How to improve your listening vocabulary
Last time, I talked about the problems that vocabulary can cause when we’re listening.
But knowing about the problem is only half the battle. The rest is about how we get better at it.
First, we can tweak the way we learn vocabulary. If you are an intermediate+ learner, it’s not enough to just learn a new vocabulary word in your textbook. You need to learn which words it’s commonly used with and how it sounds in common phrases. Many words sound differently when they’re used in a sentence, so it’s a good idea to check them in a pronunciation dictionary like Forvo.
To listen to different people pronounce the word in a common phrase, I also recommend YouGlish.
Second, you can incorporate some dictation activities into your listening practice, where you write down exactly what you hear. The next time you watch a video, instead of just listening and reading the subtitles for a video, try this:
Choose a small section (about 1 minute).
Turn off the subtitles.
Listen and write down exactly what you hear.
Check that what you’ve written makes sense. If not, use the grammar and vocabulary that you know to help you logically fill in the missing parts.
(You may need to repeat steps #3 & #4 several times!)
Turn on the subtitles and check what you’ve written. If there are any differences, go back and listen to those parts a few more times. (Here’s another good time to use YouGlish to check the pronunciation of common words & phrases.
I talk more about how do this type of activity in the free unit of my listening course, HEAR It Right: The Smart Listening Method. A list of recommended websites for dictation practice is included.
Finally, you can also improve your ability to predict what people are going to say. An easy way to do this is to listen to a video, but stop it randomly and predict the speaker’s next word/words. Be sure to pause the video in the middle of a sentence -where it feels strange to stop it - not at the end!
The great thing is that you can do this with any kind of videos to see what words are commonly used together (common collocations).
Dictation activities also help with predicting. One of my favorite sites to use is Clozemaster. Use the Listening skills option with the Text Input (one word) or Transcribe (the whole word/phrase) mode to practice this. Listen to the sentence and write the missing word or phrase.
Which activity are you going to try? Let me know how it goes!