Language listening "Tuning our ear"

When we learn languages and speak them, we also need to listen to what is said by native speakers; whether in person, or on a CD, podcast, TV, radio or film.

This listening ability is something we must learn to do as well as we are able. Listening skills do improve over time, but we must learn to be very, very patient.

It reminds me of the old radio receivers, where to get a station, we need to tune into a station. Sometimes these stations are very faint sounding and difficult to hear, other times they are clearer.

Of course, new digital radio stations are very clear sounding nowadays.

With listening, I think we need to "tune" our hearing until we get the best "reception" we can and then just do our best to listen and understand.

Listening skills can be increased by doing the following things (in my experience)

* Listening for the important words. For example: "my mother's birthday is in July" (important words: mother/birthday/July)

* Listen for word endings. For example "the number nineteen bus is to the town centre" could sound "the number ninety bus is to the town centre"

* Try to avoid noisy places when listening

* If you are talking face to face, always be prepared to ask again

* If you are listening to something you can listen to again, play it through first, then play it in segments of maybe 30 seconds length.

We need to accept that our mental tuner will need to be used often, to keep our ears hearing the language as clearly as we can.

Bye for now

Alan