Dictogloss — How music can improve your listening fluency
[Read this article in Spanish]
Efficient sound discrimination: this is today’s topic. When you want to improve your listening comprehension, your memory of what you listen to, in English, you can feel quite frustrated. One reason for this could be that you can’t make out the words at the speed you hear them. Sometimes as you listen to a podcast, for example, you start falling behind on what is being said, then you start to catch up again and again, until there comes a point when you just give up, exhausted. If this is your case, you need to improve your listening fluency. That’s right, people normally talk about speaking fluency but through my work at The Teach Lounge, I have found listening fluency to be vitally important.
Today we’ll talk about listening fluency or efficient sound discrimination. We’re going to use music, songs, to address this issue. Songs are a great way to start exercising your listening fluency, as the melody, the musical background, guides you along in the exercise.
So, let’s learn how to make your listening more fluent with songs. Take a look at this video where I explain the whole exercise in more detail.
We’re going to do an exercise called Dictogloss. This is a song dictation exercise. We’re going to write the lyrics to a song. All you need is a good song, paper, and pen. Here are some directions:
1. Find a song you like
I’d recommend you don’t get one of those that play on the radio all the time. Why? Because your mind has already tricked you into believing you know this song, and BELIEVE ME sometimes writing the lyrics to a song you think you know can be frustrating. I suggest you start on a clean slate. Get a groovy tune you’ve never or hardly ever heard before. One good source for this kind of music is Jamendo.com. Jamendo is a music platform that offers free-streaming, free-downloading new music from independent artists. You can also download the Jamendo app. Here are a couple of songs my students have enjoyed:
- Josh Woodward’s Memory Replaced
- Jill Zimmerman’s Souls to Fuse
- Jill Zimmerman’s Streetview
- Jason Brock’s Fly On
- LM’s The Better Way
- Oceansea’s Poetry For the Moon
- Nicolas Falcon’s The Marrying Kind
2. Listen to the song and write the lyrics down
Get a fresh sheet of paper, not the ruled kind, but a simple white surface. I call for a whole sheet because I want you to treat this as your working space, from edge to edge. I also want you to use the whole area of the paper. Please don’t stay confined to a corner or to the upper half of the page. Use the WHOLE sheet.
Once you’ve got paper, you’re ready to begin. Play the song; and at the same time, write down the lyrics. But first a couple of caveats (stipulations):
- Don’t EVER stop/pause the song. Let it play as you write. Let it play for about two or three verses or up to the end of the chorus.
- Don’t EVER stop writing as you listen. You’ll feel overwhelmed, yes. You’ll think it is impossible to keep up the pace, yes. But believe me, it is possible, yes. Simply write what you can and skip over what you missed or forgot. Simply leave the spaces necessary. You’ll fill those spaces later.
- Don’t EVER stop writing because there’s something you don’t quite understand. This is NOT a listening comprehension exercise. This is a sound discrimination exercise. So feel free to put in writing what you think you heard, the sounds, because you definitely heard something, right?
- Once you’ve reached the cut-off point (for example the chorus), go back to the top, the beginning of the song, and start all over, again all the way down to the cut-off point. This time, try to fill in the gaps in your lyrics.
- NEVER, NEVER, NEVER scratch out a word or phrase you think is wrong; simply write what you think is right over or under what you think is wrong. I’ll explain later. So never erase or scratch out.
- Go back to the start again and again until you feel that you are finished with your lyrics, that is when you feel that you can’t add or change anything else.
- To fully take advantage of this technique, I recommend you do this exercise over the course of a couple of days, for instance: 1) Monday: Go over the song once, write your lyrics; 2) Tuesday: Go over the song and lyrics again, fill in and edit; 3) Wednesday: Go over the same song and lyrics, fill in and edit some more; 4) Thursday/Friday: Do the same as above until you’re finished.
Doing this exercise over several days, allows you to start over each day on a clear mind that is prepared to listen more carefully.
3. When you’re done with your lyrics, compare these with ‘the actual’ lyrics to the song
Again DON’T cross anything out, as nothing is wrong. Every mistake gives you an opportunity to master a new sound or sound combination. Instead, ask yourself WHY you made this or that mistake, then ask yourself again, WHY you missed this word.
What can you expect to get from this exercise?
- Discovering new patterns in pronunciation, improving your pronunciation of English sounds
- Noticing old patterns in your pronunciation that don’t match those of native English speakers
- Practicing discriminating sound combinations or sound clusters
- Learning to anticipate linked sounds
- Getting used to the quality of sound of English, its stress patterns and rhythmic contrasts
The first couple of times you do this exercise, you’ll feel frustrated, you might say this is difficult. I say it’s not difficult; it’s simply NEW. As you continue using this exercise, you’ll start to better understand the workings of the English sound system in a personalized way. Studying the pronunciation of English is a daunting task. By contrast, personally understanding pronunciation by analyzing sound is a natural human process.
One thing to remember: this is not a WHAT exercise. In other words, don’t think of the results of this exercise as RIGHT or WRONG. This is a WHY exercise. Every time you come to a word or phrase you haven’t been able to discern, ask yourself, WHY, WHY couldn’t I write this word? Or WHY couldn’t I hear this word? These questions open your mind to analysis. These questions help you make room for new sounds. The answers to these questions will help you enhance your listening fluency.
This blog was written by Fabian Bedoya, teacher and director of The Teach Lounge, a specific-purpose English school in beautiful Medellin, Colombia.
