Complete the gaps with the words you hear from the listening:
I wanna talk about ……….. ……….. . I’ve lived in many different countries, both in Western Europe, Middle East, and now here in ….. ……… . And during all of that time, I’ve learned five or six different languages, to one degree or another. I love learning languages, not only are they important when you move to a country, I just find them fascinating.
Before I came to Hong Kong, I lived in Barcelona Spain for ten years. And when I first ………… , the most important thing was being able to communicate with people locally. I don’t attend ……… . I don’t think I’m particularly good in classes. I prefer to learn by just ……………… to people, finding out what I need to say by looking at dictionaries and listening carefully.
Other things that helped me when I first moved to Spain, were watching the typical kinds of programs we see everyday on …………… around the world. For example the weather. This is great, because they always say …… ……….. things. So you can really quickly hear the same words repeated …….. … ………… . And the pictures helped of course.
Other types of program that helped me learned Spanish quickly were things like game shows, where the same thing …………. . They have a catchphrase or a slogan that they repeat endlessly when contestants win or when they are called to ………. .
As well as that, I used to pick up the Spanish ……………. . First of all, I just accepted that there was no way I was going to understand ………… but one or two words. But …………… , I found that I learned lots of new things about this. I was interested because I wanted to know what was happening in the country I ……….. .. . But, I also knew that I could learn a …… …. language this way. So I'd take a dictionary with me sometimes, or I'd notice a word and I'd ask other people what it meant.
Anyway, by far the best practice I ever had was just talking to people in the street, or in shops where I'd rehearse in my head what I wanted to say ………… , before I went in. Usually, I'd make a right mess of it first of all, but, after I …… ……….. the embarrassment, it’s quite funny really. And people are very sympathetic and ……………. in most cases.
It ………… ……… a long time to develop a good level of Spanish. I lived there for ten years, and I think I’m very …….. now. But I think for the first two years I was there, it was quite a struggle to hold a decent ………….. . There were always lots of words or …………. that I didn’t pick up on. In particular with the colloquial expressions, idioms, that kind of thing, that people use in …………. ……. , but you don’t necessarily see written down. I didn’t find those very easy to learn at all. But it was a lot of fun. And people as I said are really supporting when they know that you are genuinely interested in learning their language.
