Listening Like a Pro
The following is a fun and easy method in which you can get the most out of your listening practice.
- Pick a short 2 minute segment of a film or video. You'd be surprised how much of the language you can hear in just two minutes.
- As you play the video, write down every word you hear and can understand as if you were writing the script. You will need to pause the video to write everything down. Write as much as you can hear on the first go.
- Then, play the same segment as second time. You will mostly likely find that you will hear new words you did not hear on the first run, or words that you misheard the first time. Make those adjustments in your notes.
- Finally, play the video one more time, and this time with subtitles. Fill in any missing blanks. Extract any new vocabulary or idioms and phrases for later that you can learn. Also take note of certain grammatical structures, trying to apply what you learned previously.
The best part of this method is that you can come back to these notes later and while listening to the same clip, see exactly how far you have progressed from the first time you heard the clip. Incredibly important to keeping your motivation is being able to see that your efforts are making a change, even if they are small.