Discuss about listening skill.

[ducati_36]

Hello everybody.
I'm so happy when I have met someone in this forum. And now, when I learn english, I have a problem with listening skill. Everyday, After I had read a book in english or news, I listened some the tapes for improve listening skill. But so far, It has no progress.
Could someone help me to do this?
Thank you in advance.

[tiorthan]

Your brain needs some training to learn how to dissect the sounds of a new language, that is actually very hard work for it, and it is kind of lazy. So, unless you provide you brain with very compelling reasons to learn, it just won't. Having said that, there are some very compelling reasons:

1. Extensive exposure
If you listen to a foreign language long enough, you'll start to notice patterns and you'll begin to develop an ability to recognize certain sounds. If you are also provided with context you'll develop some kind of natural understanding.

2. A need to understand
Need is created through either an external pressure (for example when you are in a situation in which no other language is available) or through a strong urge of understanding. The former is almost never present when you self-study a language, and it takes a bit of effort to create the latter.

With these two point in mind, what kind of tapes do you listen to? How long do you listen to them each day? Language learning tapes usually suffer from two shortcomming (there are a few exceptions, but I know none for the English language), they are not interesting and they are too short. The lack of intersting content is probably the worse of the two because if you're not interested in what you listen to, your brain will not really make an effort in trying to understand what is being said. One can avoid that by immersing themselves in the language by listening to it for a prolonged range of time, but as I said, that kind of tapes is usually too short. So this may be the reason why you don't feel like you're making any progress.

What to do about it? The best thing you could do is to watch something you're really interested in - no subtitles. Listen to it, and try (really try, that's the main point here) to understand what it is about by faciliating your understanding of the language by the context provided visually. Don't worry if you don't understand it the first time, try again. Also, be aware that even though this usually works better than just listening to tapes, it will still take considerable time until you'll be able to understand the language more or less fluently.