1. Listening tips
José Antonio Alcalde
Listening is usually a hard activity for many students. There are some typical difficulties:
We only have the sound and little extra help (pictures, visuals, context....). This is very artificial
in real life (except for listening to the radio or having a telephone conversation) because we
often have other extralinguistic help.
We are very stressed in this type of exercises
We need a lot of attention and concentration for little pieces of information
Listening activities are not very frequent and considered an extra for many teachers
We normally cannot ask for repetitions, clarifications, etc.
Here are some tips to help you when you are doing some listening activities:
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Anticipate yourself to the listening itself by predicting contents, words, topics,
expressions... from the title, pictures, instructions, etc. Brainstorming can help you
here a lot.
Read carefully all the directions or questions you have to answer in advance
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If possible, take notes of important pieces of information to help your memory.
Listening activities are usually fast and you will forget easily.
Try to concentrate on key words that are important: they usually are repeated all
through the listening activity.
Remember that English is based on stress and not so much on syllables: do not
expect to listen to all the letters and syllables you can see when we write in English.
Also remember that words are often linked when we speak and it is important to
separate them.
Sometimes sounds are also affected by neighbouring consonants so they can be
blended.
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Revise your answers before handing back the test.
Use common sense and logic when possible
Practice listening at home: listen to TV programs in English, music, podcast,
videos...