The ultimate guide to improving your english listening

Let’s talk listening skills. Vị you remember how you felt the first time you heard someone speak your target language?

Bamboozled?

Personally, I’ve always found listening lớn be the most difficult language learning skill. Maybe you feel the same way?

In this post, we’ll look at the key to lớn improving your listening & I’ll nói qua the method I use lớn work on my listening skills.

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One the reasons I used lớn struggle with listening is that I didn’t really know how khổng lồ practice it. Should you read along while you listen or should you listen without a text? What should you listen to? vì you need lớn translate every single word?

I had many failed experiments when I first started learning Spanish và it took me a long time to figure out the best methods khổng lồ practice my listening skills.

In fact, it was only when I moved lớn Argentina that I finally realised what I needed to vị to improve my listening and I discovered it somewhat by accident! Before I arrived in Buenos Aires, I thought my Spanish was pretty good. Then I landed & I couldn’t understand anything! It was a bit of a baptism of fire! On the bus, in the supermarket, no matter where I went I found myself smiling, nodding and desperately trying lớn work out what people were saying to lớn me.


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The author James in Buenos Aires.

However, over the coming weeks and months my listening skills began khổng lồ significantly improve & this taught me a very valuable lesson: To improve your listening skills, you have to truly listen. You have lớn listen with focus & attentiveness. Passively listening to lớn things you don’t understand is never going lớn work.

I was forced to bởi vì this because I’d moved to lớn a new country where most people don’t speak English very well and I had lớn figure out how lớn get by. But the same concept applies whether you’re travelling abroad or learning the language from home. Active listening, not passive listening, is what will give you results.

Passive vs. Active Listening: What’s the Difference?

Why Passive Listening Doesn’t Work

What is passive listening? Passive listening is when you listen to something without giving it your full attention. For example, you put on French radio in the background while you’re working, or listen to lớn Spanish music without really paying attention to lớn the lyrics.

Passive listening doesn’t work because basically … you’re not really listening! You’re doing something else – it could be working, sleeping or daydreaming – rather than actually listening to the sounds. When you listen this way, you can’t just expect to lớn suddenly understand everything you’re hearing.

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Think about it. Even in English, we don’t remember things or understand them unless we actually pay attention to them. For example, lots of people like to have the radio on in their kitchen while cooking or in the morning while having breakfast. Maybe you bởi this too. But how much of what you hear bởi vì you actually remember? If you’re being honest, very little because you weren’t really listening. You might remember a particular song you lượt thích or something important that was mentioned on the news but unless you actually try lớn focus on what you’re listening to, most of it goes in one ear và out the other.

Since that’s what happens with our native language, why vị we think doing the same thing in another language will give us different results?

The idea of passive learning is appealing because it promises results without much work. But the truth is that it just doesn’t deliver on those promises. If you’re spending time passively listening as part of your vi xử lý core language learning, it’s time lớn stop & start practicing more efficiently instead.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s no harm surrounding yourself in the language by having music or radio playing in the background while you’re in the kitchen or while you’re reading a book. You’ll still pick some things every now và again when a particular word or phrase catches your attention. Just don’t let passive listening become the foundation of your how you work on your listening skills. Lớn really see predictable, sustainable results you need to lớn practice listening in a more focused way.

Why Listening Needs khổng lồ be Active

Your brain needs you khổng lồ bring attention khổng lồ things to remember them.

By paying close attention to something & repeating it multiple times, you send a clear message to lớn your brain that something is important & needs lớn be remembered. This obviously applies to things like learning vocabulary but it’s also true when it comes lớn the other parts of listening, including sounds, accents, intonation or phrasing. You need to bring attention to them. That’s why it’s important khổng lồ listen actively rather than passively when you practice.

Another reason to lớn practice active listening is to lớn get used lớn differences between how words sound on their own và how they sound in context. Native speakers often ‘smash’ words together when they speak. We do this ourselves in English. For example, in American English the phrase ‘what’s up?’ often sounds more like ‘wassup?’ or in Hiberno-English a greeting like ‘how’s it going?’ often becomes ‘howsagoin?

These are things we take for granted in our native languages but when you hear such transformations in a foreign language, they can leave you totally lost!

That’s why sometimes you might know a word but not recognise it when you hear it because the sounds mutate when they"re spoken together rapidly by native speakers. This is one of the many reasons why focused listening practice is important. Just learning individual words isn’t enough. You need to hear how these words sound and appear in context and that’s not something you can pick up passively. Learning new words but never hearing them isn"t sufficient when it comes khổng lồ high level, real-life conversation.

So how can you go about practicing your listening skills in a more active way và what kind of materials should you practice with?

The Tools You Need khổng lồ Improve Your Listening Skills

I suggest using a language resource that contains both audio và a text transcript. The main reason for this is so that you can kiểm tra your comprehension when you listen khổng lồ something new. It’s always good to lớn listen without a text first khổng lồ really test yourself, but it’s very useful lớn have a text or transcription so you can kiểm tra your understanding afterwards.

Here are some ideas for materials you could use to practice with:

A scene from a movie or tv show (+ the subtitles)A podcast episode you have a transcript forA book in print and audiobook formatDialogues và their transcriptionAn Assimil courseTextbook audio and text