HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR LISTENING SKILLS

all right so hello hello welcome to today's lesson my name is Wes from interactive English I hope that you having a having a wonderful day we're a bit jet-lagged right now so we just finished traveling a long way so feeling jet lag which if you don't know what that means it basically means that after traveling a long distance changing time zones you feel really tired and sluggish and a bit out of sorts but that is neither here nor there I don't want to talk to you about that today instead I want to talk to you about something that is very very important I want to talk to you about perhaps the most important language skill and that is listening so I want to discuss with you how to enhance your listening skills and more specifically I want to give you five tips where is it there we go five tips on how you can enhance your listening so if you are just joining us in the chat please tell us your name where you're from tell us how you're doing but I want to talk to you about listening today and this is a good practice because right now you are listening to me and practicing your skills so I'm going to tell you about five different tips about how you can improve your listening skills and I'm gonna put some of those quotes down there that I like to heat that I like like this one says don't just hear the words listen to them so listening is a very very very important skill so let's first talk about why listening is so important just a moment ago I told you that it is perhaps the most important language skill and this is true and the reason I think this is true is because it is the one skill that we get a lot of exposure to alright we here listening all the time alright we hear it when we're in conversation we hear it on the radio we hear it when we are watching TV or movies all the time we are listening and listening and listening we are doing that much more than any of the other major language skills and that's why it's so important and for me I personally think it's the most difficult skill I think a lot of people out there they find like speaking or reading might be the most difficult but for me for some reason listening has always been the most challenging so I speak some Spanish I'm comfortable with Spanish I've lived a couple of years in spanish-speaking countries but still to this day when I'm having a conversation in Spanish it's very easy for me to tune out and stop paying attention and then all of a sudden I rejoined the conversation and I'm thinking oh my gosh what what are we talking about what's going on so I don't know if you also have challenge listening but it is very important so hopefully these tips will help you if you do find it challenging and even if listening is one of your stronger skills these tips are still relevant they are still very important excellent we got a lot of people joining us Nate hello from Lao awesome purl India we got a lot of people here Tong from Vietnam Barbara from Poland excellent thank you guys for joining us today we're going to talk about ways to enhance your listening skills and again like right now you're practicing your listening skills because you are watching this video and hopefully this will help the other reason why listening is important is because it is a very effective way of learning a language and a lot of people who study languages you know agree or disagree about what's the most effective way the people that think that listening is the most important usually do this by observing you know children young children all of us as we're growing up you know the first skill that young children or babies are exposed to is listening that's all they're doing for those first couple of years is listening listening listening and then they start to speak and it's usually a little slurred noncoherent and then speaking is the next skill but listening is the one skill that people use to learn the language and then they can start to speak it so it is very very important Ricardo great to see you again Jose from Colombia awesome so if you're in the chat let me know again I just told you for me listening is the most difficult language skill what it what do you think is the most difficult language skill between the major ones listening speaking reading or writing which is the most difficult for you we are all different today I'm going to tell you five tips to enhance your listening and this is relevant it is important whether listening is one of the easier skills or whether like me it is one of the more difficult skills for you and this is one of my favorite quotes down there at the bottom if you are not listening you're not learning and that's pretty obvious and it is very true that in order to learn listening is very important alright so the first tip that I have for you to enhance your listening skills is be attentive and be engaged as I just told you for me listening is the most difficult even when I'm having a conversation in another language it's easy for me to lose focus and then all of a sudden I try to rejoin the conversation and it's more difficult to follow along and understand what that person was saying and then I often have to ask them could you please repeat yourself so it is very important to focus on the conversation and one good way to do that is to maintain good eye contact when you're using good eye contact and looking at the other person or you are looking at the other people who you are speaking to or who are speaking to you then it is very easy to pay attention to what they're saying and show that you are engaged in the conversation again if you're just joining us let us know in the chat where are you from what's your name tell us how your weekend is going some of you are showing up it seems like for me speaking is the most difficult again other people speaking so yeah I know speaking is definitely a challenge I think this is cuz most of us would like more opportunities to speak that is the one good thing about listening and trying to practice and improve your listening is that there are so many good resources out there and like I said you're practicing your listening skills right now because you're listening to me you are able to communicate with me in the chat and write but I know that speaking is a challenge for many of you the other thing about listening in order to be attentive and engaged is you're not just listening to the words and following the conversation there are other things that