How to Improve your English Listening Skills

Listening is a crucial skill when it comes to learning a new language.

Did you know on average we spend 45% of our time listening to others. Followed by 30% speaking, then 16% reading and finally 9% writing.

It's very common for ESL learners to have great vocabulary, or excellent pronunciation, or even superb reading and writing skills all in English. But they still may struggle with listening in English.

Common problems include:

• People speaking too fast to follow.
• Cannot tell where the words start and stop.
• Cannot work out the details being said.
• Cannot pick out the most important parts to understand.
• People pronouncing words they cannot understand.

If you want to improve your English listening skills. There are certain things you can do:

1. Expose yourself to listening to English everyday.

It might seem pretty obvious this, but listening to English everyday will improve to your listening skills over time. As an ESL learner, it's not critical to understand every single word you listen to when listening to an audio such as a podcast or an audiobook. The key here is regular exposure.

2. Think of a daily time when you can easily to English.

Almost everyone has a time in the day when they can easily listen to English whilst doing another task. Some examples include: your journey to and from work, doing chores around the house, or while completing a simple task at work. You just need to play something and listen to it while completing another task.

3. Have a variety of sources to listen to.

The first topic for electrical engineers can be lectures, podcasts which focus on electrical engineering. Also think of other sources which interest you, perhaps politics, sport, even music in English.

4. Watch movies in English.

Watching movies will allow you to listen to English in a very enjoyable manner. Most movies have options to include subtitles in your native language, and also subtitles in English. The latter assists with connecting vocal speech with written dialogue. Where eventually you will be able to watch English movies without any subtitles!

If you are committed to improving your English listening skills, there are free sources you can use to complete listening activities. One good example is https://www.esl-lab.com/.

When it comes to listening, you want to follow these three steps:

1. Think about the topic.

Prior to listening to an audio or watching a video, there should be hints showing what is going to be the topic of the audio or video. Take a few moments thinking about key words in English related to the topic. This will enable you to be more prepared for what you're listening to.

2. Listening for gist.

When listening to something for the first time you want to listen for the overall picture of what is being discussed. Examples include: Who is speaking? What are they generally talking about? Where are they?

3. Listening for details.

Once you understand the gist, you want to listen for specific details; values, days, times, nouns are some examples. Then try to answer the questions, as shown in esl-lab.com.

When listening to the audios provided in esl-lab.com, make sure you don't read the transcript (shown as listening script) before listening to the audio track at least three times. When you're focusing on your listening skills, you are training your ears, and not your eyes for reading.

Other aspects to be aware of when it comes to listening in English include:

• Pronunciation
• Word stress
• Sentence stress
• Intonation
• Linking

I go through the aspects shown above in my program. I go further into improving listening skills, which includes listening to native and non-native English speakers. This is included in my English Communication Skills Program for Electrical Engineers.

I provide tailored lessons in my program which will help you improve your English listening skills substantially. If you are interested you can book a free 30 minute strategy session with me. I can provide you with the next steps you need to take in order to improve your all of your English communication skills including your listening skills.

Send me a message to get started improving your English communication skills today!

Simon Fletcher - MSc, BEng(Hons), TEFL - Simms Eng Consultancy 

Coaching Dedicated Electrical Engineers improve their job performance and accelerating their career progression by advancing their English Communication Skills!