HEAR vs LISTEN Difference, Meaning, Example Sentences | Learn English Vocabulary

In this video, I’m going to talk  about two similar and sometimes  

confusing English words ‘hear’ and ‘listen’.

These two words are commonly confused in English,

but after watching this video you'll have  a good understanding of the difference and when to use these words.

Let’s get started.

Let’s start with ‘hear’. It is an irregular verb. 

The past tense is ‘heard’.

When you hear something, noise is coming into your ears.

You are not focused on the noise.

When you are walking down the street,

you may hear people talking, you may hear birds,

you may hear noise from the traffic,

you hear all different noises.

Let’s look at some example sentences.

The first sentence says,

‘I hear someone knocking on my door.’

So the sound of the knocking or the noise of the knocking is coming into your ears,

so you can hear it.

The next sentence says,

‘He heard the thunder last night.’

Thunder is very loud, so again you  will hear the noise of the thunder. 

Now, I will talk about ‘listen’.

It is a regular verb

and the past tense is ‘listened’.

It is usually followed by the preposition ‘to’.

So you say ‘listen to’.

When you are listening, you are trying to hear something.

You are focused. And you really want to hear something clearly.

You pay attention to listen.

Right now, you are listening to me.

Let’s look at some example sentences.

The first sentence says,

‘I always listen carefully to what my teacher says.’

In this example, ‘listen’ is just like focusing or paying attention to.

The next sentence says,

‘She usually listens to music before bed.’

This case also talks about focusing on the music with their ears.

Now, let's do a checkup.

We need to use ‘listen’ and ‘hear’

to  fill in the blanks in this sentence.

Take a moment to think about where to  use ‘listen’ and where to use ‘hear’. 

The sentence says,

‘I am _blank_ to their conversation.’

Which one means to pay  attention to or to focus on? 

That's ‘listen’.

So we need to put ‘listen’ in the first blank.

‘I am _blank_ to their conversation.’

You'll notice it says ‘I am’

so we need to use the present continuous tense ‘listening’.

‘I am listening to their conversation.’

The second part of this sentence says,

‘but I  can't _blank_ exactly what they are saying.’

Maybe it's noisy outside so it's hard to hear. 

Remember, ‘hear’ means to take in the noise with your ears, 

so the correct answer for the second part is

‘I can't hear exactly what they are saying.’

Now you know the difference  between ‘hear’ and ‘listen’. 

I hope you were listening to my video.

Did you hear everything clearly?

Thank you guys so much for watching  and I’ll see you in the next video.