Types Of Listening Skills and Strategies For English Learners

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Being able to communicate well in English is something that will benefit you throughout your life. Therefore, having good English listening skills is important. Besides that, whether you’re taking the SPM or the IELTS test, listening is a component that is tested to measure your mastery of the English language.  

When listening, there are plenty of objectives that we could try to achieve. We could be listening to understand something, listening to respond to someone or simply listening to reflect or form our own thoughts and opinions. These can be categorized into three types of listening which are listening for comprehension, active listening and critical listening. 

In order to benefit from the wealth of information around us and become better communicators, we’ve compiled a few different types of listening skills and strategies that can help you improve your English communication skills.

5 Types Of Listening Skills To Improve Your English 

1) Listening to predict

When you’re expecting guests to arrive at your home soon, you’re probably more alert to any sounds that might indicate someone has arrived. Whether it’s the sound of an approaching car or a knock on the door, you’d find yourself listening for those sounds as a signal for you to go to the door. 

Listening to predict is a skill where your prediction or expectation of what might be said helps you more easily comprehend what people are talking about. For example, if you’re listening to someone sharing a recipe, you might expect to hear instructions and words related to measurements which makes it easier to anticipate the vocabulary that might be used and piece together the different steps. 

In listening tests, you’re often given time to look through the questions before the audio recording is played. Use this time well by predicting the type of answers you should be listening for based on the questions. For example, if the questions are asking for a name, you would be more alert to catch any names that are mentioned.

One way to practice this type of listening skill is to pause while you’re watching a video or listening to a podcast and then try to predict what the speaker might say next.

2) Listening for gist

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Listening for gist is used to understand the general meaning of what someone else is saying. When listening for gist, you’re trying to make out the most important pieces of information or understand the general topic without paying too much attention to the details.

This skill is very useful when you’re trying to get an overview of a situation or trying to gain background information about something. It can also be useful when you’re hearing about a topic or concept for the first time as it gives you the chance to grasp the main points first.

Listening for gist is rather similar to the skimming technique in reading which is used when someone wants to get a general idea of a text without needing to read every single word. Therefore, listening for gist is something that you can also do while multitasking. For example, you could listen to the news while you’re ironing for an overview of what’s going on around the world.

An activity that you can do to practice this type of listening skill is to listen to a podcast, speech or even watch a short video and then try to summarize the main points to yourself or someone else.

3) Listening for details

If listening for gist is similar to the skimming technique in reading, listening for details is similar to the scanning technique which involves going through a text quickly line by line looking for specific information. 

This is because listening for details is involves listening purposefully to catch specific details or answers that you need while ignoring things that might not be relevant. For example, if you’re asked to write down someone’s age or birthday, you’d need to listen carefully for any of the matching information. 

This type of listening skill is particularly important for listening tests such as IELTS because students will need to choose answers from the options given. Therefore, it’s also important to quickly read through the questions beforehand to know what you should be listening for. Listening for details ensures that you’re catching the right information without being overwhelmed. To practice listening for details, you can try out exercises that are based on listening tests.

4) Listening to identify keywords

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When writing, you’re often encouraged to include signposts to make it easier for readers to follow the ideas in your essays. When speaking, people tend to use keywords and signposts too, especially good speakers. 

Listening for keywords and signposts would make it easier for you to follow what is being said. For example, phrases such as ‘I’m going to talk about …’ would introduce the topic of the speaker. Besides that, keywords such as ‘The three advantage of …’ gives you an overview of what the speaker will focus on. Signposts such as ‘first of all’, ‘in addition’ and ‘in conclusion’ also help you make connections between the different ideas mentioned. 

Therefore, cultivating this skill will be useful in real life as it enables English language learners to identify the main points in a speech even though you might not know the meaning of every single word used.