“Everything in writing begins with language. Language begins with listening.”
Jeanette Winterson, English author
Picture this: you're in a bustling café in a foreign city, surrounded by the melody of a new language. You pick up snippets of conversation, the clinking of cups, and the hum of life around you. Before you can speak or read, you need to listen. To absorb the sounds, rhythm and flow of the language.
Listening is the first natural skill we acquire, it's the foundation of communication.
Your brain is wired to acquire listening skills first
From the moment you're born, you start to understand the world through the sounds around you. Think about how children learn to speak. They listen to their parents and the people around them, absorbing the rhythm, intonation, and sounds of their native language long before they utter their first words.
Research on infants showed that when they listen to speech, the areas of their brains responsible for speech production are activated.
But listening isn't just for kids. As adults, when we learn a new language, it now seems likely that the same principle applies.
The role of listening in communication
Research shows that of the total time we spend on communicating, listening takes up 40-50%, while speaking is only 25-30%, reading is 11-16%, and writing is about 9% (Mendelsohn 1994). Nearly half of our communication efforts are dedicated to understanding what others say.
Our ancestors communicated orally for thousands of years before the invention of writing. Speaking and listening were the bedrock of human interaction. Traditions, stories, and knowledge were passed down through generations by word of mouth. This long history of oral communication has deeply ingrained listening skills in our brains, making it the most natural way to start learning a new language.
If you listen to a language for long enough, you will eventually start to understand it
When you focus on listening, you immerse yourself in the authentic use of language. You get to hear how native speakers use expressions, their tone, and the flow of their conversations. This exposure helps you pick up the subtleties and nuances that textbooks often miss.
Listening: the key to effective learning
So, we know that listening is the most important skill when learning a language and that improving your listening will make you a more effective learner.
But listening is a skill. As with all skills, we need to practise them to improve.
The good news is that listening is the easiest of all the skills to practise. You can do it anywhere at any time. Commuting to work? Doing chores around the house? Working out?
Reframe that time to become listening time.
There are endless resources available nowadays, and no special conditions or motivation are required to practise. Writing takes a significant amount of effort, reading makes some people tired and sometimes you might not feel like speaking to anyone.
However, while listening may be the easiest skill to practise, its complex set of sub-skills means that regular, consistent and purposeful practice is key.
Receptive and Productive Skills
The skills needed to learn English can be divided into receptive skills, reading and listening, and productive skills, speaking and writing.
When you speak or write, you need to produce information. This requires more effort and is a more complex process than receiving information, so it is considered more difficult and time-consuming.
All language learners understand more language than they can produce. It’s generally accepted that new vocabulary enters our receptive knowledge before becoming an active part of our productive skills.
Think about your vocabulary. You likely recognise and understand far more words than you use, in either speaking or writing production.
We know that our receptive skills help to develop our productive skills. So, it follows that by becoming a better listener, you can increase your productive skills. And not only your language productivity.
Active listening
The benefits of being more conscious and present when listening are well documented - building meaningful relationships, retaining more information, and being fully engaged, like a participant in a game rather than merely a spectator.
Carl Rogers, widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of modern psychotherapy, coined the phrase 'Active Listening' in his co-authored book of the same name in 1957.
Rogers writes that listening well “requires that we get inside the speaker, that we grasp, from his point of view, just what it is he is communicating to us."
In the business world, being a better listener is often expressed as the number one skill that can improve your career prospects. Active listening, which requires deep attention and focus, leads to greater understanding. Yet it’s something that most of us struggle with.
According to the global consultancy firm McKinsey, the demand for social and emotional skills, such as active listening, is expected to increase by over 20 per cent across all industries from 2016 to 2030.
Why is listening so challenging?
When we listen, we’re often distracted or preoccupied and therefore not paying our full attention. Our brains are also wired to make sense of things without expending too much energy, this is partly why learners find listening for detail so challenging. Listening for general understanding is something that we do instinctively, but it’s not the best way to improve your listening skills.
Listening is a receptive skill, but it's not passive. You need to do several things at the same time;
Ignore any background noise like traffic or other conversations
Recognise that people speak with different accents and use different dialects
Listen for individual sounds
Understand the speaker’s intent
Read the speaker’s mood and attitude
Try to predict what might follow next
Interpret the non-verbal clues that we know make up more than 50% of what we say
And let's not forget listening to someone on the telephone which is almost a whole different skill!
Why you should improve your listening
The same research which looked at how infants learn a language also found that social interaction is necessary for language acquisition. Therefore, all the things that you do outside the class are crucial to help develop your language skills.
That’s why students who study abroad and immerse themselves in the language progress much faster. Even if your speaking skills are lacking, you can engage in conversations with native speakers and understand what they are saying, participating socially and feeling that you can communicate.
