Hi friends I'm Sonia and I'm back again with a new lesson just for you. Well, what are
we going to do today? Today we are going to look at, Ten ways to improve your English
by listening. Well, yes you can improve your English in a lot of ways. You can read, you
can speak with people, you can watch and learn like what your'e doing right now and you can
also listen, which is very helpful and very important. But how do we do that? There are
so many different ways that you can use. So let's look at a couple of ways today in order
to listen in order to improve our English.
The first tip that I have for you is, Get hooked on to an English TV show. Now my favorite
English TV show is, Friends. It's been my all time favorite. I love Monica, Ross, Joey
all of these characters. If you listen to them, when they speak during the show, they
are pretty clear, while they speak and also you'll get to learn a lot of different words,
different pronunciations and Of course shows like these, shows like friends are really
enjoyable. So if you enjoy doing something, you will listen well, you will get hooked
on to it and that will help you in improving your English. So that's a good tip. The next
thing you can do is, You can listen on a slightly lower volume. Like for example, The video
that you are watching right now, you can go into your settings and reduce the volume and
then try to listen to what I'm trying to tell you. Here what you will do is, because you
are reducing the volume on your settings, you will have to really pay close attention
to what I'm saying and that will make you learn better that will make you increase your
attention span also, that's a good way to listen and improve your English.
The next thing that you could do is very important and very nice. You could listen to yourself.
It's really nice to listen to yourself sometimes, for example, You can read a book or you can
maybe read a newspaper and record yourself for approximately two to three minutes and
play that back. Listen to the recording, listen to your pronunciations, you grammatical errors
if you make any, try and work on that, read something again and record yourself. Listen
to that recording, this is a good practice to improve your English by listening to yourself.
The next tip is, To listen to a song and write the lyrics, so if you are a music lover, you
enjoy listening to music. Well, this one is going to be extremely easy for you. Just listen
to some of your favorite English songs. Try and write down the lyrics, while your'e listening
to the song. Go online and check the lyrics online. and try to match, if you understood
and wrote the same lyrics of the song. Here also you will be able to gauge if you are
able to understand, listen to the lyrics carefully and understand the words, this will really
help you. The next one we have is , Listen only for stress. Now what do I mean by this?
Am I talking about stress as in when we get really stressed out or worried? No that's
not what I mean. What I'm talking about is something like this, look at this word. I'll
write it down twice for you, so if I stress on the first part of the word and I say address.
I mean the place, where someone lives, so I can ask someone, What's your address? However
if I stress on the second half of the word and I say address is a verb which means to
talk to someone, so I'd like to address a class or address my employees. So when you
listen to people speak or if you listen to videos or watch videos. You can also do this,
Listen only for the stress on the part of the word, because depending on where you stress
in the word. The meaning changes entirely, so that's really important. Another thing
that you can do and this is something you can always do guys. You can always listen
along with a friend. What are friends for? A friend in need is a friend indeed. So you
can listen to something maybe a video or maybe an audio clip along with your friend and pen
down your thoughts, write down what you've understood. Once your'e done listening exchange
your notes. So here you'll be able to understand who was better, so there's some competition
also. You can also correct each other's grammatical mistakes, correct your spellings, your pronunciations.
There are so many things you can do. So listen in with a friend, that's something I would
definitely recommend. Now the next tip that I have for you is, Listen for numbers. Yes
we always talk about words, sounds, sentences. But numbers are also so very important. Imagine
if you are on an important call and someone gives you some account numbers or someone's
contact number. It's really important to be able to catch to get that number instantly,
because if your'e not listening carefully, you'll miss out on it, because you are concentrating
only on the other parts of what they are saying, so listen for numbers too, it's very important.
The next one I have for you is, Watch a lesson on the sounds of English. Now what are the
sounds in English? There are various vowels and consonant sounds. And we have a lot of
videos, where you can find the links on the description of this video below. You can check
the links and you'll find various videos on the sounds of English. So I'll just give you
a quick example. Look t this word, these two words. This and these, now the word this has
a short sound and the word these has a very long sound. So that's what you learn in these
kind of videos. The sounds of English. Watch these videos, they are also very important
to correct your pronunciation, in order to sound really nice, when you speak. Now the
second last tip that I have for you is, Start listening in the middle of a conversation.
Let me highlight that for you. Now quite often, when you join someone at dinner or if your'e
in a party, people may always already be you know talking about something, which means
you've not started, you know you've entered the conversation from the start. You maybe
lost, you know if you are, if you've entered the group in the middle of a conversation
and you don't really know, what they are talking about, but you don't want to feel lost. You
want to be in that group, so what you need to practice is to start listening to a conversation
in the middle. So find an audio clip on the internet, if possible and play it from the
middle of the clip. Try to listen into the words that the people are using and understand,
what the topic is all about. This will really help you in situations, where you don't know
what the conversation is about, so you will be really focused, you will pay more attention
and it will help you to learn much faster. Try this one out.
The final tip that I have for you is to listen to someone speaking very quickly, very fast
. So for example, this video that your'e watching right now, you can go into your settings and
try an increase the pace, increase the speed of the video. What will happen then is , I
will end up speaking real fast and because of that, you will have to pay very close attention
and listen in very carefully to what I am speaking. Now because your attention, your
attention span is increased, you're more focused. You'll tend to really learn faster. What happens
is when you are in a very relaxed mood, you tend to miss out on certain things or miss
out on certain points or words, which are really important and very useful. But when
the speed is increased suddenly your'e very attentive and you really, you know are very
focused. So that also helps you. And imagine guys, if you can listen to someone in speaking
quickly and understand the English that they are speaking. Imagine then when you listen
to someone, who's speaking at a normal rate. It will be so much easier for you and that
will make your life much easier, when your'e trying to learn English by listening.
So these are couple of very simple, very easy tips and tricks that you can use in order
to improve your English. By listening, I would saying my favorite would be listening to yourself,
get hooked on to an English show like Friends. For example, listening with a friend. Also
listen on low volume, watch a lesson on sounds of English.
These are things which you can do very easily and they will definitely help you. So guys
this brings me to the end of the lesson today. I hope that you keep watching and keep practicing.
I'll be back soon with another interesting lesson. Till then take good care of yourself,
I'll see you later. Bye, bye.