TOP 3 Ways to Improve Your Listening Skills Advanced English Lesson

hi i’m vanessa from speak english with

vanessa calm let’s talk about three ways

to improve your listening skills let’s

get started the first way to improve

your listening skills is a little

surprising I recommend using subtitles

subtitles in English listening in

English and reading the subtitles in

English these two methods together

listening and reading will help you

really to hear each word this will test

your ears and help you to take your

listening to the next level there are

several ways to use subtitles one way is

to test your ears first watch the video

without any subtitles and if you think

you understood 100 percent or even 80

percent go back the next time and watch

it with subtitles I’m sure there are

some expressions that were new for you

or even some sentence structure that’s

useful to listen to I recommend going

back and listening after you test your

ears or you could do it the opposite way

if you are a beginner or if the video is

really difficult for you watch it with

English subtitles

first and then the second time go back

and watch it without subtitles and see

if you can hear each of those words that

you read with the subtitles so you could

start with the subtitles or you could

watch the subtitles after you’ve already

tried the video these are both great

methods for helping you really to test

your ears and to improve your listening

skills I have used this a lot with

French movies movies that I’ve already

seen new movies this is a great method

that’s helped me to improve my listening

to hear each and every sound in the

language I

wanna give you two quick recommendations

for how you can use subtitles right now

one way is on YouTube most YouTube

videos have a button in the bottom right

corner that says C C if you’re using

your computer it’s in the bottom if

you’re using your phone it’s probably at

the top CC means closed captions this is

usually for people who can’t hear so

they can read some of these are

automatic subtitles with just the

YouTube program some of them are

accurate subtitles so if you click CC

and it says auto captions or something

like that it means it’s just the

automatic version maybe it’s only 80%

accurate but it’s still useful you can

click CC on YouTube or you can use

something like ted.com ted.com

has subtitles and transcripts for every

TED talk this is really useful because

you can click on the sentence and it

will go to that part of the video this

is an excellent way to improve your

listening skills the second way that you

can improve your listening skills is to

focus on material that you can already

understand about 70% of and the way you

can know if you understand 70% is if you

understand the general context maybe if

you’re watching an episode of the TV

show friends and you understand

generally what’s going on but you don’t

understand each joke or you don’t

understand everything but you understand

the general ideas that’s probably 60 or

70 percent if you understand less than

this it’s going to be really hard to

improve your listening skills you’re not

going to be able to pick up specific

words when you already understand 7

% it’s easier to pick up the 30% that

you don’t know maybe by using subtitles

there’s an easier way if you already

understand 70% there’s a lot of material

on YouTube that you can use in this way

maybe videos for English learners are

going to be easier for you or if you

want to challenge yourself you could use

videos from BBC or more challenging

videos for English native speakers if

you watch an American TV show and you

can’t understand anything

stop right there it’s not 70% try to

find something that’s a little bit

easier maybe something for English

learners and then you’ll be able to go

to the next level and watch something

for English speakers a little bit later

on the third way to improve your

listening skills is something that I

haven’t talked about yet it is dictation

dictation

what is dictation well this is when

someone reads

or says one sentence two sentences maybe

three sentences they say them quickly

then slowly and you have to write

exactly what they said this is gonna

help you listen for every single word

every single verb tense even punctuation

when you have to exactly write

everything that you heard it’s a pretty

big challenge it seems simple but it’s

pretty difficult some people like this

some people don’t like this for me I

don’t want to do this every day with

when I’m learning French I don’t want to

do a dictation every day but maybe once

a week every couple days this is helpful

for showing my progress when I know that

I can listen to these sentences and

accurately write them I know that I can

go on to something more challenging and

you can use a dictation with any kind of

audio you can use it with a simple video

maybe a video for English learners

that’s a little bit slower

you can just listen to one sentence

pause the video go back listen to that

sentence again and try to write it

exactly this is a good test or you can

do it with an English TV show or a

YouTube video for English speakers this

is going to be more challenging it’s

gonna be faster but it’s a great

challenge so the one thing about a

dictation is to make sure that you know

the correct answer so make sure that you

do this with a video that has subtitles

if the video doesn’t show you the

correct answer for your dictation you’re

not going to know if you did it

correctly or not

so I recommend choosing a video that has

good subtitles listen to one or two

sentences try to write them and see how

you do do you understand the general

meaning or do you really understand

every single word it’s a good challenge

you can do it I hope that these three

ways using subtitles understanding 70%

and dictation are useful for you to be

able to improve your listening skills do

you have any other suggestions for

listening improvement write them in the

comments below

I’d love to hear them let’s share our

ideas together thanks so much and I’ll

see you later bye

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