Use Podcasts to Improve English Listening Skills

I'm curious if this situation sounds familiar to you:

you listen to a new podcast in English and you love it. In fact,

maybe you even get a bit addicted to it,

a podcast like SERIAL or Unlocking Us.

Not only do you fall in love with the podcast,

but you are so excited to talk about it with someone.

The problem is after you listen,

the podcast becomes one of those things that is in one ear and out the other.

What that idiom means is it something that you heard and maybe

understood, but you quickly forgot it.

The problem is maintaining or remembering the key points or the

vocabulary that you want to use to talk about that podcast.

Or maybe you just don't feel comfortable doing it. Like some of my students,

you might also feel that you have to listen to the podcast multiple

times if you want to talk about it effectively.

And that's frustrating because of course you only have so much time in the day.

These are all things that some of my students have said about their struggles,

listening to podcasts. And if any of those sound like you,

I want you to know that today you're in the right place.

If you don't already know, I'm Annemarie with Speak Confident English,

this is exactly where you want to be every week to get the confidence you want

for your life and work in English.

Although this lesson is primarily focused on sharpening your listening skills,

this is an important step toward better communication in English.

To have effective conversations we have to also know how

to carefully listen to others.

We need to be in tune to the conversation,

understand what others are saying,

maintain that information so that we can repeat it or talk about it effectively

in conversations. By the end of this Confident English lesson,

you will have a clear three step process that combines your love of

podcasts with effective English practice activities that helped

sharpen your listening skills.

Ultimately not only will you be able to understand and talk about your favorite

podcasts in English more easily,

but you'll also sharpen your listening skills overall.

Before we dive in today,

I want to remind you that it is a hundred percent okay to listen to

podcasts simply for entertainment,

without a specific goal in mind,

or without trying to practice specific listening skills. However,

when you want to commit some of your English practice time to improving your

listening skills using podcasts,

here is a simple three step process to follow. Number one,

choose the right podcast. Number two,

level up your listening skills with effective practice activities.

And number three, set yourself up for success with good habits.

Let's talk a little bit more about each one of those steps.

And along the way I will give you simple step-by-step activities that you can

practice any time. So let's go back and start with number one,

how to choose the right podcast.

If you are using it to improve your listening skills.

First always identify a topic that is interesting to you

just because someone else recommends a podcast doesn't mean that you'll love it.

And that's okay. When you're practicing your English skills,

it's really important that you enjoy what you're learning,

especially at your level.

Choosing a podcast that isn't interesting to you is ultimately going to lead to

boredom and possibly even giving up on your practice.

The activities that I'll share with you today,

you can use with any podcasts that you already enjoy,

or if you're looking for a new one,

I have a very long list of recommendations on my website to

get that list of recommended podcasts.

Simply visit this lesson on the Speak Confident English website with the link

below the video, as you consider topics that are of interest to you.

I also want you to think about your ultimate goal for a specific

activity. This doesn't mean your goal in general,

you might have multiple goals in your listening skills,

but when you sit down to practice for 15 or 20 or 30 minutes,

I want you to think about one specific goal.

Do you want to increase your vocabulary on a specific topic

or perhaps you're working to comprehend native speakers more easily?

All of those goals might influence the podcast that you choose.

The third factor you should consider when you're trying to choose the right

podcast to improve your listening skills is to think about how long you can

dedicate to listening to a specific episode.

If you have 15 or 20 minutes to dedicate to your practice,

then choosing a podcast that is short or a podcast that can

easily be broken up into smaller components is your best choice after

you've selected the right podcast for you.

The second step in this process is to level up your listening skills with

effective practice activities. In this section,

I want to talk about three different practice activities that you can do to

sharpen those listening skills and retain what

you've learned. In other words, remember what you've learned in the podcast,

whether it's new vocabulary or the key points that the speaker shares so that

you feel comfortable talking about it in conversations after you listen. Now,

before I share these practice activities with you,

I want you to remember that each of these is a separate practice

activity. Rather than combine them all at one time,

I recommend that you stay mindful of each separate

activity. One activity is focused more on vocabulary building.

