Learning English Part 3: On Listening Well for Beginners

Any language student will tell you that, in order to learn to listen well, you have to listen a lot first. In this sense, practising one’s English listening skills in the UK is very easy, as one can hear English being spoken everywhere. 

Unfortunately, this can also be hard. If you are starting to learn English, it can be exhausting to live in the UK surrounded by an alien language. Even for advanced English learners, understanding spoken English is not always an easy matter. The speed of the speech, the accents, knowledge in local slang and vocabulary or even one’s concentration level… all these can determine how well we can actually understand the spoken language in a certain situation. 

100% or Just Enough?

Sometimes we feel that being English proficient means we have to understand 100% of what is being said. But when communicating in real life, understanding enough and catching the key information are more realistic goals. Deciding whether we need to understand everything, or just the important bits will affect how we practise our English listening skills. 

For Beginning Learners: 

For beginning learners, of course it is best if you can join an ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) class, or if you have an English language teacher who can instruct you also in your native language. But what if we cannot join an ESOL class or afford hiring teachers? Then let’s begin by working with available free resources! 

Screencap of a Duolingo English lesson, with the instruction language set in Spanish.

a. Finding resources with instructions in your native language

It is very difficult to learn English by listening to English instructions, if you have no foundational knowledge of the English language in the first place. But, thanks to advancement in technology, these days there are a lot of free resources available online. 

i. Language apps: Some apps, like Duolingo, also allow you to pick the language in which the instructions and explanations would be in. You can pick a language you already know, and then choose to have English lessons in that language setting. 

ii. Youtube: type “learn beginner English” in your language in the search bar, and you will find videos teaching you different aspects of English. You can include search terms according to your needs, like “alphabets” or “simple phrases”. 

At this stage, it does not matter how good these resources are, or whether they feature British English or American English pronunciations, or if the Youtube instructors have different accents. The main goal is to familiarise yourself with listening (and speaking) simple phrases, and gain enough vocabulary to the point that you will also be able to start using beginner level resources in English. 

b. Finding beginner level resources in English

i. Songs and children’s shows: After getting some basic English knowledge, we can start looking for other interesting resources to help with our studies. For example, find songs with catchy tunes or interesting children’s shows that you like, and it will become easier for you to spend more time listening to them. While the content might be quite simple, the simplicity of the content will also mean that we will be able to understand, or guess, the words used more easily. 

• British Council: LearnEnglish Kids’ “Listen and Watch” contains songs, short stories, poems and videos. The songs include subtitles of the lyrics for easy sing-alongs. 

• CBeebies: CBeebies is the BBC channel for children ages up to 6, this website contains shows, songs, activities and games in simple English. 

• CBBC: the BBC channel for children ages 6 to 12, CBBC offers shows (that you will have to access via BBC iPlayer), games and quizzes. You can also access BBC’s children news programme Newsround (through CBBC website and BBC iPlayer), in which you can find national and international news explained in relatively simple English. 

What other resources and strategies can we use to improve our listening skills beyond the beginning level? Stay tuned for the second part of “On Listening Well”!