Useful information on how to do different things in English.

HOW TO

HOW TO... IMPROVE YOUR LISTENING

Here are nine top tips for improving your listening skills in English.
1. Accept the facts!
First of all, you need to accept the fact that you arent going to understand everything. Experts have shown that we only actually hear or fully understand about 40% of the words during a conversation even in our own language.
Why do you think youve got two ears and one mouth?

6. Think "context"!

2. Keep calm!

The other really important thing is to think about the context. If you know what the main topic is, youll be able to guess what the people are talking about. For example, if you know the topic is the weather, you can be sure that theyre going to mention things about the rain, the snow, the wind, the temperature and so on. If you know what the context of the conversation is, you should be able to guess a lot of what the other person is saying even if you dont hear or understand all the words. The trick is to use your imagination, to guess and to follow your intuition. It isnt an exact science, but it works!

While youre listening, the most important thing is to stay calm. You wont understand everything, so dont let that upset you. The aim is to get a general idea of what the other person is saying. Never try to listen out for every word. Listen for the gist of the conversation go for the main ideas.

7. Guess!

So you can hear twice as much as you say!

3. Ask for help!

If youre having problems during the conversation, ask the other person to speak more slowly. Also, ask people to repeat things if you didnt understand. Again, the speaker is trying to have a conversation and will do what they can to help you.

4. Dont translate!

While youre listening, dont try to translate. If you do, youll start concentrating on translating and not on processing the information. And then youll lose track of the conversation.

5. Keywords!

The most important thing is to listen out for the key words the important, stressed words. Basically, English is a stress-timed language. This means that when we speak, we focus on speci c stressed words while quickly gliding over the rest. Those stressed words are usually nouns (dog / table), verbs (sit / run), adjectives (beautiful / wonderful) and adverbs (quickly / slowly). Most of the other words (determiners, auxiliary verbs, pronouns, etc.) are weak sounds. The great thing is that you only really need to understand the key words in order to follow the conversation. For example, if you heard the following key words, saw / lm / cinema / last night, youd understand that the other person is probably saying, I saw a lm at the cinema last night.

Finally, you need to learn about English pronunciation, and above all, connected speech. This occurs when sounds merge together to form new sounds often when a consonant sound at the end of a word is followed by a vowel sound in the following word. For example, She lived in New York would be She liv din New York with connected speech. And we dont usually say, Look / out (with separate sounds), we say, Loo kout (with the nal consonant k combining with the vowel sound ow of the second word).

8. Improve your pronunciation!

9. Practise!

So, what can you do to improve your listening skills? There are three main things: 1. Listen to recordings that are speci cally targeted at your level. 2. Listen to native speaker conversations and recordings (from lms, the news, TV series, songs, etc.) in order to develop your ear for the language. 3. Listen to recorded material and read the tapescript at the same time so you can see how the words and sounds t together.

Now go and get listening!

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