“How to improve listening and reading skills for ielts”. A lot of people who want to learn English often ask how they can improve their listening and reading skills and there is of course a lot of advice out there.
The simple answer to this question is actually to read and listen more, you know the old saying practice makes perfect! But unfortunately for us it’s not quite as easy as that. The reality is that you need to know HOW to practice and WHERE you can get good sources of material.
So in this article we are going to help you do just that:
– How to Practice?
– WHERE you can find the suitable material to practice on and HOW often should you practice?
“Practice but do it effectively”
For reading and listening, or any learning activity for that matter, there is something we call passive listening which means that you hear or read a text, but don’t fully engage with it.
Active listening means that you are engaged with the material, and you think about it and respond by asking questions, making comments and taking notes.
There are two main ways to improve your skills. One is the most common, yet least effective way – while the other will make a big difference in just a short amount of time
Passive listening and reading
– Passive listening
is when you only casually listen to a song, people talking, or the news while doing nothing else to support your learning. In other words, you do not think about what you are listening to, it’s just putting on headphones and zoning out. You will often hear the advice ‘What you should do is watch an English movie’ and the reply is often ‘but I wouldn’t understand all of it’ (he actually means any of it), then the person giving the advice replies and says ‘don’t worry just turn on the subtitles!’. Although of course the sub-titles will help. What the person giving the advice is doing is encouraging passive listening. The problem is this results in around only 5% acquisition of new language, depending on the listener’s level and the level of the audio he or she is listening to.
– Passive reading
means that you are casually reading something and not fully engaged in the process, the reader puts minimum thought into what a person is reading. Typically this might be scrolling through the news on a website ‘reading’ English, reading some posts on social media, or browsing through an article or book.
If that is all passive, so what’s active?
When you actively listen to something, you’re giving it your full attention. This deep and singular focus makes for a more efficient and effective learning experience, and allows you to concentrate on certain aspects of what you are listening to.
Instead of listening to a TV program for half an hour or an hour, and catching the odd word, you would turn it into active listening by focusing on a specific part of the program for 2 to 5 minutes. You would then focus on a certain aspect of the language, for example you might note down all the new words, phrases and expressions that you heard.
Active reading means that instead of reading a chapter for 30 minutes, you could read one paragraph and think about a section’s grammar and function. You could then use the same grammar and functions in your own writing to improve it.
Active listening and reading require you to concentrate, think, and even do exercises. There’s no shortcut to improving your listening and reading skills in English, but you’ll end up saving time by preparing more quickly–and achieving much better results.
Active strategies for practicing reading and listening skills
– Active Listening
Some of the things you can focus on are:
– Pronunciation
– Vocabulary
– Grammar
– Structure
I would recommend focusing on the area that you’re weakest in. This is the best use of your time. For example, if you struggle with pronunciation, focus on that first. Do not try to focus on all of these aspects of the listening at once, you will feel overturned and it could lead to brain fatigue and ultimately stopping you practice.
Using this technique also improves your speaking because you will listen to native speakers a lot and think about how they talk.
– Active Reading
If you want to actively read focus on:
– Vocab
– Grammar
– Structure
– Ideas and development
Decide which one of these points is the best to start with, think about what you need the most help with.
Reading can really help you with your writing, on a passive level! The more someone reads, the more likely they are to improve their writing – what happens is that when you are trying to write something, the brain will subconsciously recall what you have read in the past and naturally try to incorporate the same language and mimic a similar tone.
1. Vocabulary
Here is what you should do when focusing on vocabulary when actively reading or listening:
Underline, highlight or note down any new words or phrases, here is a really good tool that you can use to do this inside your browser. Get the tool from here.
You can also use a dictionary in your browser to speed things up.
Double click on the word to highlight it, choose a color from the first tool’s inline pop up and wait to get the meaning and synonyms from the second tool’s inline pop up. Then copy them, add notes to your highlighted text and paste them into the notes section.
Guessing the meaning from the context – read or listen to that sentence once or more and try to guess what the word/phrase might mean.
These are two steps to make sure you check the definition of your word.
If you prefer to actually manually write – especially if you are doing the written IELTS test – write the new word or phrase you want to study in an exercise book specially for vocabulary. Then write out the meaning, pronunciation, how it’s normally used in a sentence and any other helpful information to help you remember the word or phrase. You can use a traditional dictionary and thesaurus for this, an online dictionary or use this very useful dictionary and thesaurus in one that will give you more in depth information and includes sentence examples, all of which conveniently in your browser: Click on this “link”.
“Then make sure you REVIEW YOUR VOCABULARY REGULARLY”
What’s going to happen is that over time you will build up a large number of new words and phrases that if done correctly will really enhance your writing style.
2. Grammar
When reading or listening, you should do the following:
- Read or listen carefully to make sure you understand everything
- for keywords
- Highlight something interesting and make notes next to it
It’s important to know what you’re reading – so underline or highlight any sentences that you do not understand – you can use the in-browser extensions I showed you previously.
Think about the logic behind that sentence structure.
Identify the grammar structure type and notice how it is being used by the writer or speaker.
Check a website or grammar book to see if the sentence structure is correct.
Revise what you have learnt regularly and TRY TO USE IT when you are speaking or writing.
3. Pronunciation
– Choose a few sentences from your audio that contain some of the aspects of pronunciation you would like to learn.
– Listen to one sentence or a word at a time and repeat the audio several times.
– Note down the sentence or word and the aspect of the pronunciation you are focusing on, it could be:
– Intonation
– Linking words (linking from one word to another)
– Weaker sounds
– Stress on words and / or syllables
– Have a go at copying the features by trying to imitate the exact sounds of the speaker.
4. Structure
Remember to underline or note down any discourse markers you find.
Notice how the words give structure to what’s being said or written and when you feel confident enough try to work these words into the structures you use in your writing and speaking.
5. Ideas and Development
Identify and highlight the points and arguments made by the writing or speaker, think about them and try to evaluate them yourself – how strong are their arguments? How relevant are they to the topic?
Then you can start to focus on how the main ideas are developed using explanations, examples, and details. You can use this method to help you when you are practicing your essays for the writing test.
– For more information about “IELTS Reading” Click on the title.
What sort of material do you need?
A lot of people when they first start their reading and listening use IELTS tests which is a great strategy if you are focusing on the actual exam. Check out our course and practice material here.
But if you are looking to generally improve your language skills you will not find it stimulating or particularly enjoyable. So before you practice the tests, you should spend time trying to generally improve your reading and listening skills.
80% of your time should be spent reading or listening to things that you enjoy. The reality is that anything in English will help if you actually ENJOY what you are listening to, and using the active learning strategies we discussed earlier will really boost your learning curve.
There are many great resources out there so here are some of my favorite language learning activities:
How long do I need to practice?
There is no set rule, it is different for everyone because everybody has their own unique circumstances.
A student with lots of free time is going to practice many more hours per day than someone who is busy with family and work commitments, but as they say a little everyday is more effective than doing a lot but only occasionally.
And of course the old adage that practice makes perfect is true.
“I don’t have time to practice” is the most common excuse I hear. But the truth is, it’s never too late or too early to practice. For instance, you could listen or read on your morning walk to work, during your lunch break, before going to bed – the opportunities are endless, you CAN do it!