Why listening is the first step to fluency. Watch the video here or read the blog.
Updated: Nov 15
One of the errors that is frequently made by schools or tutorial centres is the assumption that language can be learned through reading and writing.
What this fails to recognise is that our system of sound and responses to sound predated reading and writing by millions of years. Our evolutionary ancestors had ears millions of years ago. 1
What learning language through reading and writing also fails to recognise is that speaking began somewhere in the region of 100,000 to 50,000 years ago2 and our genetic adaptation to be able to learn language through speaking and listening was perfectly well established for people long before writing first appeared.
At best estimate writing was first invented some 5,500 years ago in Mesopotamia.3
If you want to learn language to fluency your primary input for that learning should be listening skills because that is your genetic adaptation for learning language. As Geary states this is a biologically primary form of learning.4
Listening is the first step to fluency.
Also consider that as a language learner you will have challenges if you think getting the broad meaning in a talk or conversation is the right approach. It isn’t.
Unless you can decode precisely what you hear you make up a false language model that you in turn use for speaking.
If you want to use language with complete fluency you need to be able to identify precisely what it is you hear.
If you are learning language and you want to have high level fluency then decoded listening (as in phonology-based listening) is the primary and most important step.
If you want to develop high level fluency high level spoken fluency, please contact us.
1. https://www.world-archaeology.com/news/ear-fossils-and-human-evolution/
2. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/509092
https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/faq-how-did-language-begin
3. https://www.getty.edu/news/where-did-writing-come-from/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing
4. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2011-11701-020
All accessed September 7th 2023