Studying a Language: Listening

Listening, although sometimes considered quite a passive skill, can often be very challenging given that spoken language can often seem completely disparate to its written form. Perhaps the listening skill area would be better described as 'oral understanding', and in light of this here are some steps designed to improve your understanding of the spoken language:

1. First of all I would advise being aware of variations within the language or you could end up completely confused. A European Spanish accent is worlds apart from that of a Cuban, to say nothing of the differences between French from France and French from Canada; and some variations of Arabic aren't even mutually intelligible across neighbouring countries! You may not be able to decipher every accent straight away, but it does help to tune you ear to variations of the language to increase the range of your understanding.
2. When you come across new words or saying in a text book or other written form, try find a native speaker or someone with a good accent to say it for you, so that you can learn to recognise it.
3. Connected to that last point, be sure to practise speaking as much as possible, even if its just reading aloud or singing along to a song in the target language. In order to reproduce the sounds of the words effectively, you need to train yourself to hear the words properly so speaking the language can be in itself, an assessment of your listening skills. See my post on developing your speaking skills: http://1ofmanyvoices.blogspot.com/2009/12/studying-language-speaking.html
4. Some text books come with audio CDs to supplement learning. These are especially handy as they often include a native speaker reading out passages from the text book that you can follow. Download the audio content onto you Ipod or Mp3 (should you be lucky enough to own one!) and carry it with you to listen to as you go about your day.
5. When listening to the target language, try add a visual element. Listen to News Reports is a lot easier when you can see the footage of what they are talking about. When listening to music, try watch the music video (most are available on Youtube) as this may indicate what the song is about and 'tell the story' so-to-speak.
6. Couple your listening with written forms of the language. Try watching foreign language films with subtitles in the target language rather than in your mother tongue. Pay attention to hand gestures, body language and other indicators of mood or meaning.
7. Listen for understanding. Try listening to a News Report and picking out 5 or 6 key words from which you could deduce the general meaning of the report, such as country names or transparent words (Words that are the same in all languages). Similarly, try watch a scene from a movie or sitcom in the target language without subtitles, and try infer what's going on from keywords as well as the actions of the characters (facial expressions, gestures, tone of voice etc). Remember, between 70 and 90% of all communication is nonverbal- meaning, you can infer a great deal of what you don't understand!
8. Listen to a song several times with the lyrics in front of you. This is a method I swear by as it helps you get accustomed to changes in tone, rhythm and cadence as well as improving pronunciation and helping you learn idiomatic phrases (or common expressions to the lay-person.

As much as you can try to schedule in actual focused listening practise using some of the ideas outlined here, and any others of your own invention. Listening skills can often be overshadowed by the need to develop writing and speaking skills, so remember that language is learned holistically, rather than compartmentally (a word I may have just invented but I'm sure you understand!)