They are also powerful goals of learning a language.

We want to read, we want to understand what we hear.

We want to understand movies.

And yet the fact of reading in the language and listening in the

language helps us learn the language.

But then the question always comes up, should we read first or listen first?

Or people say, I don't understand anything.

How can I listen?

I don't know any words.

How can I read?

How do I get started?

So I want to talk today about the strategies that I use.

For reading and listening and when it's important to read first, when

it's important to listen first.

First of all, reading, and it's a tremendous cognitive feat for

the brain to be able to read.

So the idea that we can convert the writing lines on a page

into meaning is pretty amazing.

What's also interesting, and this was pointed out recently in a

short video that I saw by Andrew Huberman, but it's something that

I have experienced myself and that is, when we read, we sub vocalize.

We actually voice what we're reading.

If one were to put an amplifier to measure the firing of those muscles

in our vocal cords, we'd find that as we're reading information, we are

actually speaking that information.

That's not the same as speaking.

Speaking means creating sentences, thoughts, utterances, where we

are drawing on our ability in the language, our memory of the

language, our model of the language.

That's speaking.

Simply reading out loud or sub vocalizing actually is not speaking.

But it's a very good way to move you in the direction of being able to speak.

So if reading is connected to sub vocalizing, and we also know that

essentially the same parts of the brain are involved in reading or listening, if

we're going to read and we're going to sub vocalize, we have to know what those

words or how they are pronounced, to some extent, even if we pronounce them poorly.

So that would suggest that we should begin by listening so that

we get a sense of how the words are pronounced so that we can then

effectively sub vocalize while reading.

In simple terms, I would divide my sort of strategy or approach to

listening and reading and the order in which I do them into three stages.

So the absolute beginner stage, call it A1 to A2 stage, then the sort of

intermediate stage, which is B1 really.

'Cause once you're at B2, you're kind of launched.

And then once I'm at B2 or beyond, what is my strategy?

At the very beginning, I look at a sentence of Finnish, as you will see.

I see words.

If these words are written in the Latin alphabet or an alphabet that I'm

familiar with, I can kind of pronounce it, but as you'll see in Finnish,

I can't really pronounce it the way it's pronounced in Finnish, but I

can kind of make an effort to do so.

So therefore, as a beginner, I would, first of all, go at

this text in sentence view.

So one sentence at a time, and then I would listen to that sentence...

and then I would try to read that sentence ... so the order would be listen

first, then read, but very soon, again, dealing with one sentence at a time, I

would try to force myself to read first and then listen, because we can get lazy.

If I listen to it, then I'm not trying hard enough to vocalize those sounds.

So I would typically say, if I'm doing the mini stories, maybe after many story two

or three, I would try to make an attempt at pronouncing the sentence in Finnish

because I can read the Latin alphabet.

Then I would listen to it and then I would say it again.

And so this is building up my capability to sub vocalize so that I can read

more and more difficult material.

Remember that all of the skills that we develop through whatever practices

we engage in, we're gradually building up our ability in the language.

It's very similar to what happens in AI.

Exposure to a lot of different contexts

it's going to help us almost predict what's coming at us and being able to

predict is also both in the case of artificial intelligence and in the case

of learning a language is an important part of us getting a sense, sort of

a model of what that language is.

So that's at the beginner stage.

One sentence at a time, starting off listening first, then read,

then listen, then read again.

The next stage, and by the way, this idea of having a reading and

listening strategy that depends on the stage you are in the language, I

think is a good thing to try to do.

But the point there is that whether we're reading or listening, we are

in fact kind of doing the same thing.

And the two learning activities and the two goals of our learning

very much work hand in hand.

If we look now at the intermediate stage, obviously it's easier to listen first.

I get up in the morning, the easiest thing for me to do is to listen to something.

So I'll go grab a podcast, let's say in Farsi.

While I'm listening to that, there is quite a bit there that I didn't

understand or that I'm kind of familiar with the words, but I'm

not entirely sure what they mean.

So that then triggers my curiosity to go and read that transcript,

which I can now do automatically in LingQ using our Whisper AI.

So in that situation where I'm B1 and a half in Persian, I tend to listen

and then later on, I'll go in and read.

Also, this issue of intensive reading versus extensive reading.

Intensive reading, you're looking up every word, you're going

over the sentence a few times.

Extensive reading, you're just reading.

And the same applies to listening.

I have found that at the beginning stage for me, it's not possible to just, you

know, go straight into extensive reading, not looking anything up, just listening.

I can't do it.

I have to have a certain level of vocabulary, a certain level of

familiarity to be able to move to more extensive reading and listening,

no longer in sentence mode perhaps, certainly not repeating what I'm

reading or listening, and maybe I don't even have to read what I listen to.

I can read over here and listen over here, and all the while I'm building

up my capability in the language.

So, the further we are along in the language, the more we have a tendency

to not repeat, to not go back and it's better for us not to repeat.

I just wanted to talk a little bit about, because the question always comes

up, do you listen first or read first?

And I think this very much depends on your level in the language, where you

are in the language, what you like to do.

It's in your interest, I think, to develop a taste for both listening and reading,

because the greater the variety of paths, of formats that we use, the better for us.

Makes things more interesting, and I think we learn better that way.