Laura's Brainstorm: Listening (part 2) (13/12)

Reasons for listening

We, as non-native speakers of English, need to understand more than we should be able to produce.
The samples of spoken language in all course-books do not contain a sufficiently high proportion of the features of natural speech.
The learners will need much more than this if they are going to be able to cope with real-life language situations.
Even though good listeners may be able to get every word that they hear, this is not their concern most of the time.
Specify your listening objectives when you carry out a listening activity.
As long as you achieve your objectives, you are a good listener – whether you catch every word or not.

Listening practice

If you feel that your command of English is inadequate to meet your academic needs, such as taking notes in lectures, expressing yourself in tutorials…
If you are anxious that it might be a potential obstacle to your future professional pursuits.

Then…

Listening: teachers

Do you think that listening is about getting every word that is spoken?

What you can do on your own beyond the classroom?

TV: choose your favourite programs and make regular appointments with them.
Radio-like Broadcasts (Podcasts, stream radio…): you are free to do other things while listening – having breakfast, a shower, even jogging!
Watch news bradcasts (in English, of course) already watched on Spanish TV.

Use the WWW

Good luck

Good luck with your listening practice. It is not going to be easy, especially because the listening ability is hard to measure.
But if you keep practicing, you should find that you can gradually listen better.

The listening activities have been traditionally divided into:

Laura's Brainstorm