By committing to regular practice and finding ways to immerse yourself in the language, you will steadily improve.
How to improve your listening - It’s up to YOU!
Base your listening practice around these three core elements.
Frequency
How often do you practise each skill? Do you practise daily, a few times a week, only at weekends, or maybe only a few times a month? Is it focused practice? Do you have a clear vision, and can you work attentively without distractions?
Why do most speakers find it difficult to speak? Because of the lack of practice time.
Schedule the time on your calendar and commit to it. Hoping to find the time in between all the other things that demand our attention is not enough. You have to plan for it.
“Everything is practice.” – Pele, Brazilian Footballer
Consistency
Do you have a plan for your practice? The expression ‘consistency is key’ is very common for a reason.
To be consistent, your practice should follow the same pattern so you can achieve whatever learning outcome you set for yourself.
Finding methods and routines that work for you will not only have a positive effect on your learning but also many other areas of your life. Make your learning a habit and watch your progress change.
Purpose
What are you trying to achieve? Remember that listening for general understanding is the default setting. Unless you tell yourself, and your brain, that you have a specific goal that you want to reach, it’s likely that general understanding is what you will achieve.
Real-life listening has a purpose. You listen to get directions in the street if you are lost, to find out information about something over the phone, or to understand a conversation with someone. Practice activities must have a purpose if they are to be useful.
The comfort zone trap
Watch out for your comfort zone. What you avoid the most is often what you need the most.
Almost weekly I hear students say that they want to be more fluent, or they want to write more professional emails, or that they want to improve their confidence in social situations. Yet often they don't commit to doing the focused exercises that will help them achieve their goals.
Students who find speaking difficult will happily do pages of grammar exercises, anything to avoid speaking! And so, speaking continues to be the most challenging skill and the cycle is never broken.
But if you continue like this, you will never get the results that you want.
When I work with IELTS students preparing for the speaking exam, I give them a list of possible topics and ask them to identify which subjects they are most comfortable talking about.
Then I focus on helping them develop answers to the topics they didn't choose and don't want to get in the exam! A bit mean, I know! But the key to improvement is practising your weaknesses, not your strengths.
You can’t always take the easy route and expect a positive outcome. It’s about effort. Human nature means we will choose the easy option, the path of least resistance.
You have to push through the pain and get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable.
The students that continue to progress from B1 intermediate level, are those that put the effort in. It’s that simple. Your teacher can guide you, set exercises, listen to you and support you, but they can’t do the work for you. That’s up to you.
Not all listening is created equal
Listening for general understanding
As we have discovered, our brains will naturally choose the easy option when it comes to listening.
In everyday conversation, we usually hear the important information, the content words like verbs and nouns. We read body language, listen to intonation and add context, which all help us to understand what the other person is talking about. In general conversation, that’s enough to be able to participate.
And if that is your aim, that’s fine. But what we don’t hear are the details. The small words such as auxiliary verbs, prepositions, and verb endings. Even if we hear them, we don’t absorb them as we have many other clues to help us.
And guess what? This is exactly the kind of language that most learners have the most problems with. We’re naturally good at listening for general understanding. So, if you want to practise listening for detail, you need to practise listening for detail.
Listening to TV series and films
There’s no denying that this can be one of the most entertaining ways to practise your English. If you want to improve your vocabulary, learn some colloquial expressions, and get a feel for natural language.
Most of the things we watch are focused on face-to-face conversations between characters. As we discussed in an earlier blog on non-verbal communication, a relatively small percentage of communication consists of the words that we use, the rest is made up of non-verbal clues.
Have you ever watched something without the sound and still had a good idea of what was happening? It’s because the visuals add to our understanding. So, if only a small part of your practice is focused on listening, then it’s not the best way to improve your skills.
Listen without visuals
Listening without visuals gives your imagination freedom. Have you ever read a book and had a strong visual image of a character only to see the film and be disappointed by the actor? Did it feel strange because it didn’t match the image you had already created? That’s the power of connecting images to words in your own head.
The brain forms a much stronger connection when it has the opportunity to create unique and personal interpretations.
What should I listen to improve my skills?
Audiobooks
Audiobooks can take your listening skills to the next level.
Remember that listening to an audiobook in a second language will be much more challenging than listening in your first language, so make allowances so that you don’t get frustrated, and accept that you will need to dedicate more time to the task.
Audiobooks allow you to visualise the words and ideas that you are hearing about. They are generally narrated clearly and are less chaotic than podcasts which often have a more fluid structure. My tip is to find a subject that interests you, and if possible, a book that is narrated by the author.
This is the best way to get a feel for the language because the narrator is connected to and invested in the words that they are speaking. Not only are audiobooks a goldmine of vocabulary and grammar knowledge, but they also demonstrate correct pronunciation and intonation.
