13 Tips: How to Improve Listening Skills in English

You may be perplexed in thinking how you will improve your listening skills in English in the wide array of resources out in the world. Countless courses in English are available, with different curricula, methods of learning, and techniques suggested by the experts, and all of them tell you different methods. It is a puzzling matter to choose one or more from all of them. Then what would be the technique that will make me overwhelmed and make me learn pretty quickly? Do you want to know how to improve listening skills in English? Here, I am giving some authentic tips. Follow it to improve your listening skills.

This piece of writing has described a lot of ways to improve English listening skills. Before going deep, you have to learn why listening skills are essential for learning spoken English.

Why is listening essential?

People of the world have learned language through listening. When a baby listens to any language or mother tongue, they listen to the words and sounds that continue around them. They grasp the way of speaking, language type, and the necessary vocabulary. Every time they listen to the words through situation-based words, they capture it in mind. Unknowingly, they form the time sense, intonation, accent, and interpretation of the words that others say.

So, listening can only improve your English speaking skills very effectively. If you consider any other language except the mother tongue, you can learn and speak by listening. All grammatical senses, tense sense, and other word utilization techniques come to mind through spontaneous listening. I have not personally learned Hindi and English from any institute, but through listening to people and media. Today, thousands of media are there for growing language skills through listening.

Here are some crucial reasons for listening and learning:

• When listening, people can grab different kinds of vocabulary, grammatical usage, accents and intonations, and many interpretations. People try to listen more than write.
• It is the best way to learn situation-based new words.
• Through entertaining media, we can learn English. Thus, you can grow your general news, information, sports news, or anything else that you want to learn. 
• When someone listens to the words from a spontaneous event, you can easily learn the words of the related events or topics. If you watch sports commentary, you can easily learn the entire vocabulary related to the specific sports.
• People can easily imitate the words, intonation, and way of speaking of what they are listening to, and then their confidence in the spoken English learners grows.
• You can watch and listen to events, reels, and social media videos from the online platforms that are your hobby or that you prefer. You can listen to the process of cooking, ironing, bodybuilding, and relaxing when you are resting. So, there is no waste of time at all. It satisfies your hobby after all.
• When you practice listening, you are training yourself to listen confidently.
• Listening helps you to support your understanding power after listening to any English conversation. If someone utters words that you cannot understand, there is no meaning in learning English theories of learning the bookish language.
• When you are listening, you are training your attention. So, you can easily be able to understand the words of others.

13 Tips- How to Improve Listening Skills in English 

Learn 13 tips to improve your listening skills and improve your spoken English. Let’s learn the tips. 

1. Prepare Yourself
 

Life is full of challenges. As you keep prepared for the challenges in life, you have to be prepared to learn spoken English with complete determination. You have to set yourself in these steps that may improve your progress. They are goal setting, plan making, and tracking of your progress.

Setting a goal: If you do not set a goal, you will not run and move. If you want to be a native speaker, you have to master the art of grammar learning. There are almost 1 million words in the English language, but at least 50,000 words you should learn to speak like a native speaker. No, it is not a big deal. You will learn them from the situations you will face in everyday life. Set the goal to grab all the words you face every day.

There are many other goals while learning a foreign language. Set the goal for every parameter and try to reach the target. Or else, you will not reach the target. So, the dream of learning a language will be unfulfilled.

The people who take admission spend a lot of money, spend time without learning, and then they do not become masters of spoken English. It is for not setting the goal. So, set it.

Plan making: If you do not make a plan, you cannot reach anywhere. It is true for the everyday life of all people. If you want to visit a place, you have to plan for clothing, medicines, a residing location, the way to visit, food, and all. How your pet will go with you or your kids’ response to the entire journey, how they will feel comfortable during the journey, and everything you have to plan. If you do not succeed in planning, you will surely stumble and face a lot of hindrances.

Therefore, make a plan for learning English and strictly follow it. Otherwise, you will not be successful in gaining spoken English skills.

For this, you can set a goal of a weekly checklist (you can try it daily). A sample specimen of setting a goal and meaning success is mentioned here:

First phase: You can select a short English podcast by using the transcript.

Second phase: Listen to the podcast without accessing the transcription.

Third phase: This time, you can try bringing out the grammar, vocabulary, intonation, way of speaking, and all. Then, note it down.

Fourth phase: Repeat and revise studying the same document where you have noted everything down.

