Beyond the Sound Barrier – Listening Skills

Beyond the Sound Barrier – Your Listening Skills

When you learn a language, one of the first thoughts you have is that you want to speak it.  When we ask someone about their proficiency in a foreign language, we will say “Do you speak French/ Chinese / Swedish?” and so on.  As soon as someone opens their mouth, we can judge whether they are a native speaker or not.  Understandably, we see spoken skills as paramount.

Speaking first?

Of course, speaking is important.  You can then communicate your wishes in another language.  Speaking in a foreign language requires plenty of practice – something you will get with a Lingua Learn UK course – as you get more and more fluent and as you seek to build your vocabulary and grammar.  As you speak, you are often very conscious of possible mistakes you are making and of how your vocabulary and fluency may be limited.  If you think about it, you do need speak the language without having heard it first.

Language Learners as Listeners

A toddler learning its first language will often hear a word in context several hundred times in context before they reproduce it.  When you try to learn a language, you are cutting short that process, of necessity, and replacing it with a structured programme.  Due to time constraints, you cannot have the opportunity for so much low-stress exposure to the language you are learning.  But you still need to hear the language, just as a child needs to hear it to pick it up.

Listening as an adult abroad

When you are living abroad and learning the local language as an adult, you get the chance, perhaps at work or sitting on the ‘bus, to eavesdrop on lots of conversations.  You pick up new words and new turns of phrase which you can then use yourself when you are speaking.  How can we replicate this as a learner in a language class?

Tips for listening skills

When you hear a new word or phrases, repeat it aloud – or under your breath if the situation dictates.  Hear if you sound like a native, practise the unfamiliar sounds.

When you are doing a listening comprehension exercise, don’t just listen for the information.  Aim to recycle the language you have heard in an upcoming conversation.  Your teacher may well have prepared a task to help you do this.

If your course provides listening transcripts, follow the transcript too.  This helps your brain match the spelling and sound.  Furthermore, you get an easier way in to understanding the content.  It also gives you practice at reading.

Keep a notebook of interesting words or phrases for you to use later.

Listen to the radio or watch media in a foreign language; even if you are still at a beginners’ level, you can still accustom yourself to the cadence and sound of the language in a low-pressure way.  Just do not be disheartened if you cannot understand everything!

If you have a recording, try to see if you can write down accurately what is said.  The popular Duolingo app is great for this.

If you have done a listening comprehension exercise with your teacher, see if you can re-produce the information you had to find out, but in the foreign language.  This gets you to recycle both the pronunciation and the vocabulary of what you have just heard.

Don’t be afraid to listen back to things several times, if you are able to.

Above all, remember listening to the language in the class isn’t just finding out information – it is an essential springboard for the rest of your language learning journey.

About your blogger

Hello, I’m Tim – head of Lingua Learn UK.  I have been involved in languages teaching for over thirty years, principally in French, German and Spanish.  At Lingua Learn UK, I co-ordinate native speaker teachers of 14 languages, all university graduates and qualified teachers like me.