can improve your English listening. So, keep watching.

Before I go into the specifics of how you can improve your listening, it’s important

to know that you need to work on other areas of your English too. So, for example, if you’re

reading a book and you learn new words and phrases, this means that when you hear these

words and phrases being used, you’ll be able to understand them. So, work on your

general English in addition to your listening. But, in order to improve your listening you’re

going to have to listen more. Most English learners that I talk to, they don’t do enough

listening. In fact, I surveyed my audience and asked them, how much time do they spend

listening in English and the vast majority spend less than 1 hour a week. And, this is

not enough. You’re going to have to listen more in order to understand how people use

English sounds, how these sounds connect together, how people use stress, rhythm and intonation.

So, get as much listening practice as you can. The good news with this is that you can

listen while doing other things and this is going to be beneficial. So, listen while you’re

commuting to work; while you’re washing the dishes; while you’re walking the dog.

There’re so many opportunities in our lives where we can do more listening. So, listen

as much as possible. You might be asking, "What should I listen to?"

"What is going to be the most beneficial thing for me to listen to in order to improve

my skills?" So, the important thing is, is to make it relevant to you, make it relevant

to how you’re going to use your English in the real world. So, if you are a business

person and you deal with people from America, then learn Business English and learn American

English, make it relevant to you and your situation. It’s also important that you

make it fun. Listen to things that you enjoy listening to. For example, I love soccer so

I listen to so many podcasts in Spanish about soccer and for me this is just enjoyable.

I don’t feel like I’m studying, but I’m getting the practice that I need. So, think

about what you enjoy listening to and listen to more of that.

A potential problem is that what you want to listen to might be too difficult. So, for

example, you might want to listen to conversational podcasts talking about politics but they’re

speaking too quickly or they’re just speaking about things that you don’t understand.

Now, if this is the case, then you can actually start listening to something that is easier

and build up from there. I want to give you 2 things that you can listen to if you struggle

with really fast conversation. So, the first thing you can do is listen to the news. This

is because the news reporters speak in a very clear way and also they’re talking about

current events and most people are up-to-date with current events so you’ll understand

what they’re talking about. The second way you can do this or the second option is to

listen to graded readers and these are books and audio books that have been adapted specific

to certain levels of English. So, I made a video where you can evaluate your own level

of English. You can evaluate yourself and then you can get the readers, the graded readers

specific to your level. Starting with those 2 things will help you get more adapted to

the way English is spoken and then you can move on from there.

Repeating what you listen to is also going to benefit you. So, for example, if you listen

to a podcast and you don’t understand 50% of it, listen to it again because what normally

happens is the second time you can understand more words because the first time you listened

to it you get the general idea of what they’re talking about. But then, the second time you

know what they’re talking about and therefore you can fill in all the different words and

phrases that they use. So, repeat a podcast 2, 3, 4 or more times because you’ll be

amazed at how much you can understand the second and the third time of listening to it.

We can also get smart repetition by doing narrow listening. So, this is where you choose

a topic and then you listen to a podcast on this topic. Watch the news report on this

topic. Watch your documentary on this topic and you’re getting the vocabulary and phrases

repeated again and again. This last tip might surprise you. Working

on your pronunciation is going to help your listening. So, there was a study done that

took 2 groups. They tested the groups before the study. They both did the same things except

for the experimental group had extra pronunciation training and that training led to a higher

performance in listening comprehension. And, I think this works because once you know how

to make the sounds, how to use the correct intonation and rhythm and stress, then you’ll

be able to recognize this when you listen to it. So, work on your pronunciation in order

to improve your listening. I have given a lot of advice here on how you can improve

your listening. If you’re only going to remember one thing, remember to get as much

practice as possible. Take your smartphone or your music player wherever you go. Take

your headphones and listen to English at every opportunity you get and enjoy it. Enjoy what

you’re listening to. So, thank you for watching this video and I’ll see you next time.