We talked about the importance of reading to improve your English listening skills. (See our posts about why reading is important to improve English speaking)
Now, we suggest that the next step is to learn some general rules of thumb about how to improve your English listening skills.
To understand English by listening means that you can imitate or dictate the words that you heard. If you see the script of the movie <Batman Begins>, you will encounter this expression: “He poignantly imitated the reactions of other people.” To understand this sentence, you must know every word in this sentence. Do you know the word, ‘poignantly’? You will likely not understand the Batman sentence completely if you do not know the word. (Poignantly means to do something with strong feeling).
You may know the word, “crane”, meaning a machine which lifts heavy materials. But “crane” also refers to stork-like birds with long necks. If a person knowing only the first meaning of “crane” faces a sentence using the word “crane”, meaning a type of bird, he may feel embarrassed: how can a “crane” have wings, let alone be able to fly!
What about “toucan”, a word which some elementary students in the USA are familiar with. It may seem like a relatively simple word, but not an easy word for people learning English as a second language. “Toucan” is a bird with big bills living in jungles of Latin American countries.
All examples in this post will probably make clear why it is useful to improve your English vocabulary in order to improve your listening skills. If you do not know the meaning of what you heard, or alternative meanings of a word, you may experience difficulty with understanding and comprehension.
Next time, we are going to study the importance of phonetic rules of English.