The link between listening and pronunciation is clear. Audiobooks give you exposure to the phonetics of a language while providing you with a model to copy and further develop your skills. You can train your ear to hear the difference between difficult sound pairings, such as 'ship' or 'sheep', and then copy those sounds. You can improve your recognition of the sounds and your production at the same time!
Podcasts
Podcasts are a fun and flexible way to practise your listening skills. The variety of topics they cover nowadays is huge and there’s sure to be something for everyone. They’re easy to access, often inspiring and usually free to listen to.
BBC Learning English has developed podcasts just for language learners. Why not have a look and see what interests you?
They can be the perfect companion when you are doing a routine activity and want to transport your mind somewhere else.
Podcasts immerse you in the natural sounds of the language including colloquial expressions, slang, and accents. Choose one by a native speaker to get the maximum benefits of the more relaxed and informal style of speaking.
Bear in mind that to maximise the learning element, you still need to be able to focus on what you are listening to, so combining listening with a gentle walk or routine task like ironing is ideal. Active learning requires your attention.
The radio
Listening to the radio is an easy way to improve your listening skills. It's simple to access, available on-demand and many stations broadcast live on the internet so you can watch the presenters in the studio. As well as catering for all kinds of musical tastes, talk radio allows you to listen to interviews, debates and current affairs programs which is great for developing your knowledge of what's happening globally.
I once taught a student who was passionate about football and taught himself sports vocabulary by listening to BBC Radio Five live every day. Make sure you choose something that excites and engages you.
Try to listen to different presenters with a variety of accents for the best exposure to a wide range of speaking styles.
Whatever you choose to listen to, remember to listen with a purpose. What do you want to achieve? Here are some simple activities that you can build into your practice:
Prediction
Think about the topic you are going to listen to. What key information might you expect to hear? Teachers often start listening exercises this way for good reason. Predicting content ‘activates’ any related vocabulary stored in our brains and can help us understand the material better.
Prediction also mirrors how we naturally use our first language, where we use context to help us make sense of what we hear. Make it a habit. Before you begin listening, ask yourself, ‘Based on the title, what do I expect this to be about?’
Dictations
Dictations can completely transform your listening skills. And they are so simple to do.
Go online to TED.com and find a talk about something that interests you. Make sure that you have everything ready before you begin. You need a quiet space to focus and you should have your notebook and pen to hand.
Start small. Listen to the first five seconds of the video and write down everything you hear, every word. Even if you aren’t sure that it’s correct, write the sound down. Repeat it until you think you have all the words. Then move on to the next five seconds and repeat the process.
After 30 seconds, listen to the whole thing without stopping. Then look at what you have written and examine the language.
Does it make sense? Have you written full grammatically correct sentences? Is the tense correct? Have you included all the prepositions and auxiliary verbs?
If you think that something is missing, try to correct it. If you heard a sound but weren’t sure of the word, can you guess it from the context?
Once you are happy that you have done as much as possible, check it against the transcript. They are available for all TED talks. Make any necessary corrections to your writing.
As you get into the habit of dictations you’ll start to enjoy them. Like anything new, it will be hard at first. Stick with it, do them at least three times a week, and see how fast you improve.
When you feel ready, you can listen to longer sections, but start small and build up as you get more confident.
Five new words
To make your listening effective, you must have a clear purpose. What do you want to achieve after completing the exercise?
Here are some ideas to help you define your purpose:
I’m going to learn five new words. Underline them in a transcript of your listening material and look them up in a good English dictionary. (warning – beware of bilingual dictionaries. They don’t give detailed enough explanations, or provide context to how the words should be used.)
How many tenses can I identify? Is there a structure that I don’t use? How could I use that to improve my grammatical range?
Is anything particularly relevant to me, my job/studies or my social environment? The best language is the language that's connected to you and your interests.
So what are you waiting for?
Embracing the art of listening is your secret weapon in mastering English. By making listening a daily habit, you immerse yourself in the language, enhance your comprehension, and build a strong foundation for speaking, reading, and writing.
Remember, every time you listen, you're one step closer to fluency. So, take charge of your learning journey—schedule your practice, stay consistent, and push beyond your comfort zone. With dedication and patience, you'll unlock the full potential of your language skills. Start today and watch as your understanding and confidence soar.
Happy listening!
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Your Author: Zoe Ford
Zoe is a CELTA-qualified EFL teacher and Ex-Director of Studies at a prestigious private language school in London. She has been teaching English to adults for over 10 years and has helped hundreds of students to reach their learning goals.
When Zoe isn't teaching you can find her at the cricket researching new blog ideas, she also loves to cook, to travel, and to share her passion for learning with others.
