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

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Hello every one, Really this interviewer represent my situation, lestining is difficult to me specially if they speek fast. I remember when I was traveling and in the plane, the air plane hostess speeks too fast and I undersand nothing, I am coming out in cold sweat when I think about listening to native English speeker. In my view to fix this problem I have to practice listening, by watching movies and series, lestining to this webside audios, and solve exersise. The main key here is continuous lestining practice.

Actually if tell the truth, it is much more difficulte for me to speak than listen. Most of the time, when ı meet a stranger can't speak anything, not a word come out of my mouth

In my case, I used two methods to improve my listening skill. The first method is taking dictation. Everyday I choose an English conversation for listening and try to write all what I heard. I usually listen three times. The first time is for getting the general ideas of the conversation. In the second time, I will write all what I heard on my notebook. In the last time, I listen with the transcript and correct my writing. The second method is listening before going to bed. I usually choose a short stories for listening. I often spend 30 minutes on this activity. I practiced these two methods in three months and I realize that my listening skill is better. I appreciate all your comments on my sharing.

Thank you so much for sharing your personal methods. I find them very interesting, so I´ll put them into practise. By the way, if you want to talk to someone in English, I´m wide open to practise :)

If you would like to practice speaking, we can do it on Zoom?

Hi bariss,

Unfortunately, sharing Zoom and other personal contact details is not allowed in our House Rules. But you can practise conversation by writing comments and replies here on this site :)

Best wishes,

Jonathan

The LearnEnglish Team

A couple years ago I had a listening test. It was a complete failure for several reasons. Firstly, I was placed far from the speaker, so I could barely hear him. Secondly, I wasn´t used to his accent, it sounded weird for me. And finally, in my opinion he spoke so fast. So you already can imagine the results. Nowadays, in order to improve this skill, I am doing these tasks from this website and I am also watching series in English with English subtitles. I think I am making progress bit by bit, the key here is to be constant.

My problem is understand some people when they speak, some of them speak weird or is difficult is like here in Mexico, the people who live near to the beaches. They cut de words, their spanish is no full, they cut the word S at the end, In Mexico we understand them because We get used to hear them. Maybe this is the reason because some words I can not undestand in englihs, the diction

Yes, I have to confess that the listening skill of the exam is difficult for me. I like to exercise a lot of listening tasks in English, but sometimes if the conversation is going to run fast, I feel that I am still lost and will try to listen to audio records once again. Many texts seem to be simple for listening but when you start to listen to them, you want to get out of it, otherwise, you will come out in a cold sweat of your body. To avoid these issues, I have been using a wide range of listening entertainment such as TV, Radio, and Music. I can get it while speaking on the TV even it would be faster than the exam. But, I can get a conversation on TV. It could be an unbelievable circumstance But I am honestly getting the speaker of TV.

Hello Ugulhan,

It's great that you're using lots of different resources to improve your listening skills, and this is definitely the best approach overall.

Listening tasks on exams are often more difficult to understand than speaking in television and films because video gives you a lot of information that audio alone does not.