How can I improve my general listening skills?
If you find IELTS listening texts very difficult to understand, you probably need to improve your general listening skills.
- Step 1: Deal with problems that make listening difficult
There are certain aspects of spoken English that may make it harder to understand than written English. If you find listening difficult, you may need to focus on the following:
1. Speed (connected speech)
Students who say that spoken English is too fast often have problems with connected speech. Here are some resources that can help you overcome this problem:
- Use the pronunciation course to help develop your listening skills: https://www.loom.com/share/28dd0318ba024d3482b4732450e0a0ba
- Do “micro listening” – this video shows you what micro listening is and how to do it with Ted Talks: https://www.loom.com/share/8c483df45a3d4560898baf39674130dc
- Use the YouGlish pronunciation website to help you understand connected speech.
2. Accents
If you have a problem understanding different accents, follow the advice in this article: Some accents confuse me. What can I do?
3. Length / concentration
Sometimes students struggle to concentrate for longer listening passages. Here’s an article that can help with this: How can I stop losing focus when listening?
Here's a common problem that is not only related to listening:
4. Vocabulary
Insufficient vocabulary is one of main reasons students find both reading and listening to English difficult. Have a look at this article to find out how to fix this problem: How can I improve my vocabulary?
- Step 2: Graded listening
These are listening passages that are have been simplified so that people of different levels of English can understand them. They will help you gradually build up your listening skills. Here are some graded listening sites:
- https://elllo.org/english/levels/index.htm
- https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/skills/listening
- https://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/study-break/graded-listening
- https://www.esl-lab.com/
If your problems with listening are mostly related to connected speech, accents and speed, you can also ‘grade’ listening passages by doing the following:
- slowing down the speed on YouTube or YouGlish videos
- listening and reading at the same time or watching movies and series with subtitles
- Step 3: Listening for pleasure
When your listening skills have improved and you are better able to understand graded listening materials, a good way to continue improving is to find English podcasts on topics that interest you and start listening to them regularly. Have a look at this article for some recommendations: Can you recommend any podcasts for practicing general listening skills?
