What did you say?
One of the hardest parts of learning a new language is building listening skills. When you begin your language-learning journey, you will notice that as you build your vocabulary and learn new words through reading, vocabulary practice, and grammar worksheets, you may not see any improvement on your listening skills. This is because for many people who study on their own, they learn words through sight, but when they hear the same words, they may not be able to recognize the same word.
For teachers, this is definitely a struggle as some students may improve their reading and grammar abilities at a much faster rate than their English skills. Learning a new word does not mean that your students are able to recognize this word in conversation or in the classroom.
Here are some tips to improve listening skills:
Practice, practice, practice! Listening improvement takes time and effort. Youtube and other sites have plenty of listening practice for you. Find some listening practice that is at your level and practice active listenling at least 30 minutes a day.
Practice active listening. Listening skills are not improved just by background noise. When you practice your listening, hit pause a lot and try to write down words that you not know. Stop every 10-15 seconds and make sure you understand what you hear. Take notes and review them to see what you understand and do not understand.
Everytime you learn a new vocabulary word, listen to this word. Make sure that you can recognize this word audibly along with being able to read the word. This will help you to build a vocabulary both visually and audibly.
Have conversations. This is a great way to build your vocabulary. Try to talk to as many people as you can and write down words you do not recognize. Also, don’t be afraid to ask what words or phrases mean if you do not understand. It’s more important that you learn and improve than just have a conversation. Don’t be afraid to ask questions.
Not all English words are the same. There are many accents in the United States alone and understanding one person’s English does not mean that you will understand someone else’s. Please be aware that some accents (like southern accents, rural accents, and northern accents) can be hard to understand and that words sound completely different. Please make sure that you ask if you do not understand and know that some words will sound very different.
Don’t get discouraged! Listening improvement takes time. For some people, they feel like they can’t understand anything they hear despite how much work they put in. Then one day, they start to understand. Listening improvement is a grind and just takes time and effort. Keep working on it.
There is no quick or magic way to get better at listening. Keep working at it and know that your work will pay off and you will improve if you work hard!
