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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