12 Ways to Improve English Listening Skills
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to English with Lucy!
Today, I want to talk to you about how you can improve your English listening skills. So, I’ve got some tips that I’m going to give you. If you do follow all of my English listening tips, then you should be able to start to understand native speakers more easily and more effectively. We’ve got a lot to cover in the lesson. So, let’s get started.
There’s a word that I’m going to be using a lot in this lesson and it is ‘‘variety’’. I want you to use a wide range of resources and listen to a wide range of accents as well. Why? Well, I know a lot of you come to me and say: “Lucy, I want to learn British English and to do that, I’m only going to listen to British speakers.” But in my opinion, that’s not the right thing to do. You are going to meet people from all over the world with all different accents, and you’re going to need to understand them, you don’t want to just be able to understand British people. So, if you’re not doing it already, I want you to listen to as many accents as possible. And when you’re doing that, I want you to think about the different sounds that each accent makes.
I made a video with the lovely Anna from English Like a Native about the differences between our accents. Lots of students found that really, really helpful because there’s not one definitive way of speaking English. There are lots of variations: regional variations, variations by country. I mean English spoken in New Zealand is very different to English spoken in America, for example. So, you need to be able to recognize more or less everything and diversify your English.
Focusing on that word ‘variety’ again, I want to talk to you about resources. For my next point, I want you to ask yourself a question, I want you to answer it yourself honestly: How much time do you actually dedicate to practicing and improving your listening skills? Answer it honestly! Most of the students that I asked say around 1 to 2 hours and even then, they might be exaggerating a little bit. Now, you’ve recognized that you’re probably not practicing enough, I want you to start practicing. Honestly, practice makes perfect. You’re not going to suddenly wake up and be perfect at listening. It takes time, it takes dedication and it’s called a skill, for a reason, is something that you have to develop principally on your own and also with help from others. But “what is listening practice”, you might be asking me. Well, I’ve got lots of recommendations for you, which brings me to my next point: resources and more importantly, variety of resources.
Now, the most obvious one is watching TV programs or movies in English. This is great, but I think you can take it a step further. Maybe you’re watching programs with English subtitles. That’s good, but you don’t want to rely on the subtitles. I want you to learn with your ears and not with your eyes. So, what I recommend you do to take your listening to the next level is: watch each program or movie twice. It’s probably more achievable with programs – short ones. I’ll recommend that you aim for something that’s less than 30 minutes. So, you could try a comedy like Friends, which is American English or maybe BBC news, and you can just watch the headlines which would be British English pronunciation. So, I want you to watch it first with no subtitles, see how much you can understand. And then, I want you to watch it again with subtitles, and see what you did pick up and what you didn’t pick up and then note it for next time. Don’t be afraid to replay things again and again and again.
Learn the patterns of voice that we use.
If you’ve got a listening exam or you’re going to have a telephone conversation or some sort of interview over the phone, you’re not going to be able to read the person’s lips which can be really useful. So, you really ought to practice listening blindly. So, one really, really good tip that often gets overlooked is: use audio books.
Reading is great for building your vocabulary, but it doesn’t do much for your listening skills, because what a book does not offer you is a pronunciation guide, normally. I’m sure some exist that do. So, I would like you to start listening to audiobooks. Pick a book that is interesting and relevant to you. Judge it by your level. If you’re quite a low-level, choose a children’s book. If you’re more intermediate, maybe go something for teenagers. And if you’re advanced, obviously, go for something that’s aimed at adults or maybe has a lot of technical language. Remember that: if you want to check your understanding, you can always buy the book as well. Listen to a section and then read it, listen to another and then read it. This is a wonderful way of improving your listening comprehension. The best website for audiobooks is Audible, and if you click in the link in the deion box, you can get a free audiobook and a 30-day trial. There’s absolutely no catch, so try it out and see if it works for you.
