Practicing Listening Skills to Improve Understanding

Practicing listening skills is key to becoming fluent in any language, as it is required to understand the spoken language. Often students of English who are not surrounded by that language find it extremely difficult to understand spoken English, particularly when listening to a native speaker. To make matters worse, English is spoken in a wide variety of accents and dialects around the world ranging from Scottish to South African to Eastern American to Indian. How can you possibly improve your understanding?

Well first of all, in Spain it is very common for English movies and television to be dubbed over in Spanish. This practice is unfortunate because it means that students of English do not get the opportunity to hear the language often and easily (not to mention you’re missing out on the amazing voices of actors like Robert DeNiro and Meryl Streep!). Here’s what you can do to avoid this issue.

Go online. There are so many streaming services online that you can access which have hundreds of movies and TV shows in English! Some of these sites are even free, like YouTube, and you can usually add subtitles. I recommend using English subtitles while you watch in English, otherwise you risk spending the whole time just reading rather than listening. Some great YouTube channels include TED-ex, Crash Course, and Be Kind Rewind.

Other media you can use to practice listening includes podcasts (NPR, BBC radio), radio broadcasts, news, and even audiobooks (audible.com). Many of these provide transcripts that you can read after or while listening. A good practice is to listen to the audio once through without reading anything. Then listen again, this time while reading subtitles or a transcript. Lastly, listen and look up any words you didn’t know and put them into whatever flashcard system you have for studying language. Try listening to an English book you've already read in Spanish. You'll know the story so it'll be easier to follow in English.

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