Improve Your Listening Skills
Introduction
One of the most common requests from our students, and one of the main issues that we have identified as being key to students’ progress, is listening comprehension. This is due to an over-emphasis on analytical grammar-based ESL teaching and learning.
Improving listening skills is actually the key to improving every aspect of your English.
So… How can you improve your listening skills?
Just listen!
It may sound obvious, but the fact is that many people (especially teenagers and adults) just don’t listen to English.
- People tend to switch off (stop listening) as soon as there are words or phrases that the student doesn’t understand.
- People tend to use subtitles when watching films or series. We will add a whole article about why you should turn off subtitles when you are watching films or series.
Learn the sounds of English
All humans learn the sounds of their mother tongue before they learn anything else. This process actually starts in the womb!
So, it makes sense that we should also learn the sounds of any other language that we want to learn. There are two ways to do this:
- Just listen, avoiding the written language for as long as possible. Ideally, you would also have contact with native speakers in order to get feedback (just like a child gets from their parents and others).
- Learn about phonetics… and then phonics!
We have provided a whole section about pronunciation. The greatest benefit of learning about phonetics, apart from improving how well others understand you, is that it makes it much easier to distinguish what other people are saying to you.
Learn about Word Linking
Although it deserves an article all of it own, this article wouldn’t be complete without mentioning how much training your ears (which really means to train your brain!) to hear word linking can improve your listening.
In summary, we don’t speak in individual words. We actually speak in syllables!
For example, we don’t say I like apples in ice-cream… We say I lie kapple zi nice-cream.
Learn about Weak Forms
Once again, this deserves its own article, but weak forms are incredibly common in English and it is very hard to understand the language if you unaware of them.
Weak forms are forms of many common words (articles, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, etc.) that are pronounced with the ever-present vowel schwa (sometimes known as the neutral vowel). We mainly use the weak form when a word is unemphasised in a sentence, i.e. it is said with a low tone.
Common words with weak forms are: to, for, from, them, are, but… and many more!
Related topics
- Word Linking / Consonant Migration
- Weak forms
- Phonetics
- English Vowel Sounds
- English Consonant Sounds
- Phonics / Spelling in English
- Tools to improve listening
- Practice listening skills
Introduction
One of the most common requests from our students, and one of the main issues that we have identified as being key to students’ progress, is listening comprehension. This is due to an over-emphasis on analytical grammar-based ESL teaching and learning.
Improving listening skills is actually the key to improving every aspect of your English.
So… How can you improve your listening skills?
Just listen!
It may sound obvious, but the fact is that many people (especially teenagers and adults) just don’t listen to English.
- People tend to switch off (stop listening) as soon as there are words or phrases that the student doesn’t understand.
- People tend to use subtitles when watching films or series. We will add a whole article about why you should turn off subtitles when you are watching films or series.
Learn the sounds of English
All humans learn the sounds of their mother tongue before they learn anything else. This process actually starts in the womb!
So, it makes sense that we should also learn the sounds of any other language that we want to learn. There are two ways to do this:
- Just listen, avoiding the written language for as long as possible. Ideally, you would also have contact with native speakers in order to get feedback (just like a child gets from their parents and others).
- Learn about phonetics… and then phonics!
We have provided a whole section about pronunciation. The greatest benefit of learning about phonetics, apart from improving how well others understand you, is that it makes it much easier to distinguish what other people are saying to you.
Learn about Word Linking
Although it deserves an article all of it own, this article wouldn’t be complete without mentioning how much training your ears (which really means to train your brain!) to hear word linking can improve your listening.
In summary, we don’t speak in individual words. We actually speak in syllables!
For example, we don’t say I like apples in ice-cream… We say I lie kapple zi nice-cream.
Learn about Weak Forms
Once again, this deserves its own article, but weak forms are incredibly common in English and it is very hard to understand the language if you unaware of them.
Weak forms are forms of many common words (articles, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, etc.) that are pronounced with the ever-present vowel schwa (sometimes known as the neutral vowel). We mainly use the weak form when a word is unemphasised in a sentence, i.e. it is said with a low tone.
Common words with weak forms are: to, for, from, them, are, but… and many more!
Related topics
- Word Linking / Consonant Migration
- Weak forms
- Phonetics
- English Vowel Sounds
- English Consonant Sounds
- Phonics / Spelling in English
- Tools to improve listening
- Practice listening skills
