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    How To Improve Listening b1

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    malenatobe
    This document provides tips and strategies for improving listening skills in English. It discusses some of the challenges in understanding spoken English, such as variations in pronunciation of letters and word stress. It also explains connected speech phenomena, where words are pronounced differently in natural conversation compared to slow, clear speech. The document recommends listening to recordings multiple times and practicing dictation, questioning, identifying grammar patterns, and vocabulary learning. It provides many online resources for listening practice, including podcasts, news programs, stories and songs paired with transcripts. The overall message is that extensive listening practice with different strategies is important for comprehending native English speech.

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    How To Improve Listening b1

    Uploaded by

    malenatobe
    159 views5 pages
    This document provides tips and strategies for improving listening skills in English. It discusses some of the challenges in understanding spoken English, such as variations in pronunciation of letters and word stress. It also explains connected speech phenomena, where words are pronounced differently in natural conversation compared to slow, clear speech. The document recommends listening to recordings multiple times and practicing dictation, questioning, identifying grammar patterns, and vocabulary learning. It provides many online resources for listening practice, including podcasts, news programs, stories and songs paired with transcripts. The overall message is that extensive listening practice with different strategies is important for comprehending native English speech.

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    tips on how to improve your listening

    Original Title

    How to Improve Listening b1

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    This document provides tips and strategies for improving listening skills in English. It discusses some of the challenges in understanding spoken English, such as variations in pronunciation of letters and word stress. It also explains connected speech phenomena, where words are pronounced differently in natural conversation compared to slow, clear speech. The document recommends listening to recordings multiple times and practicing dictation, questioning, identifying grammar patterns, and vocabulary learning. It provides many online resources for listening practice, including podcasts, news programs, stories and songs paired with transcripts. The overall message is that extensive listening practice with different strategies is important for comprehending native English speech.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    159 views5 pages

    How To Improve Listening b1

    Uploaded by

    malenatobe
    This document provides tips and strategies for improving listening skills in English. It discusses some of the challenges in understanding spoken English, such as variations in pronunciation of letters and word stress. It also explains connected speech phenomena, where words are pronounced differently in natural conversation compared to slow, clear speech. The document recommends listening to recordings multiple times and practicing dictation, questioning, identifying grammar patterns, and vocabulary learning. It provides many online resources for listening practice, including podcasts, news programs, stories and songs paired with transcripts. The overall message is that extensive listening practice with different strategies is important for comprehending native English speech.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    of 5

    How to improve your listening

    Why do we find it difficult to understand spoken English?


    There are other factors in this respect:

    1- The same letter (vowel and consonant) can be pronounced in different ways
    In the table below, we can see that to pronounce one sound we can sometimes use
    more than one letter, making the process of listening and spelling a little bit more
    complex.

    Consonants
    p

    pen, copy, happen

    soon, cease, sister

    back, baby, job

    zero, music, roses, buzz

    tea, tight, bu6on

    ship, sure, na7onal

    day, ladder, odd

    pleasure, vision

    key, clock, school

    hot, whole, ahead

    get, giggle, ghost

    more, hammer, sum

    church, match, nature

    nice, know, funny, sun

    judge, age, soldier

    ring, anger, thanks, sung

    fat, coee, rough, photo

    light, valley, feel

    view, heavy, move

    right, wrong, sorry, arrange

    thing, author, path

    yet, use, beauty, few

    this, other, smooth

    wet, one, when, queen

    Vocales

    kit, bid, hymn, minute, business

    mouth, now, ground, council

    dress, bed, head, many, said,


    leather

    near, here, weary, cheerful,


    atmosphere

    trap, bad

    square, fair, various, beer

    lot, odd, wash, cough, swallow,


    because, knowledge

    start, father

    strut, mud, love, blood, enough

    thought, law, north, war

    foot, good, put,

    poor, jury, cure

    eece, sea, machine, believe

    nurse, stir, learn, refer

    face, day, break, neighbour,


    survey

    about, common, standard

    How to improve your listening


    a

    price, high, try, buy

    happy, radiate. glorious

    choice, boy

    thank you, inuence, situa7on

    goose, two, blue, group, rou7ne, n


    juice

    suddenly, co6on

    goat, show, no

    middle, metal

    2- We need to know the word stress


    In English, just like in Catalan and Spanish, multi-syllabic words have a stressed
    syllable. We say PARty and our voice goes up in the first syllable. We will call this the
    stressed syllable.

