When learning a new language, most of us start out by reading and writing a lot of material: worksheets, textbooks, dialogues, and the like.
While this is great for learning new words and understanding grammar, it doesn’t do us any favors when it comes to actually using the language.
As a result, many people struggle when they start to learn to listen. It’s one of the most difficult parts of learning a new language; while there is one exact way to spell a word, each person will pronounce it slightly differently.
Because listening is a more intensive skill than reading, there are a lot of common problems for people learning English through listening.
Here, you’ll find out what problems to look out for as well as tips on how to overcome them.
Common Listening Comprehension Struggles for English Learners
Since billions of people around the world and throughout time have learned new languages, we have a pretty good idea of the common challenges experienced by language learners.
These challenges aren’t exclusive to English learners and can happen to people with any linguistic background. This means that whether your first language is Korean, French, Russian, Arabic, or Swahili, you likely experience the same challenges as learners coming from any other language.
So remember: You’re not alone!
Trying to Understand Every Single Word
When we read something, we have time to ponder each word and make sure we understand it before moving on. We can skip and come back to the same word or sentence again and put it in context with the next couple of lines.
When you’re listening, you don’t have that luxury.
We lose our place in the conversation because we try to mentally
- Understand the sounds
- Make the sounds into words
- Know the definition of the word
- Adjust the definition of the word according to multiple contexts
- Retain that information as the speaker continues
All at the same time with a brain not used to the language.
This causes the listener to hang on to every word, miss words that happen after an unknown word, and generally be unable to keep up with the conversation.
Not Recognizing Words You Know
Before you are comfortable hearing words in your target language, you might get frustrated that even when you hear a word you know, you don’t recognize it.
When we read, we have a voice in our heads that says words a certain way. When we hear it and it sounds different than we are used to, the mismatch makes us completely unaware we heard a familiar word, or we get startled at the unexpected pronunciation.
In the TV show “How I Met Your Mother,” the main character Ted has an incident where he had only ever read the word “chameleon,” leading to him pronouncing the word extremely wrong in front of the college students he was teaching. It’s supposed to be “kham-eel-eon” but he said “cha-ma-leeon.” Embarrassing!
If this can happen to native English speakers about English, it’s inevitable that it will happen with English learners, too.
Understanding the Speaker’s Accent
There are more than just American, British, and Australian English accents. In fact, English has about 160 recognized different accents globally.
So even if you are quite familiar with one accent, there’s a very good chance you will encounter someone you can’t understand simply because of the way they pronounce things!
This is again a problem that is experienced by native English speakers, too.
Keeping Up with the Speaker’s Rate of Speed
The most common listening problem is likely that the audio is simply too fast to keep up. Fluent speakers in any language speak much faster than any basic practice audio you’ll find out there.
If you’re listening to a recording, you can try slowing down the speed, but it may distort the words.
Asking someone to speak slower in real life might work, but often the speaker will be fearful of feeling like they are treating you poorly, since speaking slowly to someone is typically an insult.
Limited by the Listener’s Vocabulary
Even if you are able to understand what someone said, if you don’t know the meaning of it, you will still be left in the dark and missing out on what they’re trying to say.
Missing Cultural Context and Figures of Speech
People from different areas have different ways of expressing ideas, and sometimes even the same words mean different things.
The tricky part about this is that cultural context is affected on a tiny regional scale and a broad scale. People who live in different neighborhoods might speak slightly differently from one another (especially in cities like Boston and New York City). But, they’ll also have the same influence of pop culture to mix in with their regional vernacular.
Figures of speech are always difficult for language learners. Euphemisms, hyperboles, litotes, metaphors, metonymies, oxymorons, puns, similes, and understatements are particularly confusing figures of speech that are often used in conversation.
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Strategies to Improve Your Listening Skills
Ready to start overcoming your listening comprehension issues and become more fluent in your target language?
Here are some strategies that teachers and professors often utilize to help their students thrive, and how you can adapt them to help yourself learn better independently.
Start with a Familiar Speaker
Find a YouTuber, podcaster, audiobook narrator, or chat buddy whose voice you can understand well to boost your listening skills.
Engage with Interesting Topics
Many audio language-learning programs begin with scenarios like ordering a meal at a restaurant, which is useful but may become tedious if you don’t actually care about it or if you already know it. Opt for subjects that fascinate you instead!
Diversify Your Input Channels
Experiment with different media to spark your interest, gather cultural insights and grasp diverse communication styles. Utilize television, movies, YouTube, podcasts, music, audiobooks, and any available resources to enrich your learning experience.
Master Pronunciation Rules
Learn about the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) for English. This tool aids in discerning pronunciation nuances, such as distinguishing between similar sounds like 't' and 'th.'
Incorporate Videos for Understanding Body Language
Verbal communication also recruits visual cues to get the message across. Watch live-action TV, movies, and videos featuring native English speakers to observe facial expressions and body gestures. Lip reading can also be beneficial, particularly for individuals with hearing difficulties or auditory processing disorders.
Use Active Listening Techniques
Instead of passively listening to audio in the background, actively focus on what you hear. Focus only on what you are listening to, even if it’s only 15 minutes a day to improve your listening skills.
Read and Listen
Read a script or subtitles in English at the same time as watching or listening to an audio source. You will improve your ability to recognize the sounds of written words.
Take Notes During Listening Sessions
Jot down unfamiliar words or phrases without disrupting the conversation's flow or pausing your audio to practice going along with a conversation even if you don’t catch 100% of the words. Then, you can learn about the missing information later.
Exercises to Practice English Listening Comprehension
Ready for some specific exercises you can do to improve your listening comprehension skills?
Especially if you’re learning independently, it’s important to make sure you are practicing with purpose. This means:
- Understanding why you’re struggling to understand a specific audio piece
- Coming up with steps you can take to address this specific situation
- Keep using what works and refining or discarding the methods that don’t
- Listen to as much audio as you can actually understand as possible. Use it as a way to boost morale and compare it to audio you have trouble with so you’ll have a better idea of what you need to do to understand that troublesome audio.
Improve Your Listening Skills with a Tutor
Overwhelmed? Never fear! With esl classes for adults, you can have an instructor to teach you exactly what you need to know in the exact ways you can learn it best for your individual learning needs.
With a tutor, you can have a practice partner for more learning exercise options, as well as immediate and helpful feedback on how to improve.
Start learning with English tutoring online or in person with Superprof!
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