Tips to Improve Your Listening Skills

Practice listening to something in English every day, and gradually increase the amount of time that you listen.

• Listen to different types of materials.
• Listen actively. Try to answer the following questions:
• who
• what
• when
• where
• why
• how
• Listen passively to get the general idea of what's being said.
• Keep a listening log (a list of everything you listen to in English each day/week).
• Write a 1-sentence summary to remember the main idea of what you heard.
• Write down new expressions, idioms and vocabulary that you hear.
• Use dictation and other exercises to help your listening ability.
• Ask an English speaker to dictate an article to you. Good sources of material are podcasts, magazines or online articles or textbooks.
• First, write down exactly what you hear.
• Then, only take notes on the important points that you hear.
• Do information gap exercises, using unfamiliar content and complex structures.

Use the resources in your community to practice listening to English.

• Visit places where you can practice listening.
• If possible, enroll in an English class.
• Go to a museum and take an audio tour in English.
• Follow a guided tour in English in your city.
• Call or visit a hotel where tourists stay, and get information in English about room rates, hotel availability or hotel facilities.
• Call and listen to information recorded in English, such as a movie schedule, a weather report or information about an airline flight.
• Watch or listen to TV programs and podcasts recorded in English.
• Some helpful TV channels to listen to are CNN^®, Discovery Channel^® and National Geographic^®, NPR.org, VOA, Science Friday
• Do this with a friend and talk about the program together.
• Listen to an audiobook in English.
• Listen to English-language recordings that come with a transcript. Listen to each recording at least 3 times:
• The first time, take notes about the main ideas you hear.
• The second time, read the transcript and listen for the ideas you wrote down.
• The third time, write down any words and phrases that you didn't understand, and look them up.
• Practice speaking English with others.
• Exchange language lessons with an English speaker who wants to learn your language.

Begin to prepare for academic situations.

• Visit academic classes conducted in English.
• Record lectures or presentations, and replay them several times.
• Listen to short sections several times, until you understand the main points and the flow of ideas.
• Stop the recording in the middle, and predict what will come next.
• Become familiar with the organization or structure of academic lectures.
• Pay attention to the difference between main ideas and details presented.
• Listen for the general (main) ideas.
• Pay attention to details — facts, examples, opinions.
• Pay attention to the structure.
• Lecture or presentation — introduction, body and conclusion
• Narrative story — beginning, middle and end
• Learn to recognize different styles of organization.
• Theory and evidence
• Cause and effect
• Steps of a process
• Comparison of 2 things
• Think carefully about the purpose of the lecture.
• Try to answer the question, "What is the professor trying to accomplish in this lecture?"
• Write down only the information that you hear. Be careful not to interpret information based on your personal understanding or knowledge of the topic.
• Develop a note-taking strategy to help you organize information into the main points and supporting details.
• Make sure your notes follow the organization of the lecture.
• Listen for related ideas and relationships within a lecture, and make sure you summarize similar information together.
• Use your notes to write a summary.

Listen for signals that will help you understand the organization of a talk, connections between ideas and the importance of ideas.

• Listen for expressions and vocabulary that tell you the type of information being given. Think carefully about the type of information that these phrases show:
• opinion — I think, It appears that, It is thought that
• theory — in theory
• inference — therefore, then
• negatives — not, words that begin with "un-," "non-," "dis-" or "a-"
• fillers — non-essential information — uh, er, um
• Identify digressions — discussion of a different topic from the main topic — or jokes that are not important to the main lecture. It's OK not to understand these!
• Listen for signal words or phrases that connect ideas in order to recognize the relationship between ideas. Think carefully about the connection between ideas that these words show:
• reasons — because, since
• results — as a result, so, therefore, thus, consequently
• examples — for example, such as
• comparisons — in contrast, than
• an opposing idea — on the other hand, however
• another idea — furthermore, moreover, besides
• a similar idea — similarly, likewise
• restatements of information — in other words, that is
• conclusions — in conclusion, in summary
• Pay attention to the connections between examples.
• When you hear 2 details, identify the relationship between them.
• Write a sentence connecting the examples, using the appropriate connecting word.
• Pay attention to intonation and other ways that speakers indicate that information is important. Important key words are often:
• repeated
• paraphrased — repeated information but using different words
• said louder and clearer
• stressed
• Pay attention to body language and intonation patterns used to express different emotions.
• Emotions are often expressed through changes in intonation or stress.
• Facial expressions or word choices can indicate excitement, anger, happiness or frustration.
• Listen to how native English speakers divide long sentences into "thought groups" to make them easier to understand — a thought group is a spoken phrase or short sentence. Thought groups are separated by short pauses.
• Listen to sets of thought groups to be sure you get the whole idea of the talk.
• Listen for pauses between important points.
• Listen for numbers you might hear in prices, times or addresses.
• Listen for verbs and other expressions that show if an event is happening in the past, present or future.
• During a lecture, pay attention to words that are written on the board.