If you believe listening exercises or listening to native speakers are difficult skills to master, please do not feel this is just your problem. Many students of a foreign language find listening quite daunting, and even native speakers may find it hard to understand different accents from their own native language. Why is this so? And what can we do about it? Well, these are two good questions
I'd like to discuss here.
Why is “listening” so hard?
I believe that students of English as a foreign language quite often fail to realize that even in their own language hearing and listening are two
very different things. When we go for a walk downtown, for example, we usually hear lots of background noise, voices and sounds, yet we don't pay attention to them. We just don't care and we certainly don't usually worry about what people are saying. The exception is, of course, if something suddenly calls our attention-say somebody yelling. In that case we may want to pay more attention to understand what the problem/situation is.
Listening is, therefore, quite different from hearing. In listening we become active- ideally, we are active listeners. This means, quite simply, that we transform hearing into a creative and meaning making act that engages with what somebody is saying.
When we listen we usually:
1) make assumptions about what the other speakers will say. These are based on how much we know of the topic or the speaker.
2) anticipate our response in some way. If somebody is talking to us, this is because they expect a response-even if such response is just sympathetic silence.
3) make meaning of the utterances we hear: we make sense of things said. This is particularly so when we don't actually understand everything, yet we make the effort to put the pieces together and come to a sort of conclusion that gives us confidence: "Sure... I get what you mean."
4) make questions about what the other person is saying. We wonder about why they said so, what
they really meant, why they're telling this to us, etc.
5) think about other things at the same time. No matter how interested we are in what we are being communicated, there are lots of other cognitive processes going on. This may range from "Did I turn off the lights before I left home?" to something more serious like "I really need to do something about this constant back pain"
There are different kinds of listening
Another issue to should consider is what we understand by the word "listening". We don't listen in the same way to a doctor prescribing us some drugs as we listen to the TV commercials while cooking soup in the kitchen.
We also do different things with the input: At a conference or lecture we make take down notes. When having a telephone conversation we may ask somebody to spell out a surname. When we're listening to a friend we may ask follow up questions, etc.
In other words, different listening texts demand that we do different things with the input we get. And we normally adjust accordingly.
How to listen better
Giving these and other implications related to the act of listening, it is difficult to give very specific ideas about how to improve your listening. Nevertheless, here are some useful tips that have been tried and tested for years in ELT. I hope they will work for you:
a) Always try to prepare in some way for what you'll listen. Either read the task in front of you carefully before doing an exercise, or/and underline key words from a passage you'll have to work with, or read something about the lecture topic you'll listen about, or just think about the topic and predict what you might listen.
b) If you’re doing a listening exercise, underline the key words in the task and try to listen for synonyms or similar expressions. For example:
Listen to the following person making a complaint at a reception desk of a hotel. She complains about 1– the hot temperature in the room 2–the loud noise coming from the next room 3–the bad smell coming from the lobby
c) If it's a real life conversation, don't be afraid of asking your interlocutor to repeat at a slower pace what they said. If it's a recording, just play it once to have a general understanding and then again for more detail.
d) If it's a real life conversation, make sure you read back figures or numbers and proper names to your interlocutor.
e) If it's a real life conversation, or a telephone conversation, rephrase what the interlocutor said in a different way and wait for some confirmation or rectification.
f) Throughout the process, try to relax and enjoy the conversation rather than freeze in anticipation of what you believe it's going to be a complete disaster. Usually, when learning a new language, we make poor judgments about our skills, and these tend to reify the problem.
g) When listening to long segments, try paying attention to the ways a person may signal a change of topic (e.g. Now, let’s turn to…; Right, let us now consider…; etc) or words that signal contrast (However, Nevertheless, But, etc.) or words that anticipate important information is coming next (e.g. What really matters is; in fact I believe that; the key here is; etc).
h) If you know you’ll be talking on the phone with a native speaker, always prepare a notebook and pen to take down notes as you listen.
i) If you know the person you’ll talk with comes from a particular region or country, try getting a bit familiar with the accent by listening to recordings or online television from that place.
j) It’s good practice to read and listen at the same time. Get some audio books which are easily available on the market. Use captions (subtitles) when watching a DVD.
k) Use the internet to tune in the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera or any other radio station and listen to the news live.
l) Meet with classmates or English speaking friends regularly and have a conversation in English. Do the same over the phone.
I hope these tips can help you to improve your listening skills. Remember that practice (and time) makes perfect.
