LESSON 5: LEARNING HOW TO LISTEN

Good morning, English Learners!! 

There is a new lesson today about listening skills. Listening is an ability that plays an important role in everyday life. You have to put emphasis on it: you don't have the chance to listen again, you cannot check an unknown word, etc. For this reason,  it is necessary that others understand you.

When you do a listening, you want to hear exactly every single word. Do you think this is possible? First of all, define your objective and find out what you have to do in the exercise. Some exercises will ask you for general understanding in a situation, while others will ask you for specific information such as a date or the name of a street. If you achieve your goals, you are a good listener. It doesn't matter if you haven't understood all the words mentioned. 

Prediction is also very important in listening. The more you predict, the more you'll understand the listening. If there is a situation given, imagine what can happen next. Inference, that is to say, guessing what you don't know from what you know,  is another technique which may help you developing listening skills. 

Most listening exercises will ask you to listen for specific information. There is a variety of exercises. You can find a multiple choice answer, a sentence completion or a multiple matching.

-- In multiple choice questions, I recommend you to underline the key words in questions. In this way, you'll focus on them. All options may be mentioned in a recording, but only one is correct. Don't expect to listen to the same words. You have to listen to the same thing said in other words. The first time you listen, try to find the correct answer. The second time you listen, check your answer and write it down. 

-- In sentence completion exercises, there will be part of the sentence missing and you'll have to write down the correct piece of information.Write the exact words you hear. It isn't as complicated as you imagine. 

-- Multiple matching. There will be different questions. Each of them goes with a speaker. Try to think of other ways of saying it, because you may hear synonyms of the question. 

That is all you have to know in order to develop your listening skills. I hope you use these strategies, which I find very useful.