LISTENING STRATEGIES



228600-22860000 LISTENING STRATEGIESGood listeners use several strategies to help them understand what they hear.Below are some suggested strategies and resources for practice:? Think about what you already know about a topic (background knowledge).Ask yourself: based on what I already know about this topic, what do I think Iwill hear? Predict what main ideas or key words I you might hear.? Focus your listening: What do you really need to listen for? For example, whenyou listen to a weather report, you focus on the weather for your city, oftenpaying less attention to weather information about other cities. Before listeningto an audio text, think about what you really need to listen for.? Read the questions before doing an assigned task: This will help you focusyour listening as mentioned above. Reading the questions will help you knowwhat is important to listen for and understand.? Read the instructions carefully before listening: This will also help you focusyour listening.? Listen for key words or information: remember that you don’t have tounderstand every word to complete a task. Key words are usually the stressedwords in a sentence.? Think about what kind of listening text it is. Are you listening to a story? Anacademic lecture? a TV show? A conversation? Different types of types of audiotypically follow different structures. For example, if it’s a story, you will likelylisten for who/what/when/where/why and how. If you are listening toinstructions, you will likely hear sequence markers that will help youunderstand order (first, second, next…)? Pay attention to visual cues to help you: look at a speaker’s body language,look at any images or written text, including titles of videos or audio files to helpyou understand what is being said. One way to practice is to watch a video firstwithout the sound to see how much you can guess about the content.? Use context clues to help you understand unknown words: when there is aword or idea you don’t understand, pay attention to what is said before or afterto help you. Often, speakers give clues in what is said before or after that willhelp you understand. For example, they may use a synonym or antonym to aword or phrase.? Use context clues to help you understand implied meanings: sometimesspeakers don’t directly say what they mean. You can use context clues to helpyou understand.? Listen for tone and mood: What emotion does the speaker seem to have? Arethey angry? Sad? Happy? If their words don’t seem to match their mood, theymay be using sarcasm.PRACTICEThe following exercises will help you practice these strategies1. Practice using background knowledge, predicting and focusing yourlistening. Go to. Choose one of the topics that interests you. Before you listen:? Think about what you already know about this topic; predict the wordsand content that you think you might hear.? Click on the Quiz tab (not the transcript). Read through all the questionsto focus your listening.After doing the above and listening, click on the transcript to check your answers.2. Practice anticipating the structure of the listening. Listen to these differenttypes of listening. What do you notice about the structure (For example: are theresequence markers? What transition words are used? If there is more than onespeaker, do they take turns speaking? Does one person ask most of the questions?)? Listen to advice/instructions: listen to “How to Regift” to a conversation, listen to “Talking About Hobbies” to a news story: Pick a clip from CBC National News. Practice listening for implied meaning. Go to. Practice listening for meaning from context. Go to. Practice listening for stressed words and their meaning. Go to. Practice listening for tone and mood. Go to ................
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