English Listening Tip: Listen for One Specific Thing | ESL Listening

Do you want to improve your English listening? Then you’re in the right place! Keep on reading for this tip about listening for one specific thing. It can help you not becoming overwhelmed when it’s something a bit difficult.

How Can I Improve my English Listening Skills?

If you’re studying English, I’m sure you want to improve your English listening skills. English listening is important for a whole lot of reasons-to give a good answer in response to a question, to be able to understand a TV show or movie, or even to get a better score on an English proficiency test.

Whatever the reasons for improving your English listening skills, here’s a simple tip to help you do that. It will help you not get overwhelmed, but instead focus on something smaller than understanding every single word.

Listen for Just 1 Thing

When you’re a beginner or intermediate student, it can be really useful to listen for only one specific thing. This way, you won’t get overwhelmed, like you would if you were trying to listen to too many details at once. Start small, and work your way up to bigger and better things!

Keep on reading for the English listening tip.

English Listening Tip: Listen for One Specific Thing

Choose an audio that is over five minutes long and listen carefully for one specific aspect of the language. Some things you could listen for include the following:

Sentence/ Word Stress
Intonation
Numbers
Articles
Tense
Subject-verb agreement

You can listen for whatever you want. Just be sure it’s clear before you start.

You Can Start Small Too with English Listening

If you find that five minutes is too long and your attention starts to wander, start shorter. Like exercising a muscle, you must build up endurance. Here is one activity you can use to practice any of the above with YouTube or any podcast with a transcript. Breaking News English would be perfect for this, if you don’t look at the transcript first!

1. Choose a short video or audio clip.

2. Look at the title and think about what the topic is likely to be and what vocabulary you might hear.

3. Listen or watch (without subtitles or transcripts!) several times. Write down the words you are focusing on. For example, if you are focusing on stress, you will write down the stressed words. If you are focusing on articles, write down the noun phrases you hear (“a man” or “the storm”).

4. You can stop and check what you have written using the transcripts or subtitles.

5. If you are using Breaking News English, you can continue listening a few more times, until you are ready to complete the listening activities for a more complete listening study session. Alternatively, you could use the dictation activity and listen very closely to extremely short segments of text.

Need more English Listening Tips?

If you liked this ESL listening tip, and need more, then you’ll need to check out this book on Amazon: 71 Ways to Practice English Listening: Tips for ESL/EFL Learners This tip about listening for one specific thing is from the book, and there are 70 more useful tips.

If the book doesn’t help you to improve your listening skills, get in touch and I’ll refund your money. It really is that good!

The key to staying motivated with learning English is to mix up the activities you’re doing. Nobody likes doing the same old thing all the time, right? Right.

That’s why we wrote this book. We wanted to give you some fresh, new ideas for ways that you can work on your listening skills. There are things you can do with a friend, things on your own, or things with a big group of people. The possibilities really are endless for the things that you can do.

Get started today! Pick up your copy.

Where Can I Get It?

They’ll help you improve your English listening skills, whether you’re a beginner, intermediate or advanced level student. Head over to Amazon to pick up your copy today.

The book is available in both print, and digital formats. Keep a copy on the bookshelf in your office as a handy reference guide. Or, read the e-version on the bus or subway when you’re going to school or work.

It really is that easy improve your English listening skills. Ready to get started? Check out the book here:

—>71 Ways to Practice English Listening<—

English Listening Practice for Beginners

Have your Say about Listening for One Specific Thing

What are your thoughts about this English listening tip? Do you have of your own tips or tricks that you’d like to share? Leave a comment below and let us know.

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Last update on 2019-09-22 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API