It can be hard to see improvement in your English listening skills and frustrating when you feel like you can’t understand a single sentence you hear.

It’s especially frustrating when it sounds like words disappear or sentences are missing key verbs.

With these issues in mind, we have come up with 7 study methods to help you improve your English listening over time.

These tips will help you build a solid foundation for your listening skills, equipping you with the right tools and methods for your learning goals.

1. Understand beginner sentence structure and vocabulary

While listening is an important skill to improve, it’s often best learned in conjunction with other English skills like vocabulary and grammar.

If you possess a basic understanding of English sentence structures and vocabulary, it’ll be easier to discern what you’re listening to.

It’s difficult to know what you’re hearing if it’s unfamiliar, so connecting these dots is essential.

While you’re improving your listening, try to expand your vocabulary and understand the structure of a sentence.

It’s always a good idea to review vocabulary and brush up on grammar!

2. Don’t say every word clearly: Elision and omitting sounds

It’s very common for native speakers to shorten words, link words, and leave out sounds for ease of pronunciation.

In punctuation rules, we have “contractions” where you can join two words by omitting a letter and adding an apostrophe. For instance, “you are” becomes “you’re”.

But not all shortened words are accounted for with this rule!

Sometimes, even subjects, question words, and letters are left out of daily conversation.

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For example:

I’m going to ⇒ I’m gonna ⇒ I’ma

What are you doing? ⇒ Whatcha doin’?

I do not know ⇒ I don’t know ⇒ I dunno ⇒ dunno

Do you want to go? ⇒ You want to go? ⇒ You wanna go? ⇒ wanna go?

Is not ⇒ isn’t

Good morning ⇒ G’ mornin’

There’s also something called “word linking”. This occurs when a sound is stronger or similar to the ones next to it, so a sound is omitted or carried over.

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For example:

The “t” at the end of a word might be omitted next to another consonant.

Example: might not ⇒ migh’ not.

“D” might be dropped or carried over to the next word.

Example: Hold on ⇒ hol’ don

While uncommon in written, formal English, you’ll frequently come across shortened words and phrases in spoken, informal English.

Familiarize yourself with the most common elisions, omissions, and contractions and start listening to spoken English with ease.

3. Different English accents affect pronunciation

Keep in mind that, depending on the region, English accents vary.

There are more than 80 countries where English is an official spoken language.

This number gives you an idea of the range of accents you could encounter in real life, or even just on TV, watching a movie or your favorite TV show.

That being said, there are roughly three to six popular and taught English accents with specific rules. British and American English are the most common ones. Here are the others:

American

British

Australian

Canadian

Irish

New Zealander

Having an idea of the slight differences in pronunciation between these accents will aid your listening skills, so be open to learning and listening to different pronunciations.

To illustrate, a common difference between American and British English is how words ending in “R” are pronounced. In American English, there’s usually a rounded “R” sound. In British English, it ends with an “A”.

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Example: Water 🌊

American: Wat-er

British: Wat-ah

Nevertheless, be aware that even native English speakers struggle with understanding some English accents. So don’t be too harsh on yourself.

The best way to familiarize yourself with different accents is to expose yourself and listen to a variety of accents. This can be a great language-learning adventure!

4. Shadowing and dictation: English apps

If you like learning English with TV shows and YouTube, or if you’d like to start, there are two effective study techniques you can use:

Shadowing and dictation. And they only take about five to 15 minutes of your day!

These are also great techniques if you aren’t able to immerse yourself in an English-speaking environment or country.

What is shadowing?

While you listen to something, simultaneously repeat it out loud. Alternatively, you could pause and repeat a sentence before continuing.

You can repeat this process as many times as you please.

What is dictation?

As you listen to something, write out the words that you hear. Afterwards, check it against a transcript or subtitles to see if it’s correct.

Not only can you use dictation for listening, but it’s also an easy way to see what sounds and words you struggle with when you compare it to the correct words.

As a matter of fact, there are numerous apps available to practice these methods.

We recommend RedKiwi, an English listening app, since it has a variety of content to practice these two study methods. You can complete quizzes and repeat phrases and sentences as much as you’d like.

Not to mention that you’ll get a choice of movies, animations, news, and documentary clips to practice with.

As a result of familiarizing yourself with different sounds, you’ll be able to identify similar ones in the future.

5. Comprehension: Try and understand what you’re listening to

When you’re listening to something, try and understand the main idea of what’s said.

While having the ability to read or hear a word is useful, if you don’t understand what context it’s used in or why, then there’s no point in reading it.

Here are a few simple listening comprehension tips:

Identify the keywords in the context. This will give you an idea of the topic at hand.

Paraphrasing. Simplify and repeat what’s said in your own way.

Ask questions about the content.

For example: Who are the characters? What was the main idea/issue? Why was he angry?

6. Passive listening

Active listening can take a lot of time and effort.

For a more relaxed approach, have something on in the background while you work or while you’re doing chores at home.

This is what we call passive listening. Listening that doesn’t require an immediate response, so you can just process information.

Turn on a fun TV show with subtitles, some English tunes from your favorite music genre, or find a podcast about a topic that interests you.

You might be surprised by how much English you understand.

It’ll help you review your existing vocabulary and grammar knowledge.

Perhaps it’ll even pique your interest enough to learn new vocabulary or phrases.

7. Be patient! Improvement takes time

It can be hard to see improvement over a short time.

Give yourself a few months, or even a couple of years, to see improvement.

As mentioned before, maintain consistent practice, daily or weekly, for about five to 15 minutes a day. It’s best not to feel overwhelmed by the amount and length of content.

If you’d like to test your improvement, test yourself with audio and use the dictation method. See how many mistakes you get the first time and compare it to new notes two months later.

Or, similarly, choose a RedKiwi content and see how long it takes to complete. Test yourself with the same content in a few months!

Conclusion

By integrating these different strategies into your study plan, we’re sure you’ll start to see improvement in your English listening skills soon.

So enjoy the adventure of learning different English accents and pronunciations. And make sure to have while you learn with TV shows and movies!

Whether you’re a beginner or an advanced learner, these tips and methods will help you understand what you’re listening to.

The Best Study Methods to Improve Your English Listening: 7 Tips