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I totally agree with you, missbookwork! I lived in Bolton, a town in North West England for thirteen years and the people always told me I spoke 'posh English', even though I clearly have a non-English accent. This is because regional dialects don't always observe the formal language rules. This is why I sometimes worry when all these countries insist on recruiting any native speaker over someone who speaks English as a second language but who also has the qualifications to teach English. I think you'd have to visit different British towns to really get a feel of exactly what I mean. A few of my English friends even struggled with written English skills.

I had no idea you guys had the ''ñ'' as well, but I guess it makes sense, since you guys were governed by the Spaniards for a while, so it makes sense you guys implemented some Spanish words and even letters like the 'ñ''. I think it's fascinating I have heard you people like to eat things like ''adobo'' and ''menudo'' as well By the way, I've met a lot filipinos in the past, mostly women.

So I just tried it and I have to say that it's rather horrible. The words and translations aren't natural and some doesn't even make any sense - what does 'raining cats and dogs' even mean? I'm having a dreadful time on the website so far as I keep failing my tests because of these mistakes. They also keep using super formal and rare words that nobody uses anymore. Oh and some guy (presumably American or British judging from the username) tried to argue with me about my own language in the discussion section when I complained about one of the translations. I'm rather offended by this website. At least now I know that I wasn't exactly wrong for being pessimistic towards this website.

Hey all. Well, though I've also not heard of "active listening" throughout my 30+ years as an ESL teacher, I suspect that I know what Trellum experienced in the class; it was actually one of the core activities that I used throughout my career. To describe (in just a few words, hard for me! ha) what I did: Students will not be able to comprehend strings of sounds (utterances) until they have developed a "sound bank" of their own. This "sound bank" is a set of utterances (usually full sentences) which help the student when trying to recognize sounds that they hear. Just sitting and listening will not contribute to the development of this "sound bank"-- that is a passive activity. Students have to get the muscles moving, and those will be the mouth muscles. Now, this will not be simply repeating sentences over and over again. It will be sound manipulation exercise, meant to strengthen articulation muscles as well as to help overcome obstacles when trying to string sounds together. There will be a great deal of substitution involved, so a basic pattern may be worked upon, creating the base and words will be changed. A very simple exercise might be: It's a book. (chair) It's a chair. (table) It's a table. (cup) It's a cup. The emphasis would be on the rhythm of the utterance, the stringing together of words (it would never be: IT (PAUSE) IS (PAUSE) A (PAUSE) CUP, but rather [IT sa CAP]. No matter how much you wiggle your ears, you will not improve your listening comprehension through passively listening to speech. You will have to produce that speech as close as you can to the expected pronunciation in order to develop that "sound bank" (and not individual sounds, again, utterances!) that you will use to recognize what you are hearing. Perhaps because the student is actively doing something to improve comprehension, the course referred to in the OP was called "active listening", though I find that term kind of misleading and more marketing than descriptive of the process. Kind of like the "Natural Method" which was anything but "natural"....ha. peace, revel.