An interview about listening skills

An interview about listening skills

Listen to the English teacher talk about listening to practise and improve your listening skills.

Do the preparation task first. Then listen to the audio and do the exercises.

Preparation

Transcript

Presenter: So, today's expert teacher is Gabriella, a university English teacher from Leeds. Gabriella, hi and thanks for joining us today.

Gabriella: Thanks for having me!

Presenter: So, I have to confess today's topic is something I am really bad at: listening. Most people say speaking is the most stressful part of learning a new language but, for me, with my B1 German, speaking isn't so bad. At least I'm in control of it. But listening … woah … people speak so fast and it's like my brain just shuts down. Am I just really strange and bad at listening? Tell me, honestly, I can take it.

Gabriella: No, you're not strange. In fact, it's really common. You know, in exams most people do pretty well in speaking compared with listening. Of course, exams are a different situation from real life because in an exam you can't ask for something to be repeated or explained. You usually have just one or maybe two opportunities to listen to the dialogue and then it's gone.

Presenter: Right, but in real life I feel stupid always saying, 'Sorry, can you repeat that, please?', especially if I still don't understand even when they repeat it. And people out there listening, I hope you don't do this – quite often the person just repeats what they said equally as fast and I'm still lost!

Gabriella: They do, don't they? In real life, you've got two strategies. One is to pretend to understand and get out of the conversation as fast as you can.

Presenter: Yep, sounds familiar!

Gabriella: But, obviously that's not going to help if it's a conversation with high stakes. It might have important consequences. I mean, if you're just chatting with a stranger at the bus stop, it doesn't matter. But imagine you're at a government office or a bank, trying to find out what paperwork you need to get your ID or open a bank account. What can you do then?

Presenter: I hope you've got the answer, Gabriella, because I'm coming out in a cold sweat just thinking about either of those situations!

Gabriella: The other strategy is to summarise what they said.

Presenter: But how can you do that if you didn't understand what they said?

Gabriella: Ah, well, you only start the summary, so you might say, in German in your case, 'OK, so the first thing I have to do is …?' and make it a question. Or, for example, 'And which office is that again?' Break it down into smaller questions and the other person will naturally start answering them. That way you're controlling the conversation a bit more.

Presenter: I get you ...

Discussion

Download
Worksheet79.35 KB

Language level

Average: 4.1 (108 votes)

Submitted by younes01 on Fri, 22/04/2022 - 01:46

Permalink

to be good at listening you have to listen more. it doesn't matter what are you listening to.
for me, I have the preference to listen to a podcast or some videos that I love and I am interested in its topics
you should not underestimate the value you gain from listening even if you are not understanding anything

Submitted by Minhhanhtran on Thu, 21/04/2022 - 19:16

Permalink

For me, listening is more difficult than speaking. When i listen to English, I have to concentrate a lot on it so that I can understand what they said. Especially with the difficult subjects such as the forecast, the direction on the map, it is very difficult to understand. I have to practise listening 20 minutes everyday, but it is stll hard for me.

Submitted by Samah Hasan on Mon, 04/04/2022 - 21:47

Permalink

Learning new language have many issues at the beginning but from my point of view i think that speaking is more difficult than listening especially at the beginning as our brain try to think on different language so this is more hard at the beginning but depending on practice everything gonna to be easy and normal one day.

Submitted by KATIELLE RAIAN… on Fri, 28/01/2022 - 20:03

Permalink

Unfortunately, I have a lot of difficulty with listening. I study every day, train my ears, but learning new skills is not easy, so I do what I can, I listen to English as much as possible.

Submitted by misty on Sun, 09/01/2022 - 02:10

Permalink

For me, English is not my native tongue, therefore I have difficulty in speaking as well as listening. One strategy that I do to understand English better is listen to TED talks or podcast.

Submitted by ANOUAR on Thu, 30/12/2021 - 12:50

Permalink

In real life it's difficulte to grasp all what others are talking especially if they are talking to fast, but when I watch something on the internet I tried to make subtitele to understand better.

Submitted by jmajo on Thu, 23/12/2021 - 14:55

Permalink

To help improve my listening I try to watch videos with English subtitles with the audio in all the English accents I can, from different parts of the United States and Britain, so I watch and listen to the audio without looking to the subtitles, but if I don't recognise a word or I can't understand some part of the audio then I look to the subtitles and try to comprehend the meaning of the passage. It's a bit more difficult for me to understand the audio without the video because I have to imagine the context of the conversation, whereas If I see the video with the audio I already have the context and it´s easier to understand the meaning of it.

Thanks for the lesson.
Great site!

Submitted by vuhoap on Mon, 22/11/2021 - 13:42

Permalink

To help with listening, my strategy is to listen at here every day that I can. The first, I do preparation task for learning the new vocabulary. Then, I attempt to locate myself in high stakes and start to listening the conversation for the first time. The second time, I do the task 1 and 2 until all the answers are correct. The third time, I listen and look at the transcript to get all content of conversation. Finally, the last time is the same with the first time, I only listen what just learned.

Submitted by danielbacelar on Fri, 22/10/2021 - 00:18

Permalink

I liked this listening exercise! Thank U!