5 Ways to Improve Your Listening Skills in English and Understand Native Speakers

- Hello everyone, today I would like to teach you

some of the ways you can improve your listening in English.

Listening is a really important part

of developing your fluency

and understanding native speakers more.

So now let's take a look

at five easy steps to improve your listening.

So my first tip is gonna be practice listening

while reading simultaneously.

What it means is to just use subtitles

and try to actually read them too.

One of the examples might be using subtitles

on YouTube videos for example, or using subtitles

when you watch movies.

I feel like a lot of people underestimate

the value of subtitles.

Subtitles are really important to understand the text.

Even native speakers sometimes use subtitles

when the speech is still unclear, if they wanna make sure

that they really remember everything.

I know a lot of native English speakers who use subtitles

when they watch TV shows or movies in English.

If you like listening to podcasts,

you can always download the transcripts

if they are available to your podcast

and listen while reading simultaneously.

If you like reading books,

you can also listen to audio books.

Again, simultaneously, you can read and listen.

It's a really good practice, reading while listening.

And of course, if you're using textbooks in English,

they also have a great variety of exercises

for you with the reading practice, as well as the listening.

So they always include the listening practice as well.

And when you actively try to improve

your listening in English,

there is a great system that I recommend using to everyone.

This system will tremendously help you

improve your listening in English

and it can also actually help you improve your accent.

So step number one is to listen

to the audio without looking at anything, just listen.

The first step is just to try to understand

how much you can grasp from just listening.

Don't peek, don't look at anything, just listen.

And during this first part, you're learning

to understand the gist of the text, the most important part.

You don't need to understand everything,

just the most important part.

This is why the first step is really important.

Step two is repeat.

We do exactly the same, but just again.

Again, you'll listen to the audio one more time

without looking at anything.

If you have a text for example, just listen to it again.

Don't peek, here try to listen to more words,

try to understand more words,

more expressions, more critical points.

Try to just listen one more time.

Step three is to get reading.

Now is the time to look at your text.

Look at the text, relax, read it.

Just, you know, skip through it.

Try to understand the gist of the text,

again, the most important parts.

And if there are some words that you don't know

then it's the time to copy them down to your notebook

or to just transfer them to your Anki app,

if you're using Anki like I do.

And if you're not familiar with Anki,

here is my video about this app.

It's a great app,

and I'm sure it will help you memorize the vocabulary

in English faster.

Step four is the listening with a text.

So now you're already super familiar with the text.

You looked up all the words,

all the expression you're not familiar with

and now is the time to listen

while you're looking at the text,

while you're reading along.

You can read out loud

or it's not necessary to actually read out loud.

It just depends on you again.

Just listen and read at the same time.

Finally, step number five is to listen again

without looking at the text.

So this whole system is comprised of five steps

and the final step is to just listen again.

And I'm sure by this time

you're gonna understand that like 99%

of the text is gonna be so familiar to you right now

and you're just gonna feel so confident.

So happy that you understand so, so much.

Try this and then leave the comments in the description

if this method helped you.

My tip number two is to listen

to what you actually enjoy listening to.

It seems like an obvious tip, but for me

for a long time, it wasn't that obvious.

You know a lot of people like listening

to music, for example

but I personally don't really listen to music that much.

And when so many people advise you to listen to music,

to look at the lyrics of the songs,

I just don't like listening to music.

And I always felt like maybe I was missing out

but actually you're not missing out.

If they're listening to something you like then, amazing.

I personally like listening to podcasts.

And for me, this is my listening practice.

I don't listen to music, but it's okay.

My tip number three kind of contradicts my tip number four

because it's about challenging yourself

with something you're not quite familiar with.

For example, I really like yoga, for example.

And I like listening to everything about yoga, you know,

like reading books about yoga, things like that.

But one day I'm like, hey, I think I should listen

to something about space.

You know, about the planets, about our planet Earth.

It's completely different, but again,

I am interested in this.

This is the most important thing.

It can be different.

You know, usually you're like listening to something

about cars or about technology or about money

but just one day you decided to listen to something

about food for example.

It's just a good challenge.

You know, listen to something completely different

from what you're used to.

And actually this is where Coursera is gonna help you a lot.

They have a lot of great courses

about a lot of different topics.

They have subtitles, they have transcripts

and you can also listen and watch, and it's just amazing.

I personally use their website to learn Chinese,

and there are a lot of different courses

for English learners as well.

I'm gonna link some of my favorites in the description

to this video.

My tip number four is gonna be

about exposing yourself to various dialects and accents.

And this is something I kind of struggle with

because I had a period of time when I just refused to listen

to anything but American accent.

And this is not a good thinking.

You should try to listen to as many accents,

as many dialects as you can.

And the most obvious example is just gonna be to listen

to TV shows in American accent such as Friends,

The Office, Grey's Anatomy, and also listen to

and watch TV shows in British English,

like the Crown, Sherlock, Downton Abbey, things like that.

So these TV shows are completely different.

The storyline is different and the accents are different

and they're gonna help you improve your listening a ton.

And here, if you just don't wanna watch any TV shows

or movies, you can also go on italki.

They're all a lot of great teachers

from all over the world and their accents are different.

Their dialects are different.

So you can just talk to them, you know,

talk to different teachers

from a lot of different countries

and this is also gonna help you improve

your listening in English.

And my last tip,

the tip number five is gonna be a pretty interesting one.

It's kind of funny too.

It's gonna be about learning some filler words

so that you can buy yourself some time

if you don't understand anything.

I know there are some moments when a person is talking

to you and you feel like you're struggling.

You know, you feel like you're not following

the conversation at all.

And this is a good way to learn some filler words

or maybe you do understand something.

And you're just not sure, you need some time to think

so you can use these filler words.

You can use I mean, actually, basically,

like, okay, so.

So I think that's all for today's video.

These are all my tips on how you can improve

your listening skills in English.

Again, check out the Coursera,

checkout italki, checkout Anki.

All of this resources are just a great start,

and thanks for watching this video.

Subscribe to my channel.

Follow me on Instagram

and check out my Patreon page.

See you next time, bye.

(upbeat music)