Ways to Improve English Listening Skills and Understand Native English Speakers

Ah, hello everyone, Anna here  from EnglishLikeANative.co.uk

In today’s lesson we’re going to look at 5  ways to improve your English listening skills.

The first thing to do is expand your vocabulary.

Now expanding your vocabulary might not seem  like it's strictly related to listening,  

but hear me out, “hear me” out means listen to  what I have to say before making a judgement.

A lot of students have problems  with listening because they don't  

know the words that the person is saying.

Studies show that students need  to first understand the words  

in the text that's being spoken  to understand what's being said.

So, expanding your vocabulary only gives  you a better chance of knowing more words  

in the listening piece and this will  help your understanding of the overall  

piece, which is especially useful in  standardised tests such as the IELTS exam.

Remember that knowing the word means understanding  the meaning, but also knowing the word class - is  

it a noun, a verb, or an adjective, for example,  register, collocations, and pronunciation.

This brings me on to my 2nd tip…

Number 2!

Improve your pronunciation.

By improving your pronunciation,  you give yourself a better chance  

of understanding a word when someone says it.

I have often had students who  understand the majority of  

English that’s written down but don’t  understand words when they are spoken.

That’s sometimes because they think  the word will sound different,  

because they haven’t learnt the  correct pronunciation of the word.

For example, in many English words that have  two vowels in a row, learners expect there  

to be two sounds but there’s often just  one so they don’t recognise a word like  

‘cousin’ when they would easily  understand that word written down.

There’s just one vowel sound in the first  syllable of ‘cousin’, /ˈkʌ/, /ˈkʌ/, /ˈkʌzən/.

Say it with me, ‘/ˈkʌzən/’, ‘/ˈkʌzən/’.

Now English pronunciation is  one of my specialist subjects,  

and something I can really help you  with, if you are keen to improve your  

pronunciation then hit that subscribe button  and write “Help me Anna” in the comments.

Number 3!

So, the 3nd strategy for improving your listening  

is to become familiar with  the rules of connected speech.

Learning how to say individual  words is really important but  

you should dedicate some time to  learning about full phrases too.

If you want to check out my tips  for connected speech in more detail,  

you can watch my video “How to Sound Like a  Native English Speaker: Connected Speech”.

But, basically when we speak at a natural speed  in English, sounds often disappear, change,  

get mixed together or sometimes  sounds appear out of nowhere!

For example, let’s take the sentence “Can  you tell me what you’re looking for”.

“Can you tell me what you’re looking for.”

When we say this sentence quickly, you  may be confused by the ‘what you’re’ part.

That’s because when we have a /t/ and a /j/  sound together, they mix together to make a /tʃ/  

sound – ‘wɒtʃu’, ‘wɒtʃu’.

The next thing to notice in this sentence is  

the sound in the ‘you’ is shorter  than a lot of people expect too.

We normally say /jə/ instead of /ju:/ and  the auxiliary verb ‘are’ almost disappears.

Additionally, the sound at  the end of ‘looking’ changes,  

so the last part of the sentence isn’t ‘what  you’re looking for’, but ‘what ya lookin’ for’.

At the beginning of the sentence, the ‘you’  becomes /jə/ too and we find that same vowel  

sound in ‘can’ (/kən/), so the whole sentence  is “Can you tell me what you’re looking for?”

“Can you tell me what you’re looking for?”

That’s a lot of changes in just this one example.

Don’t worry about learning all the rules  together but if you can learn them bit by bit,  

it will really help you understand  natural speech when you listen to it!

Number 4.

My next tip is to be realistic about what you  can listen to and how long you can listen for.

If you’re an intermediate student,  

watching a whole film without subtitles  is just perhaps a bit too much.

Start out small, maybe ten minutes a day,  

using materials that are made for language  learners, like videos or podcasts.

The internet is full of great resources. It’s  better to start small and do good quality work,  

then build it up bit by bit, then  start too big and be discouraged.

That would be the worst thing. I will leave a link  

to my podcast in the description  if you haven't yet discovered it.

Number 5

When you find a video or podcast you like, my  next tip is to listen to it again and again.

You won’t understand everything  you hear the first time.

And that’s totally normal. Even in our native  languages, we don’t hear everything all the time.

We have to fill in some gaps. In  a language we’re still learning,  

filling in the gaps is extremely difficult  because we just don’t have the vocabulary,  

grammar or pronunciation knowledge to do that.  So, listening again and again even if it’s only  

to specific parts you found very difficult. This  will help you to fill in those gaps. You may need  

to listen more than five times and that’s ok! The  effort you make now will help you in the future.

Also, identifying the parts you don’t  understand and keeping a record of the  

problem areas will help you build up your own  personal bank of common problems to overcome.

Then you’ll know what to listen out for the  next time you’re trying some listening practice.

Bonus Tip!

After listening multiple times, check the  transcription, listen back again and repeat.

This will help you develop your understanding  of the relationship between letters and sounds,  

especially when a native speaker  talks naturally and quickly.

Listening and reading at the same time is a  really useful trick for training your ear.

And going back again and  shadowing the piece you're  

finding particularly difficult  that will just be phenomenal.

So why not give it a go right now! There’s a link  

for you because you stayed all  the way to the end of the video.

There's a link for you to download a FREE  transcript to one of my popular podcast episodes.

There you go. That was five or rather six,  

with the bonus, ways to improve  your English listening skills.

Until next time, take care and goodbye!