How to improve your English listening skills

English listening improves when you learn to catch the main idea and key words instead of trying to understand every word. Listening several times to short recordings at your level, recognising how words join together in speech, and listening a little every day are the basics of this skill.

Material at your level

Recordings you can understand but that stretch you a little are the most useful. At the start, slow recordings made for learners, short dialogues, and videos about familiar topics work well. A recording you don't understand at all adds very little, however long you listen.

Listening to the same recording again

On the first listen, catch only the topic and who is speaking. On the second, note the key words. On the third, listen while reading the transcript (if there is one) and see what you missed. Finally, listen once more without it; you will notice how much more you hear than the first time.

Recognising connected speech

In speech, words join together and some sounds become weak: “What do you” often sounds like “wadda ya”, “going to” like “gonna”, and “want to” like “wanna”. Knowing these forms helps you recognise in speech the words you already know in writing.

A short exercise

Make a one-week listening plan: every day, listen to a short recording (one or two minutes) using the four steps above. Write down two new expressions you hear each day, and at the end of the week listen to the first day's recording again.

To keep going, see Ten minutes a day of listen and repeat: English listening practice and English pronunciation for Turkish speakers: the 7 most common difficulties.

Frequently asked questions