    In our language, we have clear norms to how pronounce stress in words, in English
    there are very few norms to this effect. And if we stress the wrong syllable the native
    English speaker might not understand us. Here are a few norms to use word stress:
    http://www.englishclub.com/pronunciation/word-stress-rules.htm

    3- There are many connected speech phenomena


    This is a common situation in language classrooms:
    Classroom teachers often slow their speech to facilitate learner
    comprehension.
    Listening materials are full of clearly pronounced and well articulated speech.
    As a result, language learners often develop their listening and speaking skills based
    on these artificial situations.
    However, when they meet authentic native speakers, learners are often shocked to
    find that they dont speak in the ways that they expect.

    The language outside of the classroom seems unfamiliar and fast. Students
    are unable to know when the word begins and when it ends limits or to
    recognize words or phrases.

    How to improve your listening


    Connected speech, also commonly referred to as reduced speech involves the
    contracted forms, reductions, elisions, and liaisons used by native speakers in their
    oral speech.
    For example this sentence:
    I dont have to go but I kind of want to cause it sounds like fun

    might sound something like this:


    I dont hafta go but I kinda wanna go cuz it sounds like fun!

    Students who do not receive adequate instruction or exposure to authentic discourse


    are going to have a very rude awakening when [they try] to understand native speech
    in natural communicative situations.
    More information about connected speech in:
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/features/
    connected.shtml

    Strategies to practise your listening


    Here are some tips to help you make the most of your listening activities:
    Use a video recording (or video) to practice and carry out your listening
    strategies. Listen to an extract more than once, using different strategies.
    For example, listen to it one time and try to understand the general meaning or
    main idea. Try to listen to the key or more important words, and pause to try to
    guess what is going to follow. Listen to the recording several times.
    After a few times listening to it, focus on pronunciation and pay attention not
    only to consonants and vowels but also to the rhythm and intonation of
    sentences. Can you guess the emotions of the speaker?
    Use a short section of the recording to do a dictation. If you find it difficult,
    repeat the exercise several times. This will help you not only discriminate sounds
    but also improve your spelling.

    How to improve your listening


    Listen to a recording with someone else. After each listening exchange
    information on what you both understood. Set yourself questions for subsequent
    listenings.
    Use the recording to practice other skills apart from listening. For
    example, listen and pause the recording to pay attention to the sentence
    structure, to the syntax or to the new vocabulary.
    Read a graded reader which comes with a CD. Most publishing companies
    publish graded readers for beginners to advanced students. Many of them come
    with a listening CD and the transcripts. It is a great exercise to read when you
    are listening to the story to improve your discrimination and pronunciation.
    Some publishing companies are

    http://www.macmillaneducation.com/catalogue/readers/readindex.htm Macmillan
    http://www.cambridge.org/elt/readers - Cambridge University Press.
    http://www.penguinreaders.com Penguin Readers.
    http://www.link2english.com Mary Glasgow Magazines.
    http://www.burlingtonbooks.com Burlington Books.
    http://www.blackcat-cideb.com Black Cat.
    Do as many exercises as possible with the multitude of resources on the
    Web. Here is a selection:

    http://www.lyricstraining.com

    http://agendaweb.org/listening/
    dictations.html

    http://www.teachya.com/listening/
    dictations.php

    Listen to the songs and write the lyrics


    at the same time.

    Dictations online.

    Dictations by levels.

    How to improve your listening

    http://learningenglish.voanews.com/

    http://www.esl-lab.com/

    http://www.mansioningles.com/

    Listening exercises adapted to different


    levels and based on news.

    Exercises for basic, intermediate and


    advanced level.
    Exercises for the basic, intermediate

    listening00.htm

    and advanced level with instructions in


    Spanish.

    http://www.englishclub.com/listening/

    Links to websites where you can listen

    index.htm

    to English news, stories, poetry, etc.


    Listening comprehension resources

    http://www.elllo.org/index.htm

    designed specially for English students


    and classified in 8 levels.

    http://www.agendaweb.org/listening/

    Listening podcasts with scripts

    http://www.britishcouncil.org/
    professionals-podcast-englishlistening-downloads-archive.htm
    http://edition.englishclub.com/
    category/podcasts/

    Listening podcasts with scripts

    Listening podcasts with scripts

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