Another activity is focused more on sharpening your ability to understand the

key points.

All of these are fantastic goals to have for your listening skills in English,

but they are different skills. And as a result,

they require a different approach.

If you want to do all of these,

what I recommend is choose one podcast, one episode,

and use the same podcast for three or four days in a row

and each day choose one of these activities so that you're focused on a

specific kind of listening. So let's start with practice activity.

Number one, listen for overall gist.

What that means is to listen for the big picture. The main idea.

In this kind of listening, you're not focused on the tiny little details,

but rather understanding what the main messages of the

speaker.

When you're working to improve your listening skills for capturing those main

ideas, here's what you can do. First of course,

choose your podcast. And second, before you start to listen,

begin to prepare a little mind map. Rather than try to listen,

understand,

and remember everything without any help it's much better to write

down some of the keywords or key ideas while you're listening.

This helps commit those important ideas to your memory.

It also becomes something that's easy to visualize.

So in two or three days, when you're in a conversation with a coworker,

you can start to picture or visualize the mind map that you created while you

were listening.

And it begins to bring those keywords or important points to your

memory. So before you click the play button on the podcast,

start your mind map by putting the title of the podcast or the interview in the

middle,

and then begin to use question words to help you anticipate

what the speaker will share. For example,

you might begin to think about who or what the speaker is talking about.

What is the specific skill?

What are the steps required to gain that skill?

Why are these steps important?

I'm using those question words who, what, why,

how to help me anticipate what's coming.

If you were creating a mind map of this lesson today,

it might look something like this. Then as you listen to the podcast,

begin to complete that mind map. Again,

the point of this activity is to help you be focused on listening for

those key points. The things that the speaker really wants you to remember,

and it will help commit these ideas to memory so that you can talk about them

more easily.

The second practice activity you can use for sharpening your listening skills,

using podcasts is to listen and read for vocabulary building.

Now with this one,

you definitely want to find podcasts that provide a transcript.

With this activity, combining listening skills and vocabulary building,

you'll want to listen and read the transcript together

as you do that. I want you to highlight circle,

write down any of the words that are new to you or that

you want to remember.

There may be idioms or phrasal verbs that you hear that, you know,

you've heard them before, but you never really used them in speaking.

And now you want to make sure you remember those new phrases so

that you can use them in conversation.

So as you listen and read the transcript,

have a tool available that will allow you to highlight or write down

those phrases that you want to remember. Once you're finished listening,

go back and review any of the words that you've highlighted.

If there are words that are new to you before you go to the

dictionary, I want you to challenge yourself and try to understand them based on

context.

See if you can pinpoint the meaning based on the other words and sentences

around that key word. Let me give you an example of what I mean.

Imagine this is a sentence from a podcast and the word affluent is new to you.

Look at that full sentence and see if there's anything else that gives you a

clue about the possible meaning of affluent from this sentence.

We know that this family has always lived in the most expensive part of the

city. So what does that tell you about their background?

What might affluent mean?

This kind of activity of using the context really sharpens your

ability to understand new words in conversations,

in podcasts.

When you hear them learning to do this effectively will also help you avoid

getting lost in conversations when someone uses something that you've never

heard before. So when you do something like this,

take a few moments to write down what you think that word might mean.

Then go to a dictionary to confirm it.

These two steps are essential to learning the new vocabulary,

but now we need to commit it to memory.

One of the best things that you can do is immediately take that new word

phrase or idiom and use it in your own example sentence.

So once you've learned that the word of fluent means wealthy,

how would you use it in your own sentence,

doing that consistently over a period of days,

we'll give you the repetition you need with a new word so that you

committed to memory and you're able use it easily in

conversations going forward.

And now the third practice activity you can use to level up your listening

skills is to focus on global listening or

listen, to understand the finer details.

