Basic Tactics For Listening Audio

[Rode Neagle]

Howcan learners improve their listening comprehension? Teacher Raphael Ahmed shares some useful strategies in one of our top five articles of all time, illustrated by artist Jamie Johnson.

It should not be difficult to realise the importance of listening when we consider that it occupies about 45 per cent of the time adults spend in communication. This is significantly more than speaking, which accounts for 30 per cent, and reading and writing, which make up 16 per cent and nine per cent respectively.

Yet, for all its importance, students (and even teachers) often fail to give listening the attention it needs. This is all the more remarkable as learners often say that listening is the most challenging of all the skills in English.

There are many difficulties an individual may face in understanding a talk, lecture or conversation in a second language (and sometimes even in their first language). The speaker, the situation and the listener can all be the cause of these difficulties.

Imagine you've just turned on your TV. You see a man in a suit standing in front of a large map with the symbols of a sun, clouds and thunder. What do you imagine he is about to tell you? Most likely, this is going to be a weather forecast. You can expect to hear words like 'sunny', 'windy' and 'overcast'. You'll probably hear the use of the future tense: 'It'll be a cold start to the day'; 'there'll be showers in the afternoon', etc.

If you are taking a listening test, skim through the questions first and try to predict what kind of information you need to listen out for. A question beginning 'How many..?', for example, will probably require you to listen for a specific number or quantity of something.

Find a short video with subtitles on a topic that interests you. Use the title to help you predict the content and then listen out for the content words. Go back, and listen again with the subtitles. How much did you understand the first time? Return to the video a week later and try again.

Just like the traffic lights on roads, there are signposts in language that help us follow what we're listening to. These words, which link ideas, help us to understand what the speaker is talking about and where they are taking us. They're particularly important in presentations and lectures.

Most course books for learners of English come with a CD and audio script. Find an example of a business presentation or lecture and see how many signpost phrases you can identify (listen more than once, if necessary). Then check your notes with the audio script.

Imagine you are a detective taking a closer look at those buildings you saw earlier on as a superhero. This time, rather than taking in the big picture, you're looking for something specific and rejecting anything that does not match what's on your list.

Decide on a type of detailed information you want to practise listening for and watch programmes where you would expect to get that information. For example, you could listen to a weather report to get details about the weather, or you could follow the sports news to find out the latest results.

Imagine you are a tourist in a country whose language you do not speak. In a restaurant, you hand over a credit card to pay for the bill, but the server seems to say something apologetic in response. Even though you don't understand his words, you can probably conclude that the restaurant doesn't take credit cards, and you need to pay with cash instead.

We can infer from the use of the words 'homework' and 'exams' that this is a conversation between a student and his teacher. By using contextual clues and our knowledge of the world, we can work out what's being said, who is speaking and what's taking place.

Find a YouTube clip from a popular television show, for example Friends. Now, rather than watch it, just listen to the dialogue. How much can you infer about what is taking place, who is talking and what their relationship is? Now listen to the clip a second time but watch it too. Were your conclusions correct?

The next time you hear a word you don't understand, try to guess its meaning using the context or situation to help you. But don't worry if you don't get it the first time. As with everything in life, the more you practise, the better you will get.

Jamie Johnson is an artist and illustrator based in Glasgow, Scotland. He works in painting, collage, drawing and various digital media techniques. Jamie has exhibited his work in galleries around the UK, Europe and North America, most recently as a solo show at Chopping Block Gallery in London. He continues to work with a wide variety of clients as an illustrator and designer, alongside a personal interest in community-based projects.

Are you a learner at A1 English level (elementary)? This section offers listening practice to help you understand familiar words and basic phrases when people speak slowly and clearly. Situations include meeting people, shopping and conversations at work.

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Sound is everywhere on earth. Human hearing is a unique capacity, distinct from our other senses. Listening is the capacity to translate what we hear to the brain or, as musician Pauline Oliveros says, to consciousness.

Listening is different from Hearing. While we hear all the time (except the deaf), listening involves a higher attention investment and voluntary energy to focus, with a purpose and a meaning. Listening is a crucial use of our hearing capacity in investigations. The sound we hear can tell a different story than visuals or written words. Sound can be listened to under different circumstances, whether driving or walking or washing dishes. Sound is not only what we can hear, it exists in a much wider spectrum of sound waves. Sound is also data, information and evidence.

Because of this unique space occupied by sound, it is an effective, albeit often overlooked, element of investigation. Sound can serve as an important method for gathering evidence, or a vehicle for conveying your findings to a receptive audience.

To get a detailed sense of what is possible to do with sound/acoustic investigations in particular, Forensic Architecture - a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London - offers an impressive array of cases and methods. The agency's work focuses on "investigating human rights violations including violence committed by states, police forces, militaries, and corporations." For instance, in sound investigator Lawrence Abu Hamdan's work with Forensic Architecture, he conducted a complex analysis of sound made by bullets, which helped determine who killed two teenagers in Palestine in 2014.

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