| Hi, everybody! Welcome back to Top Words! |
| My name is Alisha and in this lesson, we are going to look at 15 ways to improve your listening skills. |
| Let's get started! |
| Okay, let's get to the lesson. |
| 1. The first tip is to join a conversation group. |
| Join a conversation group. |
| So, when we think of joining a conversation group, we think about speaking, yeah? But also, we practice listening when we go to a conversation group. So it's not just about practicing your own speaking skills, but it's also about listening to the other people in the group and understanding what they're saying. So, picking up new vocabulary from them, listening to the ways that those people speak, and so on. So joining a conversation group can be a great way to practice building your own listening skills. |
| Okay, next tip. |
| 2. The next tip is to make yourself a study plan and establish a routine. |
| Make yourself a study plan and establish a routine. |
| So, this is a tip that's pretty basic and you have to do this or you should do this no matter what skill you're working on improving. But within your study plan, make sure that you have something that's going to help you with your listening skills and you do it regularly. So that means, inside your study plan, you have something to listen to, so you're not just reading textbooks or you're not just, like looking at vocabulary words and flashcards. Make sure you also have something in your study plan that will help you to build your listening as well. |
| 3. Okay, the next tip is to watch movies in the language you're studying, especially on devices you can use to repeat selected scenes. |
| So, this means, if you are watching on like your phone or on a computer, something that lets you rewind, you can use that as a tool for your studies. So when you listen to a scene, you can go back and listen to it again to check for new words or maybe something that you couldn't quite catch the first time around. So when you're listening to movies or maybe YouTube videos or even audio lessons, make sure to take the time to just go back and check something when you're not sure about it. This can be a great habit. |
| 4. Okay, the next tip is to look for root words when listening to something. |
| Look for root words when listening to something. |
| What does that mean? So, this means when you are listening to new words, try to think about the base word inside a word that you don't know. So, let's think of an example. For example, if you hear the word "comparable," comparable, you might think, what does that word mean? What is, what is happening there? So, "comparable" is a word that's made up of the root "compare" and it also has "able" at the end. "Able" is used to refer to something that we can do. So, "comparable" is like saying "compare" and something that we can do, so that means something that we can compare. |
| So, when you hear a new word, try to think about the roots that you might be able to identify in a word. This does not work for every word, by any means, but if you hear a new word that's quite long, you might see if you can identify, if you can find some key root sounds within that word that can give you a hint about the meaning. |
| 5. The next tip is to use the shadowing technique. |
| Use the shadowing technique. |
| So, yes, we talked about using shadowing to improve your speaking skills, but you can also use shadowing to improve your listening skill. This can be a great way to find gaps in your listening. So if you can't quite catch a vocabulary word or you're not sure about the grammar that's used in a sentence, you can identify that when you're listening and try to check a script or check a textbook or something to identify those parts that you need to work on a little bit more. |
| 6. The next tip is to practice listening to dictations. |
| Practice listening to dictations. |
| So, "dictation" is a fancy word that means a person talking into a recorder for a long time about one topic. So, for many people you might think, oh, dictation like that like a specialist topic or people with specialized knowledge do that. But you can also find some recordings online of people talking about specific topics that can be at your level. A great example of this is podcasts. So, think about a podcast topic or something that you might like to listen to one person talk about for a long time and then do a quick search to see if you can find a podcast of that. It's basically one person talking for a long time about one topic and this can be great for building your skills. |
| Okay, onto the next tip. |
| 7. Use the Internet; it is full of listening resources. |
| Use the Internet; it is full of listening resources. |
| Yes, of course! The Internet is full of things for you to listen to. You can find movies and videos. You can find music and podcasts. So much stuff! You can use all of that to practice your listening skills, so make sure to use all of it. You can find things that are specific to your work, to your studies, to your hobbies, to your life, go crazy! |
| 8. The next tip is to watch the gestures of the speaker while you're listening. |
| Watch the gestures of the speaker while you're listening. |
| So, gestures means the body motion, the body movements, the body language of a person. So, depending on the country and culture and speaking style of a person, they might have different body language. They might move their hands more or less. Gestures can give you more information, can give you hints about what you should be taking away or the information you should be gathering from that topic of conversation. You can also look at someone's face to understand this. So, when you're watching a video like this, for example, you can look at how I move my hands and how I move my body, the ways that I move my face around when I'm talking. You can use all of these as hints to help your listening skills. |
| 9. Okay, the next tip is to focus on the speaker and avoid any internal or external distractions. |
| Focus on the speaker, avoid any internal or external distractions. |
