L is for Listening Skills!

thespanglishspeake
12 minutes ago
4 min read

When learning a language, we have to focus on the building blocks. The pillars of the house that you are going to build brick by brick to learn any language.

For example, grammar is one of the main pillars as is vocabulary. Listening too is one of the foundations of your house.

Listening along with reading are often considered passive activities while speaking and writing are considered active. But as we all know, when you are learning English (or any language) listening is anything but passive.

Here are some things you can do to try and improve your listening skills.

Let's look at some things you can do to improve your listening skills!

1. Start easy with very guided listening activities.

This means that at first, listening to a video or podcast where the presenter is speaking both English and Spanish is a good start. This content is made for learners and so there is a lot of support. The vocabulary isn’t usually so difficult, the speed is often slower than normal. This is a good way to start the journey.

2. Subtitles

When you turn on subtitles, don’t choose Spanish. Trying to listen to English while reading in Spanish is not very useful at all. You won’t listen very much, you’ll just read. If you need subtitles, make sure that they are in English.

3. Focus on on scene

If you decide to use a movie or a series to practice your listening, focus on just one scene. If necessary, watch the scene again and again until you can catch all of what is being said. Trying to watch a whole file or an entire episode in English while focussing on listening might be too tiring.

4. Pause and repeat

While listening, pause the media and repeat out loud what you hear. This is called “shadowing”. This will help you with intonation, rhythm and pronunciation. Producing these sounds will help you later when hearing these sounds.

5. Repetition is key

When you are actively working on listening skills repetition is key. The first time you listen to something listen first for the general meaning or gist. What is the listening about? The second time you listen start focussing on the details. On the third (or fourth) try, read the transcript as you listen so that you can see exactly anything you may have missed.

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6. Connected speech

Pay attention to connected speech. The way natives blend, change, link or even drop sounds. An example of this could be how “I’m going to” actually sounds like “I’m gonna”. Or “in bed” can sound like “im bed”.

7. Topics

When you decided to practice your listening skills, focus on a topic that you enjoy. If you love sports, then find a podcast on football or tennis. If you love true crime, there are many podcasts on this topic. It will make it easier for you to practice if you love the topic.

8. Speed

In many videos and podcasts you have the option to adjust the speed of reproduction. If the normal speed is too difficult, change the setting to 0,75. It may sound a bit distorted, but slowing down the speech does help.

9. The sounds (phonemes)

Because you are practising your listening skills, pay attention to the actual sounds. The way a word is written may be very different to how you imagine it is pronounced. Just think of the words “through”, “though” and “tough”. The “-ough” is pronounced completely differently.

10. Small units of practice

Try to keep your practice “small”. It’s easier to concentrate on a 5-minute scene than an entire 30-minute episode. Keep your practice to small chunks. We might not have time in a day for an entire episode, but all of us have 10 or 15 minutes in a day that we can use to practice!

Conclusion

As with everything, practice makes perfect. The more you listen, the better your listening will get.

Thanks for joining us and see you next time for the next instalment in our A to Z series.