Tips for learners
I don’t understand what people say to me
- There is no need to understand every word! Observe the speaker’s face, gestures and tone of voice. TV programmes and films provide great opportunities for this. Use your intuition: Can you guess what he or she means? Does the context of the conversation give you a clue?
- Enjoy listening to a language even if you cannot understand very much yet. Get used to hearing the new language and its rhythm little by little. You can use for example songs and their lyrics which provide an authentic and meaningful way to practise listening comprehension and rhythm. The translation of some lyrics can be found on the Internet, so you can check your understanding.
- Listen to music, radio and watch TV programmes in the foreign language. Try to recognise familiar words and expressions and to understand the main points. Afterwards, set yourself a few questions and try to reconstruct some of what you heard. Then listen to it again (if possible). Commercials and weather forecasts provide a good start. Here are some ideas:
- make a habit of having the radio or TV on when doing other things to get used to rhythm of the speech and extend your passive knowledge of the language and vocabulary;
- choose topics you are familiar with and try to figure out familiar words, for example, listen to the same news story in your mother tongue and the target language;
- use "subtitles for the hearing impaired" to help you to recognise words or to support your understanding;
- listen carefully how people from different age groups talk;
- pay attention to the way native speakers react in different situations.
- If you have a friend in another country, you can ask him or her to record greetings for you. You will have a motivating and interesting listening comprehension exercise. You can also arrange an on-line conference with your friend or collect a group of learners around the world to meet on-line.
