Thursday, November 12, 2009

Improve Listening Skills For English Learners

Listening as much as possible will help improve your English skills.


Four skills exist in completely learning a language: speaking, reading, writing and listening. Listening requires extensive concentration and practice. Babies listen for a couple years before they are able to effectively communicate their language. Listening is one of the most important skills you can possess in developing full English comprehension. Throughout your learning experience, it`s important to remember why you are learning English. This will increase your drive to succeed and improve your listening skills.


Instructions


1. Watch English content on TV, listen to the radio or watch online videos. Listen closely to develop sentence structure, intonation, interpretation and accent. Hearing the same word frequently can be the best way to develop you English vocabulary. You will eventually be able to imitate what you hear and say it with confidence. Having a radio or TV on in the background can help you learn, even when you are not giving it your full attention.


2. Accept that you are not going to understand everything right away. Don`t worry too much if you don`t understand, even if it`s for a long time. Pay attention to key words. These words will paint a larger picture so you can comprehend the gist of what the person is saying. By listening to the same thing more than once, you will begin to fill in holes that you had not previously filled.


3. Avoid translating into your own language what you hear. When you do, you stop focusing on what the speaker is saying and you start trying to define an individual word.


4. Try to get the general idea of what the people are saying. Don`t over-emphasize understanding every word right away. Most people repeat what they are saying, so you have more than one opportunity to understand what they are saying. Understand this further by paying attention to someone speaking in your native tongue. You should notice them repeating the same point over again.


5. Listen to something that entertains you. For example, decide whether you enjoy the news, movies or TV shows. Also try to gauge whether you are able to better understand people when they are speaking on the radio or on TV. While watching TV, you may become distracted by the images and lose sight of what the people are saying.

Tags: improve your, more than, people saying, right away, they saying, what hear, what people