You have excellent
listening skills in English. To maintain and enhance your solid skills, here
are some points to keep in mind for the future.
1. Use the resources
in your community to practice listening to English.
§ Visit places in
your community where you can hear English spoken.
o Go to an English
school, an embassy or an English-speaking Chamber of Commerce.
o Go to a museum and
take an audio tour in English.
o Follow a guided
tour in English of your city.
o Call or visit a
hotel where tourists stay and get information in English about room rates,
hotel availability or hotel facilities.
o Call and listen to
information recorded in English, such as a movie schedule, a weather report or
information about an airplane flight.
§ Watch or listen to
programs recorded in English.
o Watch television
programs.
·
CNN, the Discovery Channel or National Geographic
·
Watch movies, soap operas or situation comedies
o Rent videos or go
to a movie in English.
o Listen to a book on
tape in English.
o Listen to music in
English and then check your accuracy by finding the lyrics on the Internet
(e.g., www.lyrics.com).
§ Go to Internet
sites to practice listening.
o National Public
Radio (www.npr.org)
o CBS News
(www.cbsnews.com)
o Randall's Cyber
Listening Lab (www.esl-lab.com)
o BBC World
Service.com Learning English (www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish)
§ Get CDs with
full-length lectures. Full-length lectures/presentations are available from UC
Berkeley.
§ Practice speaking
English with others.
o Look for a
conversation partner and exchange language lessons with an English speaker who
wants to learn your language.
2. Begin to prepare
for academic situations.
§ Visit academic
classes, cultural centers, or museums where people are invited to talk in English
about their work.
o Before you listen
to a lecture in English, read assigned chapters or background information on
academic topics.
o Visit lectures on a
wide variety of topics.
§ Record lectures or
presentations and replay them several times.
o Listen to different
types of talks on various topics, including subjects in which you have limited
or little background.
o Listen to short
sections several times until you understand the main points and the flow of
ideas.
o Stop the recording
in the middle and predict what will come next.
o Practice listening
to longer lectures.
§ Become familiar
with the organization or structure of lectures.
o Pay attention to
the structure.
·
lecture or presentation — introduction, body, and conclusion
·
narrative story — beginning, middle, and end
o Learn to recognize
different styles of organization.
·
theory and evidence
·
cause and effect
·
steps of a process
·
comparison of two things
§ Think carefully
about the purpose of a lecture.
o Try to answer the
question, "What is the professor trying to accomplish in this
lecture?"
o Write down only the
information that you hear. Be careful not to interpret information based on
your personal understanding or knowledge of the topic.
·
Answer questions based on what was actually discussed in the
talk
§ Develop a
note-taking strategy to help you organize information into a hierarchy of main
points and supporting details.
o Make sure your
notes follow the organization of the lecture.
o Listen for related
ideas and relationships within a lecture and make sure you summarize similar
information together.
o Use your notes to
write a summary.
3. Listen for signals
that will help you understand the organization of a talk, connections between
ideas, and the importance of ideas.
§ Listen for
expressions and vocabulary that tell you the type of information being given.
o Think carefully
about the type of information that these phrases show.
·
opinion (I think, It appears that, It is
thought that)
·
theory (In theory)
·
inference (therefore, then)
·
negatives (not, words that begin with
"un," "non," "dis," "a")
·
fillers (non-essential information) (uh, er, um)
o Identify
digressions (discussion of a different topic from the main topic) or jokes that
are not important to the main lecture [It’s okay not to understand these!]
§ Listen for signal
words and phrases that connect ideas in order to recognize the relationship
between ideas.
o Think carefully
about the connection between ideas that these words show.
·
reasons (because, since)
·
results (as a result, so, therefore, thus,
consequently)
·
examples (for example, such as)
·
comparisons (in contrast, than)
·
an opposing idea (on the other hand,
however)
·
another idea (furthermore,
moreover, besides)
·
a similar idea (similarly, likewise)
·
restatements of information (in other words,
that is)
·
conclusions (in conclusion, in summary)
§ Pay attention to
intonation and other ways that speakers indicate that information is important.
o Listen for emotions expressed through changes in
intonation or stress.
·
Facial expressions or word choices can indicate excitement,
anger, happiness, frustration, etc.
o Listen how native
speakers divide long sentences into "thought groups" to make them
easier to understand. (A thought group is a spoken phrase or short sentence.
Thought groups are separated by short pauses.)
·
Listen to sets of thought groups to make sure you get the whole
idea of the talk
o Listen for
important key words and phrases which are often ...
·
repeated
·
paraphrased (repeated information but using different words)
·
said louder and clearer
·
stressed
o Listen for pauses
between important points.
·
In a lecture, pay attention to words that are written on the
board.
Note: References to other sources and Internet sites are provided as a
service and should not be understood as endorsements of their content.
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