Learning a foreign language has different parts and to understand the spoken language is probably the most difficult one. But we have good news: There are always possibilities to improve your listening skills.
How to improve your listening skills today
Watch films and series
Watching films and series could be annoying and you don’t listen very careful because you also have the video which helps to understand the story. But you could also watch tv in an active way: Start focusing on specific aspects, like daily expressions, different accents and intonations of the persons or special idioms. With this technique you will get in touch with a lot of new words. And of course: If you hear them, write them down to learn them in the next days.
Summarise what you hear
If you love to listen to audio books or podcasts, or to watch tv series and films, you could summarise what you hear. Think about an other person who is maybe on the phone and he (or she) wants to know what the audio book, podcast, film or series is about. So start to tell him (or her) what you have heard and try to give a short summary. With this method you don’t only improve your listening skills, but also your speaking skills.
Get in touch with the sounds of the language
Every language is different and has an own sound. So start improving your listening skills by listening to natives. This could be in real, but also with videos. Ted Talks are really good for this because there are a lot of different topics so it will be also interesting to learn something new while getting in touch with the sounds and the intonation.
And the most important tip:
Listen to your learning language as often as you can
It doesn’t matter which technique you prefer and how you want to improve your listening skills. The most important thing is that you do it as often as you can. Try to use dead time, like in the bus, in the car or while waiting in a waiting room. And if you only have a few minutes per day, use them to improve your skills and get better.
In addition, a language school could also help you to learn about new learning methods and to meet persons from all over the world.
Come back to CourseFinders.com for more articles about languages and studying abroad.
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter and don’t miss another article on CourseFinders.com!
This post is also available in: Portuguese
Find the perfect language school for you! Compare our schools on CourseFinders.