Why is listening important?
It should not be difficult to understand the significance of listening when we consider that it accounts for approximately 45 percent of the time adults spend communicating. This is significantly higher than speaking, which accounts for 30%, and reading and writing, which account for 16% and 9%, respectively.
Despite its importance, students (and even teachers) frequently fail to give listening the attention it deserves. This is especially noteworthy given that students frequently report that listening is the most difficult of all English skills.
Listen to same podcast
Choose one episode from a podcast that you find interesting or entertaining. Listen to that episode every day for a week—while driving, taking the bus, doing the dishes, and so on. On the first and second days, choose words or phrases that are difficult to understand and look them up. Remember to press "pause" and listen again.
After a few days, you should be able to recognize and understand these words. It may also be beneficial to memorize sections of the podcast and practice speaking them aloud. Look for distinctions between yourself and the speaker.
Overhear an English conversation
If you live in an area where English is spoken, spend an afternoon looking for an English conversation. Slow down and listen when you hear English. You won't understand what they're saying at first because you'll probably start listening in the middle of the conversation. This will make it even more difficult to understand, but also more enjoyable.
Hearing English in context is one of the most effective ways to learn the language. It will assist you in developing your understanding of how to use vocabulary words, grammar concepts, and even commonly used slang.
Join a conversation group
After all of this practice, you're ready to put your new listening skills to use. But how exactly?
Joining a group of English learners who host a conversation table is a great way to start. Conversation groups usually meet on a regular basis, but they are not classes. You are not required to attend every week; the goal is simply to converse (talk) in English. Meetup is an excellent resource for finding English conversation groups. If you can't find a group in your area, form your own!
This will be an excellent way to hear a variety of English accents and voices. If you're nervous about speaking English, remind yourself that you'll be listening—which is perfectly fine.
Practice a line before you go, and then after you say it, you can concentrate (focus) on listening! And besides listening and speaking practice, joining a conversation group can also be a fantastic way to make new friends.
Study English everyday but with breaks
Simply speaking, microlearning is dividing your task into very small tasks that can be done in about five minutes.
For example, imagine that you’re trying to study the present perfect. You can micro learn it by dividing it into:
1. Affirmative sentences
2. Negative sentences
3. Questions
4. Use
5. Words that trigger the present perfect.
This is just an example. You can divide your task the way you want, always trying to remember that every individual task should last five minutes at most.
There are a lot of scientific studies that prove that learning 15 to 30 minutes every day is much better than trying to memorize hundreds of new words and grammar rules in one day.
I know practicing a little bit every day works because I do it myself. Everybody has 15 or 20 minutes every day to read about a new tense, listen to a podcast or watch an episode of a cool series.
Try to introduce microlearning in your English-learning daily routine. The greatest thing about microlearning is that you only need five minutes to finish a task, so you can do one in the morning, one in the afternoon and one in the evening—or all three when you have a 20-minute break… You choose how you want to do it, just do it every single day!
Turn Boring Time into Listening Time
Take a look at the activities below. What do they have in common?
Driving.
Riding a bus/train.
Doing house chores (washing dishes, cooking, etc.)
Working out.
Waiting for something.
These activities have one thing in common: they don’t require concentration or deep thinking.
Throughout the day, there are a lot of activities like the examples above. These are the best times to improve your English listening skills!