One resource that often gets overlooked is YouTubers. I’m not talking about us – lovely bunch of online English teachers that are all over YouTube at the moment, although I think we could help you a little bit with your listening. You have an amazing resource – full of free videos and listening tools. Find something that you’re interested in. Maybe you’re interested in gossip, celebrities, science, current affairs. Search for it in English and start listening to it.
My next point is multi task.
Unlike reading or watching TV, listening is something that you can do whilst you do something else. So, once you’ve found your ideal resource, start to build a sort of pack of resources on your smartphone or your computer that you can take with you. So, if you have a long car journey, on the way to work, on public transport, whilst you’re doing something else like cooking, something you don’t have to concentrate on, listen to something in English.
And that links back to my question: “how much time do you actually dedicate practicing your English?”
So, say, you spend half an hour traveling to work each day, and half an hour traveling back home each day, and you listen to something in English for the entirety of those journeys. Each week, you will be doing five hours of listening practice. That’s amazing! If you do that, you will definitely improve in no time. The really great thing is that you’re doing something productive and maybe learning about another topic through English that you wouldn’t normally do. So, it’s really a win-win situation.
My next tip is: do not translate, do not translate.
When you’re speaking to someone in person, I want you to listen for context. Something I always say to my students is “fluency over accuracy!” Now, I speak Spanish fluently, but I do not speak it a hundred percent accurately. I have no problems with listening, I have no problems with understanding, and I have no problems with communicating. But if you were to film me speaking Spanish and analyze all of the errors that I make, you’d find quite a few. It’s really important to understand that you don’t need it to be perfect, you don’t need to understand every single word. You need to understand context and general meaning. If you spend too much time analyzing each word, the conversation or monologue will have moved on by the time you finally understood the word that you are focusing on, so you actually then have to catch up and you lose understanding. So, instead of listening word by word, listen to phrases as a whole.
My next tip is: learn speech patterns.
Okay? I want you to research into how natives speak. The way in which we write something is certainly not the way in which we say it. English is not a phonetic language, and we don’t always follow our own pronunciation rules. So, what research can you do? Well, you can look at homophones, for example. These are words which have the exact same pronunciation but different spellings and different meanings. I’ve actually got a video coming out on homophones very soon which I will put in the deion box. An example of a homophone would be “bear” and “bare”, the same, but different spelling and meaning.
You can also look at minimal pairs. Minimal pairs are words that have the exact same pronunciation apart from a single vowel sound. An example of a minimal pair would be “ship” and “sheep”. [i]/[iː]. [ʃɪp]/[ʃiːp] So the [ʃ] and [p] are the same, but the vowel sound is different.
It’s also important that you understand weak forms. So, we have strong forms of words and we also have weak forms. For example, the word “at”, on its own, I say [æt], But sometimes, if I’m using it in a sentence or in conversation, and I’m speaking very quickly, I will say [ət] – with the schwa sound. I won’t say “[æt] three o’clock”; I will say “[ət] three o’clock.” So it’s important that you recognize that the schwa sound can represent many vowels.
You also need to look at reductions.
I’ve got a video all about the reductions “wanna” and “gonna”, which is also in the deion box, that will really help you out especially if you want to use those, because I know a lot of you do. It’s a really quick way of making yourself sound more native.
And also contractions. I am => I’m; I will => I’ll; she would => she’d. It’s important that you learn those. I’m also making a video on contractions. So when that’s uploaded, I will also put that in the deion box.
So that’s it for my lesson on how to improve your listening skills. Your homework is to comment below and tell me and everyone else: How you are going to improve your listening skills? Now you’ve watched this video, I want to see you be motivated and I want to see you make a change. I believe in you and you need to believe in yourselves, too.
Don’t forget that I now upload on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. And I also have a free live pronunciation and vocabulary lesson every Sunday at 4:30 GMT, which is London time, on My English with Lucy Facebook page.
Don’t forget to connect with me on all of my social media. My Facebook and my Instagram is where I’m most active. And you can also sign up to my mailing list if you want to receive emails from me and hear about updates before anyone else.
Alright then, I’ll see you soon for another lesson!