Listening usually is the slowest skill to improve. For most language learners, listening is their weakest skill. You may have a good vocabulary and you may understand English grammar, but you have trouble understanding what people are saying, and it’s impossible for you to watch English movies or TV shows without subtitles.

I’ve discovered that often people have trouble listening because they have trouble with pronunciation. You may be pronouncing a word incorrectly, and therefore you can’t understand the word when it’s pronounced correctly.

Listening to spoken English is particularly difficult because there are many different elements to English pronunciation, for example: word stress, stressed and unstressed words within a sentence, linking sounds, intonation and rhythm.

For beginners and intermediate students, your listening skills will slowly improve as your vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation improves.

There is no quick way to improve your listening! It requires consistent practice.

Here’s an activity that you can do to improve your listening skills. I learned this activity from Carl Kwan, and I’ve expanded on his method.

1. Choose a short podcast (or part of a podcast) or other clip of someone speaking English (a song, a clip from a TV show or movie). If you are a beginner or low intermediate, choose something that is about 1-2 minutes; more advanced learners should choose longer clips that are about 3-5 minutes.

Important! Make sure you also have access to the words to the audio clip. You need to be able to check your work!

2. Listen to the whole audio clip once without looking at the words. Relax. Take a deep breath. Don’t panic.

3. Listen to the entire clip again. It’s easier to hear and understand what you’re listening to when you’re relaxed and not panicking.

4. Listen to the clip, but pause the clip every 5 seconds.

• After you pause the audio, write down a word, phrase or anything you can remember from the clip.
• When you have finished and listened to the entire clip, read through your notes completely.
• It’s OK if you don’t understand every word, but can you understand the general theme of what the speaker is saying?

5. Repeat step 4. Check your work. Correct your work. Add any new words you heard. When you have finished, read through your notes completely again. Can you understand the general theme of what the speaker is saying?

6. Hide your notes from step 4 and 5. Listen to the clip again, but this time stop after 10 seconds. Again, write down the main points you heard. Check your work compared to what you wrote down in steps 4 and 5.

7. Listen to the clip completely one last time while reading your notes.

8. Compare your notes to the actual words.

• What words did you get right?
• Did you have trouble hearing certain words?
• Are there any words that you should have heard [words that you already know] but did not? Why? Is your pronunciation wrong? Was the word unstressed in the sentence? Was it linked to a word before or after it?
• Look up any new words that you don’t know.

9. Listen to the clip while reading the words.

• Check your pronunciation of words you know but didn’t hear or understand when you were listening.

10. Listen again with the words.

11. Hide all your notes and the words. Listen one final time to the clip. It should be easier now to understand what the speaker is saying.

12. After about a week, come back and listen to the clip again to refresh your memory.

NOTE: Your listening skills will not improve overnight. Like anything in life, it takes a lot of practice! If you practice consistently 3-4 times a week, soon you will start to see an improvement in your listening skills.