An interview about listening skills

Listen to the English teacher talk about listening to practise and improve your listening skills.

Do the preparation task first. Then listen to the audio and do the exercises.

Preparation

Transcript

Presenter: So, today's expert teacher is Gabriella, a university English teacher from Leeds. Gabriella, hi and thanks for joining us today.

Gabriella: Thanks for having me!

Presenter: So, I have to confess today's topic is something I am really bad at: listening. Most people say speaking is the most stressful part of learning a new language but, for me, with my B1 German, speaking isn't so bad. At least I'm in control of it. But listening … woah … people speak so fast and it's like my brain just shuts down. Am I just really strange and bad at listening? Tell me, honestly, I can take it.

Gabriella: No, you're not strange. In fact, it's really common. You know, in exams most people do pretty well in speaking compared with listening. Of course, exams are a different situation from real life because in an exam you can't ask for something to be repeated or explained. You usually have just one or maybe two opportunities to listen to the dialogue and then it's gone.

Presenter: Right, but in real life I feel stupid always saying, 'Sorry, can you repeat that, please?', especially if I still don't understand even when they repeat it. And people out there listening, I hope you don't do this – quite often the person just repeats what they said equally as fast and I'm still lost!

Gabriella: They do, don't they? In real life, you've got two strategies. One is to pretend to understand and get out of the conversation as fast as you can.

Presenter: Yep, sounds familiar!

Gabriella: But, obviously that's not going to help if it's a conversation with high stakes. It might have important consequences. I mean, if you're just chatting with a stranger at the bus stop, it doesn't matter. But imagine you're at a government office or a bank, trying to find out what paperwork you need to get your ID or open a bank account. What can you do then?

Presenter: I hope you've got the answer, Gabriella, because I'm coming out in a cold sweat just thinking about either of those situations!

Gabriella: The other strategy is to summarise what they said.

Presenter: But how can you do that if you didn't understand what they said?

Gabriella: Ah, well, you only start the summary, so you might say, in German in your case, 'OK, so the first thing I have to do is …?' and make it a question. Or, for example, 'And which office is that again?' Break it down into smaller questions and the other person will naturally start answering them. That way you're controlling the conversation a bit more.

Presenter: I get you ...

Task 1

TrueOrFalse_MjMzNjg=.xml

Task 2

Matching_MjMzNjk=.xml

Discussion

What do you do to help with listening?

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Worksheet79.35 KB

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Language level

B1 Intermediate

Well, in the near past, one year ago, I was so afraid of listennig. Almost scared every single time I faced a listening challenge or exercise. But I said to myself, If I wanted to get a good level on English, I must improve this skill. So, I started watching news and listening to several podcast. When the time was running, I felt more confidence and could follow general ideas. One guy form those tools I used told to the public that this skill must be 40% of your English practicing process and I took that advice for my own routine. Obviously, there is a plenty of competence I should get, but I'm enjoying it. The hoped day will come!

I try to practice my English listening every day by watching English movies at lunch, and also I used to have an app on my cellphone to practice listening every day, and finally I'm here practicing the listening part with this section and also sometimes practicing with the post cast section. After this, I'm still wondering something...... My native language is Spanish, so I have my University classes in Spanish, my classes are through the zoom app, but I want to practice my listening more, so I would like to know if anyone knows an app or a software which helps me to translate what the teacher is saying during my University classes into English?

Of course, listening is the most difficult for me. I usually do not get the points.

Yes, listening also hardest for me. Now, I listening podcast and try to understand words, only for my ears and brain adapt, I don't understand clear, but fill more relaxed after one week when I listening podcasts.

I'm very poor in both speaking and listening. One way to solve this problem, you should be learm much vocabulary. Then you can find that you're listening is improve. In this time I am learning listening intermediate level in British Council. It's very helpful for me. Thank you

Could you please tell me how to download the audios?

Hi Bakeer,

If you're using a computer, you can right click on the grey audio player, then choose 'Save audio as ...'. I hope that helps :)

Jonathan

The LearnEnglish Team

I discovered on my own that the best way to further improve listening skills is to expand your vocabulary as much as you can because when you listen to another language, you are making an association in your mental library of words. all at the same time between the word, its meaning and especially its pronunciation.

To improve my listening skills I often play dictations in English and transcribe what I heard. Also, I always put the movies' audio in English with the subtitles, to help me to get more familiar with the sound of the words.