What I mean by all of this is to read between the lines

that phrase means to find the hidden meaning or the meaning that is

understood without being said, clearly,

we also refer to this as layers of meaning in our speaking,

I might say good morning to someone,

but if my voice sounds angry and I crossed my arms like this and say,

good morning, do I really mean good morning? No,

of course not.

There are different layers of meaning in just those two words.

When we're speaking,

there's a wealth of information that gets communicated through the way that we

pause, our word stress, intonation, and so on.

So if you want to work on understanding these additional layers of meaning using

a podcast,

here are some questions that you can think about as you're listening.

Number one,

what emotions or opinions does the speaker convey as they speak?

If a speaker says, I'm sad, of course we know that they feel sad.

They told us, but sometimes the speaker doesn't say I'm sad,

but we hear it in their voice. And that's what I want you to pay attention to.

What do you hear in their voice to answer that question,

you may need to go back and listen to that short segment again,

to see what exactly happened that told you how they felt or what

their real opinion was. Was it a pause,

some sort of emphasis or some unexpected intonation?

See if you can pinpoint how the speaker used her voice to

communicate that layer of meaning,

as you consider that you can also think about what is being communicated

through intonation, stress? Is the speaker, communicating power,

humor, disbelief, or certainty as you listen,

take notes on what you hear.

Not only does this activity help to sharpen your ability to listen

and read between the lines,

but once you understand how speakers use their voice to communicate

other layers of meaning and emotion,

you can begin to utilize those same skill sets in your

own communication. All right,

now that you know all about choosing the right podcast and three

different activities you can use to level up your listening skills.

Let's talk about step number three,

set yourself up for success with good habits.

Practicing all of this just one time is great,

but it isn't going to improve your listening skills. Like anything in life,

if you want to improve and really make progress,

it has to become a habit, something that you do consistently.

So how can you utilize podcasts effectively to build those good

habits? Strategy number one is to be realistic and fit your

listening practice into your lifestyle.

If you only have a little bit of time on your way to work,

or when you're walking the dog in the afternoon, that's perfectly fine.

And you can choose the activity that will fit your time constraints the

best. Of course, if you're driving to work,

that's not the best time to focus on building vocabulary because you definitely

should not be reading a transcript while you're driving.

But that could be a great time where you focus on listening to those finer

details or layers of meaning because you don't need to be writing anything down.

Strategy number two is to take advantage of playback speed.

If you're working on understanding native speakers more easily,

don't be afraid to slow down the playback speed so that you can

hear the speaker clearly and become comfortable with how they speak.

As you adjust and sharpen your listening skills,

you can then begin to speed up the playback speed either to a normal speed or

even faster using the playback speed to your advantage will

definitely reduce how often you have to go back and listen to the whole podcast

again, or repeat a specific segment to catch what the speaker said.

Ultimately, it'll save you time.

Strategy number three for setting yourself up for success with good

habits is to meet with friends and reflect on what you've learned.

Maybe even listen to a podcast with some of your friends and set aside

time to talk about it by creating that time to meet with friends and talk about

what you've learned. Not only are you automatically building in accountability,

which helps with developing a consistent habit,

but you're also creating an opportunity to get confident in talking about what

you've learned, reusing some of the vocabulary and it's super fun.

The last strategy for setting yourself up for success by building good

habits is to be patient with yourself.

Progress does not happen overnight.

It takes time and consistent practice. And with that,

you have a three-step process to improve your English listening skills,

using podcasts plus three activities you can use

any time you want before we finish.

I want to remind you that if you're looking for a new podcast to help you get

started in improving your listening skills,

I have a full list of recommended podcasts to help you get started.

You can find that list at the Speak Confident Englishwebsite.

Just use the link below the video, and while you're there,

be sure to share your favorite podcast with me and everyone else in the

Confident Englishcommunity. If you found this lesson useful to you today,

as always, I would love to know, and you can tell me in one very simple way,

give this lesson a thumbs up here on YouTube, and while you're at it,

subscribe to this channel. So you never miss one of my Confident Englishlessons.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Have a fantastic time getting addicted to a brand new podcast in English,

and I'll see you next time for your Confident Englishlesson.