English Vocabulary - Listen & Hear - What's the difference?

Hello there, my name is Ronnie, I'm going to teach you English, I'm going to teach you

about two words that are very easily confused when speaking English, when hearing English,

and when listening to English at the same time.

These two words are, ta-da, "listen" versus "hear".

These words have very similar meanings, it's the thing you do with your ears when you're

wanting to get information.

There's one major difference, two maybe, but the first major difference is how much attention

we have to give for each of the words.

When you listen to something or someone, you are paying attention.

You're actually concentrating on what the person is speaking about.

Paying attention or concentrating.

Now if you're sitting in front of your computer, which I'm sure you are, and you're looking

at the computer and you're taking notes, and you're very attentive to what I'm saying,

you're actually listening to me.

If you're at the computer, you're running this program and you sneak away to get a snack

or someone talks to you, you are still hearing what I'm telling you, but you're not paying

attention to it.

We have an expression that it goes in one ear and out the other.

It doesn't remain in your brain.

So if something doesn't remain in your brain, you're only hearing it.

Listen, you pay attention, and you're concentrating on it, hearing, it's like a sound.

You don't care.

Another way to think about this is, we say in English, background noise.

Background noise is noise that you don't care about and you don't pay attention to.

It's not important.

So, any of you that are students and you go to school and your teacher talks, sometimes

your teacher says things that are really interesting, like wow, listening, and sometimes, like math

class for example, your teacher is just opening his or her mouth and talking.

You're hearing it, you're picking up the sounds, but you don't care and you're not interested.

That's the difference between listen and hear.

The other major difference is, of course, the grammar.

It's easy.

Don't worry.

When we listen, we always must use the verb "to".

Here, we don't need another verb, so your mother will say, "Listen to me!"

Or your teacher will say, "Are you listening to me?"

This is a question.

We never say, "Are you here to me?"

It's just weird.

"Are you hearing to me?"

Strange again.

So, the grammar, you need to listen to someone or something.

We listen to the radio.

You can hear the radio.

It's in the background.

It's background noise, but if it's your favorite song, you're listening to it.

You're dancing around your room.

Okay?

So, we can listen to either a person or a thing, and that's the difference in English

between listen and hear.

Thank you all for listening to this, and we'll see you next time.

Bye.