you should listen for as well for example listen to the tone of the person who is speaking do they sound happy do they sound sad do they sound excited this will help give more meaning to the topic that you are discussing or that the other person is telling you about also listen for intonation again this will help you distinguish whether it is a statement or a question is it a falling intonation when they're just making a statement or is it a rising intonation are they asking you a question rising intonation this is going to help if you can identify these little things then it's going to help your listening skills in understanding what the person is telling you and again I know some of you speaking and they talked about that quote down there if speaking is silver then listening is gold for me listening is gold which is why I really really really want to improve my listening skills so if you're just joining us today we're talking about five listening skills five tips to enhance your listening skills Antonio from Costa Rica excellent welcome pura vida' that is actually one of the spanish-speaking countries I used to live in so it's great to have you let's look at the next tip number two is picture what the person is saying now when you're reading this is exactly what we're doing you're reading a story you're reading an article and you are creating the pictures in your mind because it helps you to follow what you're reading try to do the same thing when you are listening to somebody it's a little more challenging because listening it goes much faster we can all read at whatever pace we want to and then we can go back and reread to help us understand when you're listening typically it could go very quickly and you really have to try to follow it which is why the first part of being attentive is very important now the next part like I said number two picture what you're saying the way you can do this is by focusing on key words so if somebody says some key words something that is like an adjective which is very descriptive try to put that pick in your mind because when you create these pictures it's going to help you concentrate and follow the conversation and as they say another very very famous quote a picture is worth a thousand words so let's look at tip number three the next tip that I have for you guys is right here put the conversation in context this is something that I would tell students all the time and I know a lot of you who are following us some of you are joining us are also English teachers and I imagine you may be telling this to your students all the time is to put things in into context and context basically means that you understand the words or the meaning before and after a certain word or phrase that maybe you don't understand but because you understand the words at the beginning and at the end you can kind of understand the entire meaning of everything because when you are having a conversation and you are listening to somebody they may say a word or a phrase that maybe you're unfamiliar with maybe it's a phrasal verb or it could be an idiom but because you understand the entirety of the conversation you can kind of guess what that meaning is so try to put things into context Patricia from France hello welcome glad to have you guys joining us again if you just joined us we're talking about different five tips to help enhance your listening and let us know your name and where you're from in the context in the comments talking about context it's in my mind so how can we put things into context well listen for you know those key question markers those that who the what the where the when the why the how if you can kind of follow along with that it's going to help you put the entire conversation into context and you'll be able to understand what the person is talking about now this is probably more important or very important when you're not having a direct conversation when you're maybe listening to or the radio or maybe you're listening to a podcast because you're not able to see someone it becomes a little more challenging and that's why it's more important to put these things that you hear into context another good way to put things into context is to ask yourself what might happen next this is a good way to check your own comprehension so as somebody is telling you a story or as you're listening to somebody speak maybe ask yourself like where are they going with this what do you think they're going to talk about next what's going to happen next and even if you are right even if you if you are wrong if you are able to think about something that they may talk about next then that means that you've pretty much understood what has already been said that you were able to effectively listen to what that person was saying and you're able to kind of think well what might happen next so this is a good comprehension check that you can do on your own while you are listening to a conversation or again if you're listening to the radio or a podcast and really check your comprehension mohamad hi how are you great to hear from you this is great hello from Hong Kong awesome we have people from all over the world this is wonderful the next tip the next listening tip that I want to talk to you about is this one right here where it where is it let's see number three whoops I'm missing number four let's be fun number four oh gosh I don't have number four up here so let me add it real quickly so again this is let's remove this using this platform I can add something what was it called I want to talk to you about some pronunciation resources that you can use and again I went through this before making sure everything was perfect and then realized come game time it's like oh wait it's missing so listening resources in the chat if you're in here I want you to tell me what pronunciation are what listening resources do you like to use what do you think is helpful while I add this and get this up here all right so [Music] okay so and there we go you can tell we're live because again this was not planned all right so hopefully you can see you should be able to see this again I want to ask you what's listening resources you use because the other tip that I wanted to talk to you about is this right here is about using a variety of listening materials as I said before that this is listening is something that I don't think many people or as many people have trouble with again I have trouble with it but a reason that they may feel this