Fifth phase: You can write a summary or description of what you have learned from it. This is very helpful to learn spoken English proficiently. Then, read aloud so that you can feel and understand what you have written. Reading will improve your word pronouncing efficiency. If you feel your pronunciation is not perfect, you can consult any institute or organization where you can pursue an Online Spoken English Course.

Phase six: Analyze where you are lacking, and how you can improve your learning achievement.

Having regular and consistent achievement is the key to success, and listening to English podcasts and preferred things will help you reach the goal.

Measure the success:

After setting the goal and trying to reach it, you need to measure yourself after a regular interval, how much you have achieved success. According to the data of the last test and trial, you have to be more determined so that you can achieve success in reaching the goal. You can rate yourself any number in 10. When you try the next set of phases or dates, you have to keep a target to get 10 on 10. Make a planner for every task. Use pen or paper or use an application to track the planner.

2. Be an active listener
 

When you are an active listener, you will understand what is discussed or uttered in the podcast or movies. If you are not an active listener, you will not understand. You will not engage with your full heart when you are not active. Being an active listener will make you aware of everything they are uttering.

If you do not practice active listening, you cannot understand the whole thing being discussed. So, when something is discussed on TV, the internet, or any social platform, you must practice active listening. It requires mental engagement. You may have the idea about the two words “seeing” and “watching”. In this factor, you may hear but not be an active listener. So, engage completely in listening. You will understand more than ever. Either you are in front of electronic media or a person speaking. Engage yourself and be an active listener always.

If you are in the environment of a mother tongue-speaking zone, you can easily understand without being an active listener. But when you are on a platform where you need to understand something in other languages, you must engage your mind. You are required to be an active listener by engaging your mind.

If you are an active listener, you will ask questions when you are listening to something. Otherwise, they note their questions down on paper to discuss the query later. This is the way to improve your spoken skills drastically more than ever. Active listeners can understand the meaning of unknown words by matching the meaning of previous and later said sentences. It is a great pro for any English learner.

3. Listen and study a little at a time
 

If you select any video channel or podcast channel to learn spoken English, you have to proceed with a small selection. Select the length of one minute at a time if it is a long video. Study minutely for this one-minute length. Listen again and again and try to understand what the video conveys to us. When you are accustomed to English words more and more and understand their meaning, you can carry on watching lengthy videos without any pause. It is for the improvement of listening skills. If you want to know how to improve Listening Skills in English, this trick works excellently.

4. Try Different Contents
 

There are different types of practice for improving listening skills in English. Video content is the most common but effective way to improve listening skills. Which types of videos will you watch? You must entertain almost all types of videos, describing variable topics—from cartoons to funny videos, from English podcasts to typical English movies. Listen to radio, audiobooks, YouTube, podcasts, and more.

How do they help?

• Radio

A Radio has a wide variety of listening sources. On the other hand, you have to listen only and understand. This medium has great importance in improving listening skills in English.

• Podcasting channels

Listening to podcasting channels improves your English listening skills effectively. If you want to improve your spoken English learning skills along with listening practice, podcast channels work effectively.

• Audiobooks

Millions of English audiobooks are available on the web. You can listen to them online. Some of them are downloadable. Downloading is the best way to listen to it any time when you like. Improving listening skills in English means that you can easily understand English through listening. Audiobooks help it.

• YouTube

It is a great platform where trillions of videos are available. The total length of YouTube videos is 94,643 years (if someone wants to watch). So, find some video channels from which you can continue learning English through listening. To improve listening skills in English, you can continue watching YouTube.

5. Listen and sing alone
 

Who does not want to listen to music? Almost all people have their own special choice of listening to music. So, play the songs you like most and sing with it. There are some free times when people arrange the room, or do some simple work at home. Then they can listen to English music and sing with it. This will improve the listening and understanding capacity, along with breaking the stiffness of the mouth to pronounce the English words.

…and rap lovers can surely play it loudly and sing.

6. Listen to the same content for the entire week
 

Choose one video and watch it multiple times a week. You can watch it and listen to the entire speech minutely and with perfect concentration. This will help you understand almost all words, tones, accents, and pronunciations of words. You can play subtitles so that you can understand everything you want. When you watch and listen to its entire content for the entire week, it will improve your spoken English skills and increase your vocabulary.

7. Listen to conversation in English
 

If you reside in such a location where some groups of people speak in English, you can stand aside and listen to them in casual places. However, it might make you feel awkward.

