Listening

(see also Lectures)

Reading Skills and Strategies
Listening, as well as reading, can be broken down into skills and strategies.

Skills, like abilities, can refer to the following:


 * following conversations (pairs or group discussion)
 * understanding main ideas
 * understanding details
 * understanding how details relate to main ideas
 * making notes e.g. in lectures
 * understanding faster speech
 * understanding a variety of accents
 * interpreting meaning e.g. recognising sarcasm, bias, etc

Strategies are ways to achieve or help with the above; a common way to consider them is from top down: the idea of this is that 'down' refers to the level of detail or micro elements of a spoken text. In general the list below goes from macro to micro or top, down.


 * predicting what will happen in a text
 * thinking about your purpose for listening
 * considering the type of 'text' and what you know about what type of information and functions will occur
 * linking information to background knowledge
 * visualising or linking to experiences
 * paying attention to discourse markers (key phrases/signposting) that highlight the role of information preceding or following
 * thinking about why and how
 * thinking about what, who, when, where
 * paying attention to emphasised/prominent words
 * guessing grammar and functional words

Presentations and Lectures (see also Lectures)
BBC Worldservice