Acquiring listening skills is frustrating. This is because effective listening skills are acquired over time and with lots of practice. It’s sometimes frustrating because there are no rules that the speaker needs to follow when he speaks, you have to listen and make sense out of it. It’s active so you get tired, but at the end of the day it pays.
Please note: The following practices mentioned below have no scientific studies backing them, but they seem to have helped me, so give them a try.
1) The most basic thing you require to be an effective listener other than having a perfectly good set of ears is concentration. Now to increase your concentration, eavesdrop. Now that might sound funny but it really helps. Whenever you are on a subway, waiting for a train, in a train, bus, restaurant, crowded place just try to listen to what people are saying. Just close your eyes and listen to the conversations and try to make sense out of it. Concentrate, slowly and steadily it will increase your power of concentration and help you become an effective listener.
2) Similarly when you are at a secluded space, be it your room or a hill top, just close your eyes and listen to the surrounding, listen to the chirping of the birds, listen to the blaring noise on a distant loudspeaker, listen to the kids playing in the park besides your house, just listen.
3) Learn grammar once again, brush up your skills, the structure of sentences. This will help in understanding what a person is saying because most follow the basic rules of grammar when they speak, and it helps.
4) Every time you listen a new word look it up in a dictionary, understand what it means, and try to make a few sentences using it. This will help increase your vocabulary and the next time you hear the word you will catch it without mistaking it for something else. One good site that will help you understand what a word sounds like is the Merriam-Webster online dictionary. It also has audio links wherein you can actually listen to the word and how it sounds. This site is basically used by most editors as a benchmark for word formats.
5) Watch English movies preferably with English subtitles which will help you to understand what you have missed listening. Move on to listening to BBC, CNN news channels, Nat Geo, Discovery, History, Cartoon Network, whatever you like, but try to listen and make out as much as you can. This will help you to understand different accents and make you comfortable with the way English is used.
6) Take a final script and its audio file, and try listening to audio, understand what you have listened, and check with the final script whether you were wrong or right.
7) Come up with your own ideas. Feedbacks for more such practice ideas and always welcome, please write to me at ramakant.salian@morningstar.com
Here are some jokes and quotes to lighten you up!
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