Why and How to Learn English with Kindle Books ?
How to Improve Listening Skill Effectively?
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Listening skill is really important for everyone because you can’t communicate with people without understanding what they say.
So how can we improve listening English skill effectively?
This video will show you one way to improve without spending much of your free time listening. I have tried it since I was in secondary school and it really works.
Learn more:
- How to practice English speaking on your own and at Home?
- Idioms in English: 6 Idioms topics in daily life
- Active Listening: How To Listen Effectively
- English Conversations in Real Life with common Phrases (Meaning & Example)
- Linking Words for Speaking and Useful Words, Phrases to Write a Great Essay (Pdf)
- 5 Tips for self-study speaking English Naturally
Why do people fail to improve their listening skill?
But before that, you need to understand why people fail to improve their listening skills. Because listening is a long process and it takes time for you to see the result.
A lot of people don’t realize or even don’t know that hence they often give up or apply lots of methods at the same time which requires much load of time per day for them to practice. For instance, some guys try to watch movies many times to understand every sentence, the first time for listening and the second time for reading subtitles. However, I’m sure that only after the second time, you will be fed up with that movie and give up.
One more method that many students apply is note-taking.
It means that you will take note of what you hear but actually, you will have to spend much time on this method on reaching the correct gist of dialogue. As a result, they will feel bored with those tips after a few tries or a few months. And it only works for students when they are preparing for the test or someone who is not busy and doesn’t have much work to do. They are called ineffective methods.
Therefore, I will give you a very basic and simple method that can be used for any level, especially since you won’t have to use that method in your free time. And you can use that time for some extra activities to support this method.
So, what it is?
It’s called: natural listening to the main source
It comes from practical listening dialogue or conversation in daily life.
It consists of two steps:
Step 1: Download all possible listening sources to your phone( including podcasts, daily conversations, and so on)
This listening material will be the best source because you will hear the real conversation they actually speak in the most natural way. Through this kind of material, you can listen to the basic and common words that you see every day in life and how people use those words.
You can look it up at the end of the video for more sources to download.
Step 2: After download it, you should make use of your time to listen. But don’t listen in your free time, just listen when you do other activities which don’t distract you much or require much more attention.
For example, you can listen to when you are traveling, especially when you use public transport, you can easily use that method. Or when you are in a queue waiting for your favorite food or movie tickets or when you are doing exercises.
For that kind of situation, you can choose to listen to specific topics suitable for the situation, like listening to the description of the food when you are waiting for them or some trailers of the film so you can get the gist of the movie.
It really works for you because first, you will save your free time doing something else. Second, it will bring some excitement to you when you are fed up with waiting or traveling. And final, it helps you to listen in the most convenient way, hence you can listen to it for a long time without boring. By only spending 30 minutes for listening per day, you can listen a total of 10950 minutes for practical English conversation in one year for every topic, comparing to listen through movies with 100 minutes average for each movie, 4 movies each month, so the maximum you will have 20800 minutes for listening.
However, in 100 minutes, there is approximately 50% for listening to itself, and not all are listening in dialogue or conversation and even you will find it effective, you have to listen through the movie in your free time to get your most attention. Another is that sometimes, movies are far from reality so you will find it hard to apply them in real life.
So, to me, both using two techniques for such a long time, I prefer to apply the “natural listening” method for the improvement of listening skill. But remember that it takes time and attempts to be patient, you will get what you want.
Here are some links for you to download free materials:
Links:
– http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/features/6-minute-english– https://learningenglish.voanews.com/– https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/learnenglish-podcasts– https://www.ted.com/
(without spending extra time)| English Tips
How to Learn English effectively through short stories: https://helenadailyenglish.com/how-to-learn-english-effectively-through-short-stories-4-skills.html
“Hi, are you looking for some special English conversation lessons? And you want to speak English more naturally, like the way native English speakers do. One of the best ways is to learn phrasal verbs, idioms, and slang. This video is designed to help you do that” – Source: Tony Illustrated English