listening comprehension

English listening comprehension strategies and practice exercises

June 25, 2015 Meredith Cicerchia English, Strategies 0 Comments

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Depending on what you’re listening to, making sense of the English language can be a challenging skill to master, particularly when more than one person is speaking. ESL programs often provide language labs for practice, but there’s a wealth of listening material available on the web that can help you get more creative with your English listening exercises.
So how can you improve your listening comprehension skills in English and start catching more language? Try these listening strategies and then practice your comprehension skills with daily exercises. You’ll be ready for your next English challenge in no time.

How listening comprehension works

Listening for meaning is one of those real-time skills that requires you to process English as you hear it. In real world listening, there’s no pause button or going back to re-play a conversation once it’s happened. Everyone has developed listening strategies in their native language, but sometimes we don’t allow these comprehension strategies to transfer over to our second language.
For listening comprehension to take place, you first need to be able to hear where one English word stops and the next starts. This is called parsing English speech and is one of several essential skills for success in beginner-level listening exercises.
Once you can do this, your brain will listen for English vocabulary you already know and register it. Did you know that even in our mother tongues, we don’t necessarily listen to words in the order in which they are said?
Instead our brains function like fly-paper, activating the language we recognize and then putting words together to make the most probable meaning and achieve comprehension.

This is why listening to English is much easier in conversation or in a context where you know the person and can guess what he or she is speaking about. Listening to English out of context doesn’t always allow us to activate our ‘prior knowledge’ of a situation or subject and this can get in the way of comprehension (which is why listening tests and exams are so hard). Learn more about listening skills in a second language including top-down and bottom-up strategies.

Strategies for listening in English

Listen without trying to understand. Take out a pen and paper and write down the English you recognize. Simply try listening for English words you know and forget about comprehension. When the listening practice is over, look down at your words and try to re-arrange them to make some kind of English meaning. Next, listen again and write down everything you hear. You may even find you learn some new words from your notes!
Think about your topic before the listening starts. If you know you’re going to be listening to a speech on the history of the English language for example, write down all of the English words and ideas you already know related to this topic. It will help you activate the relevant part of your brain and facilitate your comprehension of the listening as you slot new knowledge into an existing schema. ESL practice exercises can be on a range of topics so listen out for early clues from the speaker as to the main idea(s).
Stay calm and don’t listen for every word. Many ESL learners panic when they haven’t understood something and this causes them to focus on what has already been said and miss the English currently being spoken. This is one of the most important strategies you can master. Don’t worry about understanding all of the English and instead focus on staying calm. Your brain knows how to listen in your first language, so give it a chance to do its thing in English.
Take guesses at the English you’ve heard. More often than not, our listening skills are better than we think they are. Our brains have subconsciously processed language we weren’t even aware we knew! Always take a guess at the meaning of an English listening passage as it’s better to be wrong than to have understood nothing.
Practice listening for the main idea. In listening, sometimes we can get lost trying to hold on to all of the details we have heard. This won’t necessarily improve our English comprehension skills as it’s more a test of short-term memory. Instead, try listening for English words on the same topic. This will help you piece together the main idea of the passage and you can worry about the details later.
Listen to various genres, voices and English speakers. If you want to improve your general English listening comprehension skills, then you need to be ready for a wide range of situations and speakers. Children’s voices can sometimes be difficult for ESL learners to understand as their English isn’t always correct or pronounced in a standard way. Similarly, elderly speakers and 2 or more men or women speaking at the same time can be confusing as it becomes difficult to differentiate the speakers’ voices. Stick with it. Remember, practice makes perfect and your comprehension will improve over time if you keep using these strategies.
Summarize your listening passage. One of the best ways to check your listening comprehension is to try to explain to someone else what it is that you understood. Practice summarizing the passage in English, either in writing or verbally, as it will help you identify gaps in your understanding and reinforce any new English vocabulary you learn.

Listening practice exercises

Watch English movies with English subtitles
ESL learners tend to think subtitles should be in their native tongue. Actually, you can help reinforce your listening skills by putting them in English. You’ll not only improve comprehension and practice English sound-letter correspondence (which is great for spelling), but you will probably learn some new English phrases too!
Children’s programs make great beginner exercises
Sesame street is a popular program that educates English speaking children teaching numbers, colors, adjectives and verbs. Episodes are often on very easy to understand topics and can be perfect listening practice for a beginner ESL learner.

Listen to English sports announcers
Listening to a match isn’t always easy as announcers speak quite quickly. However, they often use a very concentrated range of English sports vocabulary that you can familiarize yourself with beforehand. Practice listening to your favorite sports matches or see if you can watch a game where the announcer narrates the play in English.
Practice listening with cartoons and animated films
Disney films are often translated into a myriad of languages so choose one you already know and listen to it in English. The voices will give you practice understanding different tones and you won’t struggle at comprehension if you already know the gist of the story.
Watch the local news in English
Listening exercises that track the nightly news are perfect for lower-intermediate ESL learners. The English is often very straightforward to understand and on concrete topics and events which are easy to summarize. News stories will also frequently give you images and English headlines so you can catch the main ideas and focus on the details that follow.

Political speeches make great advanced English listening exercises
This is because you can usually get a copy of the speech to analyze the ideas on paper and see how the speaker has used the English language to create emotions and reactions for the audience. Listening practice that involves figurative language is excellent for more advanced ESL learners.
Watch English talk-shows and TV interviews
These English programs are great practice for listening to speech that’s emotional and full of starts and stops. English conversation isn’t always pretty and talk-shows give you a great example of English native-speakers engaging in impromptu dialogue.

Practice listening to English language music
Music is great for the language learner’s brain. All music, especially when you can get a copy of the lyrics. That’s because you can get distracted by melody and not even realize you’re practicing your English comprehension skills at the same time.
Looking for some recorded listening practice exercises on a variety of topics? Check this site. Strategies are important in both listening and reading, check out the rest of our blog posts on strategies and then give what you’ve learned a try! Have any tips for improving listening comprehension skills in English? Share them in the comments!