Improving Your Listening Skills (TOEFL)
1.
Use the resources in your community to practice
listening to English.
A.
Visit places in your community where you can
hear English spoken.
-
Go to an English school, an embassy or an
English-speaking Chamber of Commerce.
-
Go to a museum and take an audio tour in
English.
-
Follow a guided tour in English of your city.
-
Call or visit a hotel where tourists stay and
get information in English about room rates, hotel availability or hotel
facilities.
-
Call and listen to information recorded in
English, such as a movie schedule, a weather report or information about an
airplane flight.
B.
Watch or listen to programs recorded in English.
-
Watch television programs.
a.
CNN, the Discovery Channel or National
Geographic
b.
Watch movies, soap operas or situation comedies
-
Rent videos or go to a movie in English.
-
Listen to a book on tape in English.
-
Listen to music in English and then check your
accuracy by finding the lyrics on the Internet (e.g., www.lyrics.com).
C.
Go to Internet sites to practice listening.
-
BBC World Service.com Learning English
(www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish)
D.
Get CDs with full-length lectures. Full-length
lectures/presentations are available from UC Berkeley.
E.
Practice speaking English with others.
-
Look for a conversation partner and exchange
language lessons with an English speaker who wants to learn your language.
2.
Begin to prepare for academic situations.
A.
Visit academic classes, cultural centers, or
museums where people are invited to talk in English about their work.
-
Before you listen to a lecture in English, read
assigned chapters or background information on academic topics.
-
Visit lectures on a wide variety of topics.
B.
Record lectures or presentations and replay them
several times.
-
Listen to different types of talks on various
topics, including subjects in which you have limited or little background.
-
Listen to short sections several times until you
understand the main points and the flow of ideas.
-
Stop the recording in the middle and predict
what will come next.
-
Practice listening to longer lectures.
C.
Become familiar with the organization or
structure of lectures.
-
Pay attention to the structure.
a.
lecture or presentation — introduction, body,
and conclusion
b.
narrative story — beginning, middle, and end
-
Learn to recognize different styles of
organization.
a.
theory and evidence
b.
cause and effect
c.
steps of a process
d.
comparison of two things
D.
Think carefully about the purpose of a lecture.
-
Try to answer the question, "What is the
professor trying to accomplish in this lecture?"
-
Write down only the information that you hear.
Be careful not to interpret information based on your personal understanding or
knowledge of the topic.
a.
Answer questions based on what was actually
discussed in the talk
E.
Develop a note-taking strategy to help you
organize information into a hierarchy of main points and supporting details.
-
Make sure your notes follow the organization of
the lecture.
-
Listen for related ideas and relationships
within a lecture and make sure you summarize similar information together.
-
Use your notes to write a summary.
3.
Listen for signals that will help you understand
the organization of a talk, connections between ideas, and the importance of
ideas.
A.
Listen for expressions and vocabulary that tell
you the type of information being given.
-
Think carefully about the type of information
that these phrases show.
a.
opinion (I think, It appears that, It is thought
that)
b.
theory (In theory)
c.
inference (therefore, then)
d.
negatives (not, words that begin with
"un," "non," "dis," "a")
e.
fillers (non-essential information) (uh, er, um)
-
Identify digressions (discussion of a different
topic from the main topic) or jokes that are not important to the main lecture
[It’s okay not to understand these!]
B.
Listen for signal words and phrases that connect
ideas in order to recognize the relationship between ideas.
-
Think carefully about the connection between
ideas that these words show.
a.
reasons (because, since)
b.
results (as a result, so, therefore, thus,
consequently)
c.
examples (for example, such as)
d.
comparisons (in contrast, than)
e.
an opposing idea (on the other hand, however)
f.
another idea (furthermore, moreover, besides)
g.
a similar idea (similarly, likewise)
h.
restatements of information (in other words,
that is)
i.
conclusions (in conclusion, in summary)
C.
Pay attention to intonation and other ways that
speakers indicate that information is important.
-
Listen for emotions expressed through changes in
intonation or stress.
a.
Facial expressions or word choices can indicate
excitement, anger, happiness, frustration, etc.
-
Listen how native speakers divide long sentences
into "thought groups" to make them easier to understand. (A thought
group is a spoken phrase or short sentence. Thought groups are separated by
short pauses.)
a.
Listen to sets of thought groups to make sure
you get the whole idea of the talk
-
Listen for important key words and phrases which
are often ...
a.
repeated
b.
paraphrased (repeated information but using
different words)
c.
said louder and clearer
d.
stressed
-
Listen for pauses between important points.
a.
In a lecture, pay attention to words that are
written on the board.
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