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How can you improve your listening skills?

How can I improve my foreign language listening comprehension skills?

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    Shadowing has proven to be very effective in improving listening skills. It has certainly worked for me. This is where you listen and repeat back what you hear, trying to use exactly the same stress, speed, and intonation. Even when you do not understand all that you repeat back, it is nevertheless valuable as it involves active listening. You can use the BBC or VOA, a tape, a TV show, or an English-language film for this kind of exercise. Though many people want to make it easy on themselves by choosing listening material where people are speaking slowly and clearly, it is always better to use listening material which uses natural speed and intonation. Most people try to improve their listening through passive listening. They listen with no clear objective in mind and with no output--it is as though they are trying to learn a language by osmosis. This is nearly useless. You need to employ active listening. You need to have some objective in mind and have some output at the end of your listening practice for it to be effective. Shadowing is about as active as it can get. Even when you do not understand everything you are repeating back when shadowing, it is nevertheless helpful, as it refines your ability to listen for the individual words. Too often, when we listen to a foreign language, we tend to tune out what we do not understand. With shadowing, there is no tuning out--you force yourself to listen. In the beginning, you may not understand everything you hear, but nevertheless you will be hearing everything that is spoken. Since listening is the skill people build upon through natural language learning, by forcing yourself to listen in this way, it will help your pronunciation, fluency, and vocabulary as well. Note that Simul Academy (http://www.simulacademy.com/) in Japan used to base their simultaneous translation course on shadowing (I have no idea if they still use the same curriculum). If you wanted to learn simultaneous translation, you had to first prove that you could repeat back everything you heard exactly, even if you did not understand a word of what was said. Since simultaneous translation puts a high priority on listening rather than other language skills, this shows the value of shadowing. Certainly, Simul Academy is (or was) one of the better language schools.

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If there is no hearing obstacle the poor listening is due to poor meta cognitive skills. This is why we humans are still better than computers with best microphones.  So here is an unintuitive way to improvement: WRITE more, write daily. 3/ teach beginners and prepare for the lessons 2/ you may write a diary 1/ review anything that has grabbed your attention in your daily routines be it a new product, film or a thought. Of course you will read it after yourself.

Libor Ruiz

http://Ehow.com - http://www.ehow.com/how_4915731_improve-listening-skills.html - In this article, you can find some tips on how you can improve your listening skills. You need to have the focus on the person your listening to, and turn-off any destruction.  You should be aware of what is being discuss, as well as the gestures. You also need to be an active listener and allow them to finish first before you say anything.

Ayls Billones

To listen is easy, to listen and comprehend what is being spoken is the difficult part. Especially if you have to produce an abstract later. For you to improve this, you need to have at least an average vocabulary to understand what is being talked about. The following tips can help you in improving it. 1. Read a lot to increase your vocabulary. If you are strong on words, you can sing a language. You can subscribe to online sites like http://dictionary.com, http://awad.com and use them at possible occasions. 2. Start writing. That's another form of your speech. If you can write well, you can speak or handle the language efficiently. 3. Listen to international news channels like BBC, watch English movies (first with sub titles, then reduce them slowly) and TV serials. 4. Speak in English in all the opportunities you can get. Practice speaking to yourself initially to gain confidence. 5. Join international forums like Toastmasters and TED

Lisbeth Sebastian

Do the opposite : Learn how to speak that language. I'm not a native-English speaker, but at the beginning, American English seemed to me so hard to understand because they skip a lot of letters like the 't' or pronounce it differently. After learning how to speak it, I learnt the rules of pronunciation and that what made me understand how Americans talk way more easily. Really, learn first how to speak it, you'll know the language pronunciation rules better and will make the oral comprehension easier.

Mohamed Walid

You aren't going to improve unless you know what you are hearing. You need to practice listening to become used to the patterns but you aren't even going to recognize that you are hearing a pattern unless you know many of the words, so knowing vocabulary is an essential first step. Most brain experts and second language experts will tell you that you can't do much with a passage if much more than about 10% of it is unknown vocabulary. So you have to start out learning words.

Joel Dykstra

Listen to the BBC (available via podcast/apps) or any other new/informational channel you find interesting. You can also watch movies in whatever language you are fluent with in English (but with subtitles in your preferred language). This will not only improve your english listening skills but also hopefully improve your vocabulary. Watch TV shows (again the ones produced by BBC or other British TV channels contain higher quality dialog compared to the Hollywood blow up everything blockbusters)

Harsh Vardhan

Start off with subtitles. They'll help you. After a couple of weeks, try turning the subtitles off. See if you can actually pick up on what they say. If you can, good. If not, watch it with subtitles for some more time and then try again. Eventually, you'll adjust to the accent and you'll be able to comprehend. Good luck.

Srinath Murali

http://www.youku.com tons and tons of chinese movies, TV plays, documentary......... and all for free I recommend "A bite of china" PS: use adblock in your Chrome to keep off 60 seconds advertisement

Alex Luo

I think the best way to improve your English by listening to something is to watch movies and TV series or listen to the radio. Why ? Because it's not formal language or scholar sentences that you will never use in real life. Though you may learn more things by listening to the radio, depending on your current level in English, I would rather watch movies/series because you can choose to add subtitles. Here's what I did : first (when I was a teenager --> low level) I used French subtitles. Then Englsih subtitles. Now I can watch some series without subtitles some I can't and for most movies I still need them because I've noticed characters in movies speak faster and are chosen to have more different accents/levels of language which makes it more difficult for me to grasp their words.

Charlotte Faure

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