Tips for practicing English listening for beginners

Tips for practicing English listening for beginners

Listening is one of the most important aspects of communication, because it is how we relate to each other.

1. Actively listen

There are two forms of listening: active and passive. Active listening can be understood as focusing on listening to really understand the meaning behind an English sentence being said. Passive listening is simply hearing what the speaker is saying, but not actually trying to understand every word. There seems to be a widespread belief that you can improve your English listening ability through passive listening. However, this is not necessarily the right thing. In fact, passive listening cannot help you retain vocabulary, understand the meaning of words, etc. Without taking the time to really try to understand the language you're listening to, you won't remember anything.

Tips for practicing English listening for beginners

You will have to listen actively at all times, even in normal situations like enjoying music or watching an English program. Aside from simply focusing and rewinding things you don't understand, the rest of the tips in this list will help you actively listen to English to improve your comprehension.

2. Watch TV in English and movies with bilingual subtitles

Tips for practicing English listening for beginners

Starting to watch shows in English and movies with subtitles in both English and Vietnamese can help you quickly find the meaning of a new vocabulary word without having to look it up in a dictionary. Displaying English subtitles will help you improve your speaking and writing abilities.

3. Play English games online

Online games to improve English listening skills provide a fun interactive experience for learners. In addition, listening games also give you the motivation to win, you will feel excited and want to continue practicing English listening more.

4. Guess the meaning from the story's context

One of the best ways to understand English vocabulary is to use context clues. When listening to English, try to choose keywords that you know. You can use them to understand the underlying meaning the speaker is trying to convey, and figure out the meaning of new vocabulary.

You can also pay attention to tone of voice (is the speaker happy, confused, serious, or smiling?), body language, and your surroundings. If someone is trying to have a conversation with you and is pointing at a map, they most likely need directions, etc.

Tips for practicing English listening for beginners

Even if you don't live in an English-speaking place, you can still apply this method to improve your English communication skills.

5. Try to interact with a variety of voices

When we say “different types of people”, we are talking about Southerners, city people, country people, Scottish people, English people, South African people, etc. This means that there are many different accents and ways of speaking English around the world. So, to really improve your English listening, you should not practice with a typical English accent. Do your best to immerse yourself in many different accents of English and many different types of English speakers. This way, you will improve your English listening. In fact, this is probably the best way to become a fluent English listener.

6. Remember that you won't understand everything

In fact, even if you work extremely hard and study English for years, you will never be 100% sure that you can understand everything that a speaker wants to convey. Ten years into your language learning journey, you will sometimes have to ask someone to slow down or repeat what they said because you didn't understand. This is very normal!. You can learn English extremely well by improving your listening skills, but give yourself a break when it comes to perfection.

With the English listening practice methods for beginners that we have just introduced. What you need to do is spend time and practice consistently, you may be surprised at how significantly your English ability improves. Good luck.