Our 4th suggestion about how to improve English listening skills is to speed up your English understanding.(See our posts about this topic here) Whenever you try to listen to CNN News or English documentaries, you may feel the speed at which native English speakers speak is very fast and it is difficult to comprehend everything they are saying. You might not recognize this when you watch English movies or dramas because the people in them usually use shorter sentences.

The problem of the rapid-speaking situation is caused by the fact that your brain experiences trouble taking in all the words that your ears hear. Just like for the case of computers, when a computer downloads a large document from the internet, buffering is required in order to gradually absorb and analyze the information.

The speed of spoken English, even for yourself when you practice, is dependent on the person speaking as well as the situation. If you try to practice an English article from CNN again and again, and you know the article completely, you can understand it a lot better because you already know what is coming next while the article is progressing. This situation will become common in your English understanding as you are getting familiar with English expressions and sentences. Practice is the way to advance your English listening ability rapidly.