The best way to improve in a language is to listen a lot, regardless of your level. It is effective, enjoyable and economical if it is done right.
Let's go through the different kinds of listening possible at The Linguist. 1) Immersion listening for pronunciation: It is important to work on pronunciation at the beginning. Choose a few short and easy items. Contents like "the Linguist Manifesto" or "Pronunciation read at slow speed" and "Pronunciation read at normal speed" are ideal. Repeat the phrases as you listen. Listen to the same items so often that you can almost say them by heart. Make sure to try as hard as possible to imitate the native speaker's pronunciation of English. Read the texts out loud. Record yourself and compare to the native speaker's pronunciation. Practice individual sounds and whole sentences. Work on a few items of content for a month or more, just to get the pronunciation right. You can ask your tutor for help when you need it.
2) Intensive listening for feel: Once you are comfortable with the pronunciation and the sounds of the language, you can start concentrating on how ideas are expressed. Choose new content items to study that are on subjects that interest you or that you are familiar with. Listen to them. Read the texts and look up the words you do not know. Once you understand a text you can listen to it over and over again. This repetitive listening will help you to create a connection with the language, a feeling for how things are said in English. That is why it is important to choose content that you enjoy and a voice that is pleasant to your ears. Let the learning be an enjoyable experience and you will not only be willing to do it every day, but your learning will also be more efficient.
3) Extensive listening for meaning: Now you are ready to listen as a means to quickly acquire more vocabulary. You start to listen less often to the same content. You want to cover more ground. Still you need to read the transcripts of what you are listening to. In this way you are able to save words and phrases that you need to learn. Once you save words and phrases you should then review them regularly. You will find that by doing this you will start to notice these words and phrases as you listen. In a way, the written transcript is just a low tech way of recording what was said, whereas the MP3 file is a high-tech way. You should review your texts by both reading and by listening again.
4) Focused listening for phrases: Try to listen and focus on the phrases. You have saved a number of phrases in your personal database. Watch for them in the texts you listen to. Having listened many times you are already familiar with the texts. You know what is coming so you can just focus on the use of words. Each time you listen you will find that you focus on different phrases. Your objective is to make these phrases a part of your active vocabulary. You will then be able to sound natural and to avoid mistakes of grammar.
5) Review listening: If you have not used the language for while you can listen in order to refresh your knowledge and get back into the rhythm of the language. This will warm you up to the language before a meeting or a trip to the country where the language is spoken. This will enable you to get up to speed more quickly when you need to use the language. It is good practice to regularly review content items that you studied earlier.
6) Listen and then speak: If you do not have the opportunity to use the language often, listening becomes a valuable training tool. Listen to a content item and then express yourself. Use the phrases and words you hear to summarize the contents or to express your opinion on what you have heard. Writing is really an extension of speaking. If you prefer, you can express your ideas directly in writing and submit them for correction. However, for best results, you should do this after having listened to a content item that you have already studied and where you have been learning words and phrases. These are the words and phrases that you should use to express yourself.
7) Listen while you speak: When you join discussions at The Linguist, or if you have other opportunities to speak in English, make sure you listen. Do not be so focused on your own performance that you forget to pick up on the words and phrases used by the people you are talking to. You may find that you have trouble saying what you want to say, but sometimes the correct word or phrase will come from the other people in the conversations. So make sure you listen when you speak.
