The Best Way To Learn A Language

I've often read that listening to music and songs is one of the best ways to acquire a new language or to improve a language you're already studying. This technique has never worked for me. I didn't know why at that time. I kept listening to songs many times, replaying them over and over again. I only understood them when I read the lyrics. Just a few months ago, I learned that this was a consequence of being hard of hearing. How harsh I was on myself for such a long time!


The best way that worked for me was watching lots of videos with the captions on. I watched people whose teaching methods I felt comfortable with. In addition, I followed several courses of interest to me in English which was like killing two birds with one stone: working on my English and expanding my knowledge on different topics. Maybe that was the comprehensible material that was mentioned in one of the Youtube videos!


After many years of working on my English, it improved. When I first started studying English, I dreamed of taking the IELTS test one day, but it seemed to me as if it was an impossible goal. I've often heard it was difficult. Last year, I took the IELTS. I got an overall score of 7.5 out of 9, which isn't bad. Yes, it was the general test, which is much easier than the academic one, but it was still the IELTS. To my surprise, I got 8.5 in listening and reading. I was allowed to hear the listening parts twice due to my hearing impairment. Nevertheless, imagine if I had normal hearing! I believe I would score the same or the full score after listening just once.


As for writing and speaking, I got 6.5. I can totally accept my speaking score because I'm not a good speaker in general and some questions were ridiculous in my opinion. "Why do some people like to watch sports?" "I don't know!" Of course, this wasn't my answer. I knew I should never say, "I don't know" during the test.

As for the writing score, it was a big disappointment because I really like writing and I'm pretty good at it.


I know my English-learning journey hasn't come to an end yet. I need to work further on my accent and pronunciation. That is why I have been hosting volunteers to help me with that. I provide accommodation and food in exchange of them helping me with practicing speaking. It's also a good way to overcome my loneliness at home. Overall, I had good experiences. However, the only problem is that most of them don't stay longer than a week, and I can't ask them to stay longer, especially during the summertime. It gets extremely hot in Luxor and we don't have air conditioners.


As a hearing-impaired person, hearing sounds and words doesn't help. I can't distinguish most of the consonant sounds and I mishear a lot of words. The best way is to point out how I should move my tongue, lips or mouth. It might be helpful to learn how to feel the sounds instead of hearing them. For instance, maybe putting my fingers on my throat to feel sound vibrations or putting my hand in front of my mouth to feel how much air comes out, etc. The latter method was how I worked on the sounds S and Th with one of the volunteers who stayed in our home.

Nowadays, I'm looking for someone online, preferably with some background in phonetics, who might be interested in learning Arabic or just curious about my situation. We can exchange learning languages together. And who knows, maybe we can become friends as well.