Eavesdropping on neighbors peeping through the window is also a criminal offense. Then, how will you listen to the words of others while they converse?

Go to the YouTube social platform and bring out some street Vlogs, shopping videos, conversations with others, etc. Try to listen to the conversation of the Vloggers and try to understand. No objection… no complaints, no oddities. Just enjoy, listen to the conversations, and learn. Try to learn new words that they are using, and note them down for further use.

8. 15 Minutes Intensive Listening
 

Play an audio file or audiobook in a place where there is no distortion. Close the doors and avoid all disturbing events. Then, play the audiobook, keep 100% concentration, and listen to the English audiobook. Try to grasp each and every word and the meaning of the sentence. You have to keep in mind that sentence constructions have a lot of twists. You must try to understand the meaning of all sentences.

There are some moments when the speaker takes a break from speaking, and speeds up again. They may pause, and then start. They may intonate vocal sounds in some specific places, as you do in your mother tongue. Listen to all these, be conscious of learning, and improve your English speaking skills.

If you cannot understand the meaning of any sentence, note it down. Then, clear it out from any teacher or spoken English teacher. In this way, you can learn spoken English very effectively. If 15 minutes pass, you can continue or release yourself from this pressure of time-bound, intensive listening and learning.

9. Concentrate and grab the root words
 

At the very beginning, practicing listening to any English topic of conversation is tough. So, you must not try to grasp every single word of a complete movie, discussion, or conversation. You just, have to listen to the highlighted main words of the conversation. Listen to the root word and try to grasp the next set of discussions.

If you get the word, “for instance,” you have to understand that you are about to get an example of the discussion matter.

At the same time, when your friend or colleague has been describing the episodes of stories in front of you, you should grasp most highlighting words, such as bad, boring, exciting, coming soon, dashing, mind-blowing, and similar words. You can also use these words for using similar purposes, as the case may be.

10. Listen in Detail and try to Understand
 

The last point, we tried to discuss about picking some important words from the topic of discussion. Once you feel comfortable that you can now enter the deeper thought process and understand, you can carry on.

Try to understand the entire topic after listening to the event or discussion. You can pursue the Online Spoken English Course from a great organization to get professional training. This course can improve your English listening and speaking skills.

For example, if you try to understand the weather report for any zone or region, you have to listen to it carefully. When the weather report has been forecasted, you will get some new weather-related terms, names of cities, and the way to pronounce them.

You can also be careful to grasp the stress of words, the way to intonate, and so on.

11. Read and listen
 

It is a great idea to learn English. Bring out a text that you like most and read loudly. When you read, you will clear your pronunciation and the chocking fear to utter words from mouth. At the same time loud reading, you can listen to it. Reading and listening happen to you at the same time. When I was a little school-going, my parents and others used to say to read loudly. It works fantastically.

On the other hand, you can continue in a vice-versa format. Just play an English video, and listen to the conversation of the movie. At the same time, read the subtitles. It will also work fantastically, as you can get two versions at a time. Real-life conversation and native pronunciation with accent along with reading, help a lot to progress the listening and understanding skills of English.

Another way to listen and read is to play an audiobook and then read the written format of the same book. This will also help you a lot to improve your spoken English skills.

12. Listen to and Speak
 

Listen to a sentence repeatedly. Play a podcast, an audiobook, or similar things where you can listen and replay them again and again. Try to understand what the speaker says. Then, repeat the same sentence exactly as they have pronounced and modulated the voice. This process is called SHADOWING. It is also a great way to listen and learn English.

Your voice modulation, intonation, accent, and speed of speaking must be matched with the audio you have listened to. It will help you acquire the quality to improve the rhythm of speaking and word pronunciation.

13. Listen and write
 

If you want to learn spoken English quickly, you should practice listening and writing formulas. It is also called transcribing. It is what you are writing from listening to. Discover the typical pronunciation of words of native speakers. Once you can write all the words pronounced in an audiobook or spoken in a video, you have learned a lot. At the very beginning, you will face complications, but after a few days of practicing, you can make it clear. Your triumph is assured. At the time of writing, you must pay close attention to spelling. In this way, you can improve your listening skills in English and learn English proficiently.

These are the most remarkable factors in improving spoken English skills. if you want to get guided by a professional English teaching organization, you can contact FastInfo Class, the most trusted organization for learning English. You can pursue online spoken English from here at the lowest ever cost.