HOW TO STRENGTHEN ENGLISH LISTENING HABITS

Now, in order to strengthen your English listening habits for an extra leverage, let us take a look at the three types of listening one must indulge into and further ways to improving your skills in each.

Type 1: Passive or Inactive Listening

Passive listening plays a dormant role in the communication process. The listener simply listens and absorbs the meaning of the language and is not expected to react or put his views across. As a foreign learner, passive listening allows you to acquaint the verbal form of speech and take time to assimilate what you listen. It is the most comfortable way of taking massive input. Here are some important aspects you can instill to maximise learning from passive listening:

Focus on understanding each word in individual sense and in correlation with the constructed sentences. Do not deviate your concentration in putting emphasis on preconception of the context while listening.

● Rehearse and summarise in your mind what you comprehended from the speech as an aftermath.
● Take note on how vocabulary is used interchangeably to get a hand on varied ways of expressive ability.
● If possible, pen down the main frame of sentences in short hand for further reference.
● Keep observation on the pauses used while conveying the emotion of the context. There are clause, sentence and paragraph pauses in conversational speech in a rhythmic pattern which you must focus on while listening English.

● As a foreign listener, at times the speech might sound out of your pace to absorb the meaning of it. Do not get intimidated with the volume of words and sentences while listening as it might keep you from taking whatever input you can anyway.
● In case of listening live to a speaker, note the lip movement made while pronouncing the syllables, vowels and consonants differently.


Type 2: Extensive Listening

Furthermore and beyond specific information, Extensive listening includes listening to long textual narratives which in return builds the listener’s stamina to take in more and more bulk of conversational language and understand the contextual reference in larger lengths. After listening to a particular audio book on repetitive mode, you will observe that you are consciously picking up the pronunciation and can fairly summarise the meaning in portions. Extensive listening is a great self tutoring method for learning second languages. While making extensive listening a habit, keep the following points in mind for exceptional learning.

● Use different mediums like English audio books, recordings, videos, entertainment pieces, musicals, debates and dialogues for extracting a variety of accents, speech alterations and genres of vocal English.
● To avoid hurtling up while listening extensively, pick a topic of interest and listen through till the end.
● Since mostly you can repeat and take a pause while listening to prerecorded mediums, list down new words and phrases you come across and look up for the meaning of complex vocabulary to keep up with the flow of speech.
● One of the best way to keep a log of different pronunciations while listening to voluminous text is to pen down the words as they sound. This will give you an edge on the phonic tone to understand what you listen better.

Type 3: Responsive Listening

In interpersonal communication, responsive listening is the half kernel of the two way process. Now as a non native learner, getting into habit of responsive listening is a place where you are active as a listener as well as a speaker. Engaging yourself with this type of listening will build your grasping speed and make you spontaneous with the language. Once you start practising it as a habit, you can further optimise listening through these elements:

Responsive listening is a behavioural act. Keep the focal point on listening calmly rather than getting anxious about how you would frame your response. Ask the speaker to reiterate if you do not get the context clearly. It is always better and elucidating to seek clarification rather than responding in irrelevance.

Take time to apprehend what you listen before jumping to a response. It is observed that very often people practice prejudiced listening and neglect the minutes. As a settler to the foreign language you must keep a flexible and open mind while listening so as to ingest the actual meaning of what is being spoken.


DISCLAIMER: Some of the photos, links are not owned by the site, and/ or not being stored by the site. Comments are views expressed by the readers www.dailydoseofeverything.blogspot.com may not be held liable for the views of readers exercising their right of freedom to express. If you think we should remove those aforementioned elements due to copyright infrequent, feel free to tell us, and we will comply.

Daily Dose of Everything