What's the most efficient way of improving English listening skills?

Question

I am a native Chinese speaker, and I have lived in Toronto for 8 years since the time I was 18 years old. But my English listening skills are pretty poor. I cannot understand the movies in the theater without subtitles. So I really want to improve my English listening skills.

Answer 1

This is a very common problem for non-native speakers, whether they have moved to an English speaking country or not. I would suggest scheduling a lesson with an experienced ESL tutor who can give you an evaluation and possibly act as a coach to overcome this problem,

Answer 2

 

TUTOR

 It is really helpful to break material down into smaller chunks and then take on larger amounts of material over time. For example, if you are able to watch a movie at home or on a computer, just watch the same 3 minutes or so, multiple times. Close your eyes and listen. Replay it. Look at the subtitles. Keep working with the same 3 minutes on another day. Can you pause it and write down a few words that you've heard? Have you tried podcasts? The amount of free material is astounding, and you can get transcripts for some podcasts. Reading along while listening is a confidence-builder. Try listening to music and learning songs. When you learn the lyrics to a song you will always be able to call it back up when you need an example of word order, for example. Please don't be hard on yourself. Language learning is full of surprises, new material and is related to circumstances. I am a native English speaker, and I still have to ask people to repeat themselves and I do look up words in the dictionary. I was at the movie theater last week, and there were parts where I did not understand what was being said. These challenges are there for all of us, just to different degrees. Best to you!

Answer 3

I would definitely suggest listening to music--especially by wearing headphones so that you do not pick up any other sounds, or words from conversations being held by other people in your surroundings while you are hearing the song lyrics being sung in the music you are listening to closely. You can follow along with the lyrics on paper or online by Googling them via the titles of the songs you are listening to. Also, listening to books on tape can prove immensely helpful when hearing the English language articulated eloquently, and you can follow along with the spoken-read language on paper or on an e-reader accordingly. When watching videos on YouTube, you can add English subtitles and closed captions by clicking the button on the bottom righthand corner of the video screen, and they will appear onscreen programmatically--for videos of any kind!

I hope this helps. Good luck on expanding your growing knowledge of the valuable English language at large!

As you grow your knowledge of English vocabulary, you can put it into practice by incorporating newly-learned words into your everyday writing and conversations with others to follow. That always brings about feelings of accomplishment and confidence on anybody's part.