My favourite pen is a fountain pen.
I love writing with a fountain pen. I can’t really explain why I feel like this
but that’s not important. What’s
important is that I love writing with this pen and when I pick it up, I
immediately
want to start writing.
If you feel like this or if you just like writing, then I have an idea
about something you can start writing about.
Making Your Own Gapfill from
Music
More than a decade (10 years) ago, I was introduced to a music group
called Mana by a friend at university.
The first song I heard was
En El Muelle De San Blas. I loved it and still do.
What I decided to do to help my listening skills and my vocabulary was
to do a gapfill. I’m sure you know what
a gapfill is:
We are _____ __ listen to a song now.
(Fill in the gap)
We are
going to
listen to a song now.
I decided to listen to the song, one verse (part) at a time and listen
again and again. Each time I tried to
write down as much of the song as I could hear.
Here are the results:
As you can see, it was not perfect but I did listen to more and more
and I know my listening skills improved. I continued and did another verse and
you can see the results of that too.
My feeling is that doing this definitely improves your listening skills
and it is a fun way to do it because you can listen again and again to music
you like. The important thing is to
actively write down what you are hearing.
This is difference between listening and hearing.
However, it is important to practise and do this regularly. I didn’t practise for months and I tried to
do this activity again. Here are the
results:
As you can see, I have not improved.
Why? ...because I hadn’t
practised.
So, try it with a song you like in the language you are learning and
let me know how you do.
