Listening is ... Features and types of listening

The development of the skill of understanding foreign speech by ear is one of the most important key moments in the study of English.

The definition and essence of listening

Auditing is the process of listening to foreign oral speech . This is one of the most difficult skills, since this language activity includes several factors:

• Unlike reading, listening requires real-time understanding. There is no way to stop and take a look. Especially if it is an exam where time is very limited.
• You can not 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.
• Speech speaker may have some features that make it difficult to understand the text: a kind of accent, diction, intonation.
• English contains many dialects. Often, representatives of different regions of the United Kingdom, 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 full understanding of the contents of the text, including the smallest details. This is one of the most difficult kinds, since it is possible to perceive all the details only with a good knowledge of the language.
• Listening for gist - listening in order to understand the main points and the general meaning. This kind is much easier, since there is no need to try to catch every detail. In addition, this kind of activity helps to develop one useful quality - a language conjecture, that is, the ability to fill gaps from the context.
• Listening for specific information is listening to a passage in order to find specific information. The rest of the text can be skipped.
• Inferential listening is a guess based on the information you have listened to. This kind of speech activity is more psychological, since the main sense in this case is not the understanding of information, but the capture of the emotional mood and the state of the interlocutor. This kind can be attributed to non-verbal communication. In preparing for exams, this type of activity is not very useful, but in real life, the ability to capture intonational shades and mood of another person greatly simplifies the process of communication.

Training and communication

Educational listening is a means to achieve the main goal, free recognition and understanding of English speech. It involves tuning the hearing, acquiring the skills of recognizing foreign speech, learning the lexical and grammatical material, understanding, evaluating the heard and reproducing in written or verbal form. For this language activity, special educational materials and adapted audiobooks are used, designed for different levels of English. With self-study, you can listen to the text many times. In exams, as a rule, the number of auditions is limited to two times.

Communicative listening - this is the main goal of education, a free understanding of the speech of speakers of a foreign language with a single reproduction.

What does listening provide?

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

• Melodic speech and intonation. Many people who study English without communicating with native speakers transfer the intonation of their native language to a foreign speech. To learn another language in full, you need to know not only the grammar system, the general rules of pronunciation and vocabulary. It is very important to master the emotional side of communication.
• Pronunciation. Despite the fact that practically in any English dictionary all lexical units are accompanied by transcription, far from all the nuances can be conveyed with the help of graphic reproduction of sound features. Many moments can be understood and felt only in practice, listening and repeating.
• Polysemy. English words have many meanings and uses. Auditing is one of the ways that helps to understand the use of words on specific examples.
• Language conjecture. When communicating in their native language, each person is able to fill in the missing information, if something is not heard. The same skill should be acquired by studying a foreign language. Another side is the ability to guess the meaning of a new lexical unit from the context, and also through an understanding of the structure of the language.

Causes of language barrier

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

• Features of personality. By the way information is perceived, people are divided into visuals, audials and kinestets. If a person perceives information in the best way visually, then it will be more difficult for him to understand an unfamiliar speech by ear. Completely rebuild the type of personality is impossible, but you can develop the missing qualities.
• Lack of knowledge. It is likely that the difficulties in understanding the speaker's speech are caused by insufficient knowledge of grammar and a small vocabulary.
• Features of spoken English. Often in the everyday speech, carriers use a number of abbreviations: going to - gonna, want to - wanna, am not - is not, must not - must not etc.
• Lack of practical exercises. Even with a good level of command of a foreign language, a sufficient amount of practice is needed. It is important to devote time to training each skill (writing, speaking, listening and reading).
• Complex stuff. As you train, you need to gradually increase the requirements. Excessively inflated bar at the very beginning of the educational process will not bring good results. Therefore, in the first place, you can stay on the training texts and adapted audiobooks. If you have some difficulties when trying to understand English speech, you can choose a book to the level below. For example, if your grammar and lexical knowledge is at the level of Upper-Intermediate (B2), take the audiobook Intermediate (B1).

How to improve the understanding of foreign speech by ear

The two main causes of the emerging difficulties are the pace of speech and insufficient 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 every single note, he thinks in passages and phrases.

In each text there are a number of word combinations that you have already met repeatedly. First of all, this is all sorts of cliches, such as, for example, as a matter of fact - in fact, there is no doubt - there is no doubt , etc. Knowledge of such stable structures will greatly simplify the process of perceiving information.

Regularity of lessons

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 accelerate the learning process. If your level of knowledge allows, you can include listening to songs and watching movies, TV shows and TV shows. Also very useful are podcasts - short audio releases of different subjects, in which language phenomena, traditions and customs, society, news, etc. are discussed. Another way that deserves attention is listening to audiobooks in the background. That is, you do not have to try to understand and understand everything. You just will gradually get used to the sound of English speech.

What should I look for in preparation for the exams?

If you study the texts from the textbook, before listening to, pay attention to the title of the lesson, illustrations and a list of questions. Try to penetrate and to predict what you will hear. This will help to adjust the brain to the perception of the necessary information.

If you have to pass the exam (English), you need to study the listening as carefully as other questions, and prepare to begin well before the exam. When preparing, try to recreate the same conditions that will be in the exam:

• Try to cope with the task in a limited time.
• Use speakers, not headphones.
• Since this is listening with assignments, take time not only to listen, but also to fill out forms.
• Carefully read the questions, because quite often mistakes are caused by misunderstanding the task.
• If possible, find out in advance the approximate topics and find the necessary benefits. Regardless of which exam you are going to take the audition: grade 11, IELTS or TOEFL, start preparing in advance.

Some additional tips

• Learn your favorite songs. This will help develop both a listening and listening skill. And these two language activities are closely interrelated. It's hard for you to hear what you can not say.
• Listen to an English audiobook, the translation of which you read in your native language.
• When searching for materials, be guided by your level and interests. Choose texts for listening, topics of which you are interested.
• At the beginning of the course, avoid materials that are full of specific terminology.
• Understand unfamiliar words try to fill out the context.
• If possible, communicate with the media.
• You should get rid of the illusions that for a week or a month you can learn a foreign language at a high level. If you are going to take the exam, start preparing well in advance.

Auditing in English is quite a difficult task, however, with regular classes and correctly selected teaching materials, you can prepare yourself for this part of the examination work yourself.