Repetition

Repetition(ˌrepəˈtiSHən)

My 4-year-old son has recently fallen in love with listening to audio stories. Right now, most of them are in Chinese, but I’m hoping to expand our collection of English audio stories.

One thing I have found very interesting is that he likes to listen to the same stories repeatedly(rəˈpēdədlē). For instance, he would listen to a story about chickens over and over again. At first, my wife and I were somewhat resistant(rəˈzistənt) to this. We would ask him, “Why don’t you listen to a new story?” But he was very insistent(inˈsistənt), and we let him follow his interests.

Pretty(ˈpridē) soon, I noticed that he would recite(rəˈsīt) lines from the stories to himself when he was playing alone, and he would tell the story to me as we were walking down the street. I realized(ˈrē(ə)ˌlīz) that listening to the story repeatedly was actually playing a very important part in his learning process, and since then I’ve been excited(ikˈsīdəd) rather than concerned(kənˈsərnd) whenever he wants to listen to or read something “again”.

We can learn from this in our own language study. Practicing the same materials(məˈti(ə)rēəl) multiple times can also help us learn and remember(rəˈmembər) new language patterns(ˈpatərn). So as long as you find something interesting—whether it be an article, a lecture(ˈlek(t)SHər), a tv show or a movie—practicing it multiple times is a great idea!