| What does this mean? So, this means, when you are listening to something, be active. So don't let something inside you, meaning, don't let, like thinking about your work or your studies or some personal drama distract you and don't be distracted by the TV or by music or by your pets or whatever. Try to focus your attention on the speaker. So that means be an active listener. Don't just let it play in the background while you do something else. Make sure that you focus your energy on listening. |
| 10. The next tip is to attempt to find a listening topic in which you are genuinely interested. |
| Attempt to find a listening toic in which you are genuinely interested. |
| So this means, if you aren't interested by the thing that you're using for your listening practice, go find something else. You don't have to stick with the exact same materials forever. If you want to learn more from a different person or from a different kind of listening medium, like that means if you've been using music, but you want to use videos or you want to use podcasts, go for it, expand! It will only help you to build your vocabulary. |
| 11. The next tip is to listen to a native speaker and try to imitate their intonation and pronunciation. |
| Listen to a native speaker and try to imitate their intonation and pronunciation. |
| So again, this is a speaking-related tip and a listening-related tip. So when you listen to a native speaker and try to imitate them, you also have to listen very closely to the ways that they sound. So, do they go up or down when they make a certain sound or when they make a certain word? How do they pronounce the letters? How do they connect various sounds in their speech. We need to listen carefully to all of these things in order to make the same sounds yourself. So this can be a great way to work on improving your listening and your speaking skills at the same time. Pretty cool! |
| 12. The next tip is to listen to music in your target language and pick out familiar words and phrases. |
| Listen to music in your target language and pick out familiar words and phrases. |
| So this is a really fun way to build your listening skills. As you listen to a song, you can note the keywords or maybe the key phrases or even new phrases. Another good thing that you can do is look up the lyrics, so that means the words in the song. You can look up the lyrics to your favorite song or to a song you're listening and try to read along as you listen. This can really help you to catch all of the information. If there're words that you're not familiar with, you can look them up from there and then listen again a few days later and see how much you can understand. So, music can be a great way for you to build new vocabulary and to improve your listening skills. |
| 13. The next tip is to listen to an audio dialogue without reading the text and write down what you hear. |
| Listen to an audio dialogue without reading the text and write down what you hear. |
| Okay. So, this one is a really, really challenging one, for sure. So if you've listened to an audio lesson like one of our audio lessons, you can try listening to it without the text and try to write everything down line by line. This is a super challenging, but a really, really great way to find gaps in your vocabulary. So, if you listen to the audio dialogue and you realized, "Oh, I don't know that word," that's a really good sign that you need to study that word. This is a really, really good tip. It takes some time, for sure, but it can really, really help you pinpoint exactly what you need to focus on. |
| 14. The next tip is to listen to a dialogue and try to correctly write down words you don't recognize, then compare your spelling to the correct spelling. |
| So once more: |
| Listen to a dialogue and try to correctly write down words you don't recognize, then compare your spelling to the correct spelling. |
| Okay. So, this is an extra level of challenge. When you listen to a dialogue for the first time, instead of just identifying words you don't know and thinking, oh, I should check the script or I should check the text, try anyway to write down that word that you don't know. So listen to the word a few times and make a guess and then go and check the script or go and check the text after that. So, even if it's not correct, you're at least trying to understand that sound and trying to write the sound based on your knowledge. So this is another level of challenge that you can use to improve your writing skills and to improve your listening skills. |
| 15. The next tip is to listen to a news report or a podcast in your target language, in English, and then try to identify the topic of the report before reading about it. |
| So, again: |
| Listen to a news report or a podcast in English, then try to to identify the topic of the report before reading about it. |
| So, what does this mean? Okay. So, for example, if you follow a news source, an English-speaking news source, like a newspaper, an online newspaper, or maybe a magazine, something like that and they have audio files of their news available, go subscribe to that. So subscribe to like the New York Times or whatever news outlet is interesting to you and listen to their podcast files or listen to their audio files, but don't look at the information about the topic. Just press play on like the first list that you see. Just press play on an audio file at random and try to guess what the main points are. Try to guess what the topic is. Then you can go and read about that topic on that company's website and see if you got the key points correct. So this can be a really challenging way, again, to build your listening skills. First by identifying key topics in a report and then going to read about the report to gain more information. |
| All right! So those were 15 tips that you can use to improve your listening skills. I hope that they were helpful for you. Of course, if you have any other tips, you can feel free to let us know about them in the comments. Maybe everyone could find something new there too. |
| If you have any comments or questions, of course, or if you want to practice making some example sentences, please feel free to do that in the comment section as well. Thanks very much for watching this lesson and I will see you again soon. Bye! |
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