Listening is ... Features and types of listening

The development of the ability to understand foreign speech by ear is one of the most important key points in learning English.

Definition and essence of listening

Listening is the process of perceiving foreign oral speech. This is one of the most difficult skills, as this language activity includes several factors:

• Unlike reading, listening requires real-time understanding. There is no way to stop and delve into. Especially if it's an exam where time is very limited.
• You cannot control the content, as when speaking or writing your own text. There is no way to get around unfamiliar lexical units and grammatical constructions, replacing them with more familiar ones.
• The speaker’s speech may have some features that make it difficult to understand the text: a peculiar accent, diction, intonation.
• English contains many dialects. Often, representatives from different parts of the UK, the United States, or Australia have difficulty understanding each other.
• The pace of speech of the average Englishman or American is pretty fast.

Types of listening

There are several varieties of this speech activity:

• Listening for detail - listening with a full understanding of the content of the text, including the smallest details. This is one of the most difficult types, since all the details can be perceived only with a good knowledge of the language.
• Listening for gist - listening to understand the main points and the general meaning. This view is much easier, since there is no need to try to catch every detail. In addition, this type of activity helps to develop one useful quality - language conjecture, that is, the ability to fill in gaps from the context.
• Listening for specific information is listening to a passage in order to find specific information. You can skip the rest of the text.
• Inferential listening - a guess based on the information you listen to. This type of speech activity is more likely to be psychological in nature, since the main point in this case is not understanding the information, but capturing the emotional mood and the state of the interlocutor. This type can be attributed to non-verbal communication. When preparing for exams, this type of activity is not very useful, but in real life, the ability to capture the intonation shades and mood of another person greatly simplifies the communication process.

Training and communication

Educational listening is a means to achieve the main goal, free recognition and understanding of English speech. It involves adjusting your hearing, acquiring skills in recognizing foreign speech, recognizing lexical and grammatical material, understanding, evaluating what you hear, and reproducing it in written or verbal form. For this language activity, special educational materials and adapted audio books are used, designed for different levels of English proficiency. With independent studies, it is possible to listen to the text repeatedly. In exams, as a rule, the number of auditions is limited to two times.

Communicative listening - this is the main purpose of training, a free understanding of the speech of native speakers of a foreign language during a single reproduction.

What gives listening?

There are a number of useful skills that it will help you acquire:

• Melody of speech and intonation. Many people who learn English without communicating with native speakers transfer the intonation of their native language to foreign speech. To fully master another language, you need to know not only the grammar system, general pronunciation rules and vocabulary. It is also very important to master the emotional side of communication.
• Pronunciation. Despite the fact that in almost any English dictionary all lexical units are accompanied by transcription, far from all the nuances can be conveyed using the graphical reproduction of sound features. Many points can be understood and felt only in practice, listening and repeating.
• Polysemy. English words have many meanings and uses. Listening is one of the ways that will help to understand the use of words in specific examples.
• Language conjecture. When communicating in their native language, each person is able to fill in the missing information if he does not hear something. Exactly the same skill must be acquired by learning a foreign language. Another side is the ability to guess the meaning of the new lexical unit from the context, as well as through understanding the structure of the language.

Reasons for the language barrier

There are a number of reasons that affect the degree of learning. The language barrier can be caused by several factors:

• Personality traits. By the method of perceiving information, people are divided into visuals, audials and kinestets. If a person perceives information best of all visually, then it will be more difficult for him to understand unfamiliar speech by ear. It is impossible to completely rebuild a personality type, but missing qualities can be developed.
• Lack of knowledge. It is likely that difficulties in understanding the speaker’s speech are caused by insufficient knowledge of grammar and a small vocabulary.
• Features of spoken English. In everyday speech, carriers often use a number of abbreviations: going to - gonna, want to - wanna, am not - ain't, must not - mustn't etc.
• Lack of practical training. Even with a good level of knowledge of a foreign language, a sufficient amount of practice is necessary. It is important to devote time to training each skill (writing, speaking, listening and reading).
• Complicated material. As you learn, you need to gradually increase the requirements. An excessively high bar at the very beginning of the educational process will not bring good results. Therefore, in the first place, you can focus on training texts and adapted audio books. If there are certain difficulties when trying to understand English, you can choose a book one level below. For example, if your grammatical knowledge and vocabulary are at the level of Upper-Intermediate (B2), take the audio book Intermediate (B1).

How to improve listening comprehension

The two main causes of the difficulties are the pace of speech and lack of knowledge. It is important to learn to perceive not every single word, but whole stable expressions and constructions. This process can be compared to playing a musical instrument. The musician does not think about how to play each individual note, he thinks in passages and phrases.

Each text has a number of phrases that you have already met more than once. First of all, these are all kinds of cliches, such as, for example, as a matter of fact - in fact, there is no doubt - not to be doubted , etc. Knowledge of such sustainable designs will greatly simplify the process of perceiving information.

Regularity of classes

Continuous practice is the key to success. Half an hour of daily lessons will be more useful than a three-hour lesson once a week. Listening to a foreign text should be given at least some time every day. This will greatly speed up the learning process. If your level of knowledge allows, you can include listening to songs and watching movies, TV shows and TV shows. Podcasts are also very useful - short audio issues of various subjects, which discuss language phenomena, traditions and customs, society, news, etc. Another way that deserves attention is to listen to audio books in the background. That is, you do not have to try to understand and understand absolutely everything. You will just gradually get used to the sound of English speech.

What to look for when preparing for exams?

If you are working on texts from a textbook, before listening, pay attention to the title of the lesson, illustrations, and a list of questions. Try to delve into and predict what exactly you will hear. This will help to configure the brain to perceive the necessary information.

If you have to pass the exam (English), you need to work out the listening process as carefully as the other questions, and begin preparation long before the exam. In preparation, try to recreate the same conditions that will be on the exam:

• Try to cope with the task for a limited time.
• Use speakers, not headphones.
• Since this is listening with assignments, take the time not only to listen, but also to fill out the forms.
• Read the questions carefully, as quite often mistakes are caused by a misunderstanding of the assignment.
• If possible, find out approximate topics in advance and find the necessary manuals. Regardless of which exam you have to take the listening class: 11th grade, IELTS or TOEFL, start preparing in advance.

Some more tips

• Learn your favorite songs. This will help develop both listening skills and pronunciation. Moreover, these two linguistic activities are closely interconnected. It’s hard for you to hear what you cannot say.
• Listen to an English audiobook, the translation of which you read in your native language.
• When searching for materials, focus on your level and interests. Choose texts for listening whose topics you are interested in.
• At the beginning of training, avoid materials full of specific terminology.
• Try to make up understanding of unfamiliar words from the context.
• Whenever possible, communicate with carriers.
• You should get rid of the illusions that in a week or a month you can learn a foreign language at a high level. If you have to take an exam, start preparing well in advance.

Listening in English is a rather difficult task, however, with regular classes and correctly selected training materials, you can even prepare for this part of the examination work yourself.