Oral English

Listen on not to listen, that’s the question

Are you able to understand English when someone speaks to you or when you listen to it? If your answer is “no” I invite you to read this advice.

When you do a listening activity, you should specify your objectives and then you can be called “good listener”.

To understand oral English you should practise all kinds of listening strategies: listening to songs in English, listening to the radio, listening to people talking in English (conversations), etc.

In addition, you should pay a lot of attention to the person who is speaking or to what you are listening to (radio, listening activities in the classroom, etc), to be able to understand the meaning of the speech and recognize the main points or ideas of the speaker. It is necessary to evaluate the speaker's message in order to understand the topic.

You should also integrate listening activities into daily speaking, writing, reading and different experiences.

As it is said in this site (www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/docs/mla/speak.html), I recommend you to plan opportunities to practise listening for different purposes in a variety of contexts (social situations, formal situations, face to face...).

It is also important to adjust the length of listening time to your listening skills as if you have a low level you won’t be able to understand a recording that lasts too much.

It will be useful for you, if you practise listening by using pre-listening, listening, and post-listening activities.

If you want to understand oral English effectively, you must get used to listening everything in English, as you will begin to understand new words, you will be able to understand what people say without translating it into your mother tongue, and after a while, you will understand and speak English fluently.

In my personal opinion, you should find enjoyable ways to improve your level of listening comprehension such as watching your favourite films, series, and programmes in English, listening to English songs, your favourite ones, if you have them, playing funny listening games in English, etc. It is better to learn things in a funny way as if it is too boring, you will stop doing it and you won’t improve anything.

Finally, according to (http://esl.about.com/cs/teachinglistening/a/a_tlisten.htm), teachers say that students should listen for short periods of time, (five to ten minutes), and they shouldn’t expect to improve their skills very quickly.

This webpage might be useful to practice your listening skill.

www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/topic-group/speaking-and-listening