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How To Develop Your English Listening Skills
The second largest
problem that an ESL student faces is to develop his
or her listening comprehension. If you are like most
ESL students, than you can probably comprehend a good
portion of what you read and are able to write at least
a little bit in English. But you get totally lost when
it comes to understanding what an English speaker is
saying during a regular conversation.
So, if that sounds like you, here is
an easy five step exercise that you can use to practice
and develop your listening ability.
For this exercise you will need a recording
of a short text that you can have a native speaker create
for you...or you can just swipe one off of the 49,790
Esl websites that exist out there in cyberspace.
Step One - Now that you have your recorded
text, go find a nice quiet place where you won't be
disturbed for the next forty-five minutes. Once you
are there listen to your recording three to five times
straight through without stopping. Each time you go
through it, write down how much you felt you understood
on a scale of one to ten.
Step Two - Listen to the recording a
couple more times. But this time, pause about every
fifteen seconds. At each pause think about what you
heard...the sounds, pronunciations, intonations, and
make note of those parts that seem to give you the most
trouble so you can come back to them later. Then move
on. Don't waste a lot of time here with what you don't
know yet. It will only frustrate you.
Step Three - This time you will listen
to the recording again, but do so with a transcription
of the recording in front of you as you follow along.
Pause every fifteen seconds or so, and underline the
sections that you noted earlier. See if you can understand
the text now that you have seen it written out. Note
the sections where the speaker seems to jumble words
together so you can later ask if that is really how
those words are pronounced...or if the person who recorded
the text was just a sloppy speaker and slurred his words
together.
Step Four - Listen to the whole text
a few more times while following along with the transcription.
This time, however, do not pause the recording. Just
let the recording roll, and keep up with it as best
you can. Keep doing this until you feel comfortable
listening to the recording and following along with
the transcription at the normal rate.
Step Five - Once you feel comfortable
with the text, and have a good grasp of what the speaker
is saying...put away your transcription. Now listen
to the recording several more times and make note of
how much you understand each time on a scale of one
to ten.
Finally, to wrap things up...ask several
people that you know speak English well to read the
text out loud to you. This will develop your listening
skill as each one person's voice is different. They
may even have different accents, pronunciations, intonations,
etc.
Do this everyday...or as often as you
can. You will soon notice a large improvement in your
English listening skills.
1howto.com
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