Fluentfriends Newsletter March 2013::The Latest in Language Learning Continued

Listen-up! How to improve listening skills…‘I JUST CAN’T HEAR what they’re SAYING!’ If, like my husband Nigel, you struggle with listening activities, then put your frustration aside: there are good reasons for hanging in there. Listening, like all skills, is attainable with practice....

....Listening has a vital role in communication and language acquisition; yet we take for granted the complexity of the process of deciphering meaning.

Just to prove it, try this for me. Turn the radio on and hover between stations. Now, one at a time, tune into 4 different programmes in your mother tongue. For each make a note of the following:

First, is the speaker male or female? Then, is the speaker old or young? Does the speaker have a regional accent? Are they an educated speaker, or perhaps an expert speaker? Are they using colloquial conversation or slang? Do they enunciate well? What is their tone like? What would you say is their social standing? What is the subject they are talking about? What is the function of their communication? Do they use industry jargon? Intellectualised argument? Are you interested in what they are saying? Are you intrigued by the subject? Do they engage you?

You see, or rather as you can hear, listening is a demanding process…. Before you even start interpreting the content of the message you have already applied a wealth of ‘background listener baggage’ to help anticipate what’s coming your way and make sense of what you are hearing. Whilst it is receptive skill, we are in fact listening very actively.

Then there are the variations of dialect and accent. If English is your first language, can you understand other speakers from Wales, the North, inner-London, or Newcastle? Americans famously struggled with X Factor presenter Cheryl Cole’s accent; but dialectal difference is a given in some languages. In Italy, for example, a popular nineties’ TV phone-in toured the length and breadth of the country inviting viewers to guess the meaning of a sentence spoken in local dialect. Dialect is by its nature exclusive.

So whilst Listening can be tricky in class, once you have put down some basics, you can really improve your skills with ‘independent listening’ at home. For some this will come sooner than for others, but above all, it will come with practice. You wouldn’t expect to become a concert pianist after a couple of months of playing the piano, would you?

Why do you need ‘practice’?

• Because it is accumulative, the more hours you listen, the more refine your listening skills and the more you will be able to understand. Because listening is easier the more you are exposed to it. 
• Because active listening is physically tiring we need to learn to supress a natural instinct to ‘switch off’ and tune out when we do not understand a word, or even large part of what is coming our way.
• Because we can learn to focus on what we know and maximise it, rather than being distracted by what we don’t know. We can train ourselves to listen well.  

How best to improve listening:

• Be disciplined! Make a schedule and set aside time. Record the amount you manage to listen for each time. Chunk it! Listen daily, do it regularly! Increase the period of listening gradually.
• Love listening! Choose something you enjoy: food, books, history, opera, golf, football….you may have some prior knowledge and will have greater interest and engagement.
• Rewind and listen again! Try and find a programme that repeats its format or that enables you to download a podcast and rewind. Music is a great way to listen to the same thing over and over, building understanding, without getting bored.
• Tune in! Listen for break-through - those persistent words that will be the first to introduce themselves!

Not sure what to listen to?

Have a look at our Trending article, where we take a look at Tunein Radio. One of our favourite new apps.

  Read The Insider here>>>> 

Read Now Trending here>>>>