Package?

I practice my Listening Packages to my dying day non-stop! 

• What is a Listening Package?

The Textbook and Workbook sound files gathered on an audio CD is called a “Listening Package (LP)”. If your Textbook and Workbook don’t have sound files for some readings, dialogues and exercises, read them aloud and record your own voice and add your own sound files to your Listening Package. Do not worry if your sound isn’t native like. 

• Why is it important?

A conversation class cannot be only a speaking class. It must by definition also include listening practice as well. Nor can a composition class be a class in real communication practice until reading becomes an integral part of it. Trying to develop a speaking or writing class to the exclusion of listening and/or reading would be unrealistic and unproductive. Without taking into consideration their intended receivers, the speakers and/or writers could not produce meaningful messages. 

• What is purpose of a Listening Package?

The purposes of the Listening Package resemble those in real-language situations. You can create activities that are like those to which you are accustomed in your everyday lives.

1. The first goal for language students is to:

• establish the basic orientation and
• Initiate the basic processes needed by you at all levels.

2. The second is to

• Be aware constantly of the need to expand steadily the speed, length, and complexity of the listening tasks to ensure that your skills grow.

3. The third task is to

• Incorporate listening materials intended for native speakers into your Listening Package as soon as you can. 

• When should I Listen to my Listening Package?

At any time your ears are free, for example, while you are exercising, biking, running and going shopping, while you are driving or when you are in a car, taxi or on a bus or airplane. While you are eating breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner. While you are cleaning your room, clothes and even in the bathroom. While you are going to school, work, gym or anywhere else. Before bedtime, while you are preparing to sleep in bed till you fall sleep and after you wake up early in the morning. Even, while you are watching T.V. or just relaxing. Listen to your Listening Package any possible time. Let “Listening Package” become part of your body and Brain and your daily routine activity. 

• What happens if I continue practicing my Listening Package?

You will expand your fluency and especially your accuracy, vocabulary, advanced structures, comprehension, native like pronunciation, intonation and accent. 

• How much do I Learn by practicing my Listening Package?

You can’t imagine how fast you learn English by repetitively listening to your Listening Package. You can Learn English in 10 years or in 2 months, which one would you prefer? By repetitively listening to your Listening Package you learn English in a very, very short time.

• Should I listen to the same Listening Package repetitively?

YES, repetitively 

• Why should I listen to my Listening Package repetitively?

Because if you listen to your Listening Package repetitively you feel, and focus on the new words, structures and sentences; and the native pronunciation of the words and the native intonation of the correct sentences and structures become part of you and you own them and you will never, never forget them. If you want to learn English you should OWN it in your brain.

Many students have been practicing Listening Package repetitively and have dramatically improved their power of speech.

• What are the scientific reasons for listening to the same Listening Package repetitively for a long time?

 There are 9,678 scientific reasons for listening to the same Listening Package repetitively for a long time, here are some selected ones: 

1. The listening comprehension process is internal and thus not subject to direct, external observation, examination, and correction. 

2. In addition, you can correct your errors only if you practice listening to the correct words or sentences or if you read what you have written. Too, you feel more comfortable conducting activities in which you can control what you are doing. 

3. To learn to speak, students must first learn to understand the spoken language they hear. The negative effect that undeveloped listening skills have on second language learning is quite profound. To communicate with native speakers, students must first learn to understand enough in real language situations to comprehend the gist of what native speakers are saying. Past experience indicates that many students who go abroad are much less able to comprehend native speech than they are to create messages, imperfect as they maybe, that native speakers can understand. From the viewpoints of both language learning and communicating in real-language situations, listening occupies a position of prerequisite importance to which teachers and students must direct greater attention to achieve communication goals. 

4. In more recent theoretical models in which the mind is viewed as an information processing system, listening is considered an active process. Listeners are thought to be involved actively in the communication process because they use their background knowledge of the world and of language to recreate the speakers’ message. 

5. Certainly, practical experience indicates that listening is not a passive skill. Due to the high levels of listening comprehension skills native speakers have achieved, they may not be fully aware of the effort they are expending in their communications. However, when they are distracted, tired, or unmotivated, they are immediately forced to increase their efforts to comprehend what they are hearing. The amount of concentration and effort required to comprehend oral passages in a second language, naturally, is much higher than that required in the native language, a fact to which all language students can attest after having had to concentrate to comprehend a lecture presented in the second language. 

6. Your Listening Package has Authentic Materials: Authentic materials have two principal characteristics: First, the materials have a definite communicative purpose. The speaker is trying to inform, convince, or instruct the listener. His focus is normally on the objective he has in mind rather than on the language he is using to accomplish that purpose. Second, the content is important for its own sake. The speaker intends to communicate a message to someone else. He is not talking to demonstrate the use of commands or direct object pronouns. He is not using certain vocabulary items to learn them for a vocabulary quiz later in the week. 

7. Authentic speech may occur among native speakers among nonnative speakers, or between native and nonnative speakers. The language will most likely change in each of these situations, but varying the language does not affect its authenticity. In fact, when native speakers talk to no proficient nonnative speakers they regularly use “foreigner” talk because the interchange is authentic and they want to ensure that communication does indeed take place. The same phenomenon occurs in the language classroom as teachers use “teacher” talk to communicate with their students. …

That is why I practice my Listening Packages to my dying day non-stop!