way is because there are so many resources out there for people to use so let me know in the comments which resources which listening resources do you like to use because my suggestion would be to use a variety of them again if you're having a conversation you're going to be using your listening skills if you are listening to the radio or podcast you're using your listening skills video TV movies YouTube right now you were using your listening skills music is another big one I think a lot of us listen to music in English if you listen to music in English let me know write it in the comments write in in the chat who is your favorite music artist who do you listen to and then online resources there are a lot of them out there you can just go on to google and type in I put it in quotes just type in online listening comprehension practice if you put that in there and look at the results it's going to give you a list of different sites that you can go to that you can use to practice your listening skills to practice your comprehension skills so I would recommend in order to improve your listening use a variety of skills and again I think a lot of us are using you know TV movies YouTube of course but try to make it a little more difficult try to make it a little more challenging go find a podcast and listen to that because you are then you're not going to get those visual cues and actually have a picture of what's happening you are then gonna have to put that picture in your mind which is going to help you practice and and really try to identify the different material that you are listening to so again people are talking about I think YouTube is a great resources prefer to watch sitcoms so again anything that you like to watch and enjoy it is a great way to practice your listening and again this is often a fun way of practicing English because we want to watch these TV shows we want to watch these movies and we want to listen to music so it really really really helps so again use a variety of resources when you want to improve your listening skills the last one the last tip I have for you which you probably already saw it was up there before is this one is to ask questions again this is good to show that you understood or you comprehend what you just heard a lot of times when I would teach business English and I would have students talk to me about their getting ready to do a job interview and I would tell them that in the job interview you should always ask questions at the end if you're asking questions then that means that you're interested you were engaged in what was happening and what you were talking about in the interview process so always ask questions because it really shows the other person that you are engaged in the conversation and that you are listening and it's also a good way again to check your own comprehension that you are asking a follow-up question about you know what you're talking about to get more information and it shows engagement the last thing I want to tell you is and I know this is something that none of us like to do is that it's okay to ask somebody to repeat I would do this all the time and especially if you are maybe an intermediate learner or even more of an a high beginner you're going to have to ask people to repeat if you don't understand and there's nothing wrong with that it is perfectly fine and it's just going to help you in the long run because it's going to help your listening comprehension if they repeat it again and then you understand then you're going to retain that information the next time you are having a similar conversation so I would do it all the time even if you're an advanced learner you know don't worry it's okay just ask somebody can you please repeat that it's no problem what does comprehension mean comprehension just means understanding all right show comprehension of what you just heard show understanding of what you just heard so again somebody said there are subtitles - yeah subtitles ebooks with transcripts questionings not easy exactly you guys are sharing great stuff the last question I had for you is in there that picture that image you see FAQ that is an acronym can you tell me what does it mean what does FAQ stand for we're talking about asking questions what do you think it means FAQ so again today we're just talking about five tips to help you enhance and improve your listening okay so in case you don't know FAQ stands for this is something you will see on the internet a lot because there are websites you will go to and it'll say FAQ it stands for frequently asked questions all right I'll write that in the chat for you so you guys know frequently asked questions alright excellent got it if you guys have any questions if you have any frequently asked questions for us what I would tell you to do in this video go to the comment section once it gets published and write a question ask us a question about anything related to listening skills or anything related to English please let us know ask away but just write them in the comments so that is all for today's quick lesson talking about five tips to enhance your listening skills I hope you guys are able to use these tips and practice them because in general it is going to help you improve your overall English fluency I promise you alright so thank you guys so much for watching please please please like and share this lesson with others if you have questions again I told you just write them in the comments and the very last thing I would tell you to do is to join our social media classes we're on facebook Instagram snapchat and Twitter it's another good way to practice and improve your English skills thank you guys for watching I hope you have a wonderful weekend and if you are watching this it's in the future sometime I just hope you have a wonderful day all right we will see you guys next time

Channel: Interactive English

Views: 28,349

Keywords: Learn English, Interactive English, Learn English Online, Study English, 5 listening tips, how to improve your listening, english listening lesson, enhance your listening skills, awesome english tips, english listening practice, how to listen in english, escuchar ingles, english lesson listening, listen to english, fun listening lesson, improve listening skills, i want to listen to english, listening practice, how to improve listening, english listening skills

Id: E-CLHF7zSOA

Length: 24min 55sec (1495 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 16 2017