Strategies for Building your Basic Listening Skills

1. Listen to spoken English as often as you can
The more you listen, the better listener you become. Do not lose chance to listen to native speakers if you can, watch English speaking films, TV, listen to the radio or view various short videos on Youtube. Try to figure out as many new words and expressions as you can and consult the dictionary to find out their meaning. Do not forget to write out the words and expressions that are familiar to you and serve as passive or potential vocabulary for you to be able not only to brush them up on your memory, but also to use them as your active vocabulary later.

2. Listen to Natural Speech
The speech that one may hear in films, documentaries, TV, radio news is true to life, so if you want to develop your ear, listen to natural speech as much as you can. Try to listen to informal conversations that concerns topics common to the everyday life.

3. Listen to different English varieties and accents.
If you stick to RP only your listening comprehension skills may be good for nothing. To be a successful listener and language learner one must familiarize oneself with different accents, speech patterns and varieties of English that can be found all over the world. You may start with AmE and BrE that are the most widespread varieties of English in the world. To become acquainted with them, view movies, TV shows, short videos on Youtube and listen to the radio etc.

4. Listen to Authentic Lectures
Listening to authentic lectures will definitely help you improve your ability to listen to longer discourse and get to know some new and useful fact on the topic you choose. One may find numerous lectures on the Internet that are free and can be easily downloaded. The language in the lectures is more formal and usually concerns an academic topic.

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5. Take Notes and Summarize
Note taking is an important skill for any student to develop. Taking notes will help you concentrate and remember what’s been said. Try to write what you hear in a rough outline form to help you organize the major ideas and facts of the given passage. To be a good note taker, you have to develop two skills: writing notes quickly and understanding what is important in a passage. To write notes quickly, you can learn to use abbreviations and symbols and organize ideas to show relationships clearly. To take good notes on the given passage, it’s important to identify the topic or the main idea and understand the logic as well as the organization of the passage.

You will have also to learn how to clearly and accurately summarize what you have heard to succeed on the test and your university studies. A summary describes only the major points of the suggested topic. An effective summary is clear, concise and coherent, shorter than original text. You may paraphrase the material in your notes. Take your notes in outline form and link them clearly without including too much detail.

6. Identify the Main Idea and the Topic
Whenever you listen to the passage, focus on its main idea that is usually stated at the beginning of the listening passage. As a rule you may be asked to listen to the recording twice, so listen for the first time to get the main idea of the passage and for the second time search for the details that may be found throughout the given passage.
Identifying the topic of a conversation immediately will help you anticipate the information you will hear and details you will need to remember in order to answer the questions. Remember that sometimes a broad topic may be narrowed down to a specific one. Other times, the speakers may discuss one topic and then change it. Some questions require you to draw conclusions on what you hear.

7. Listen to the Passage and Read the Question Carefully
Make sure you understand what is being asked before you listen to the recoding and then answer the given questions. Remember that all correct and incorrect answers include details mentioned in the conversation. An incorrect answer may contain information that is true, but that does not answer the question.

8. Familiarize yourself with the Types of Questions on the test
Every type of question has its special instructions, so make sure you know the major types of questions and the way they may be done:
- Multiple Choice
In this type of task you need to rule out two or more incorrect answers and choose one that is correct to contain the same information as what was said in the recording.
-True/False
In this type of task, you need to decide if the given statements convey the same information as used in the recording (and mark them True) or different (and mark them False).
- Matching
When doing a matching task, you need to match given elements to various short recordings or excerpts of one longer recording. The task usually contains an extra element which you do not need to use.

9. Practice Understanding Connectors
Speakers connect their ideas by using linking words, referents and transitional expressions. Try to understand the speaker’s signals and referents that are known as pronouns and short phrases to be used instead of repeating information and may refer back to the previously mentioned word or phrase.
Referents are like links in chain that connect information. The speakers may also use transactional expressions to connect ideas and give signals to the listeners. These signals smooth the flow of ideas by showing the relationships between the ideas in a conversation. Read the examples of the connecting words and phrases: instead, although (signaling contrasts), once, then (sequences), if (conditions), also (additions), as a result (results), in short (summary), etc.

10. Answer Every Question
Do not forget to answer all questions given to the passage. Look through the questions before listening and once again to check if you have written all the answers to the questions.

11. Pay Attention to Time
Pace yourself according to the time you are given and the number of questions you have answer each question and go to the next one as quickly as you can.

12. Guess the Meaning of Unknown Words
Don’t panic if you hear any words or phrases that you do not know. Stop thinking about these words, because you will miss another important part of the recording. Remember that your task is to find the necessary information and not to understand all the words in the spoken passage. Try to use the context to understand the meaning of new words. Simply ignore the phrases you don’t know.

13. Information in the Recording VS your General Knowledge of the World
Although the exam questions often refer to well-known phenomena and problems, you should not let your knowledge of the world get in the way of doing the task properly. Before deciding on an answer ask yourself: “Does the recording say this?” Remember that your starting point must always be the recording and not your knowledge of the world.

14. Mind Vocabulary and Grammar Paraphrases
Exam question are typically constructed in such a way that information from the recording is represented by means of vocabulary and grammar paraphrases. It means that the exam question will include expressions of similar meanings as the ones used in the recording, but they will not be exactly the same. Exam questions with vocabulary and grammar paraphrases may contain the information which is identical with the content of the recording however, it does not always have to be the case, so you have to be very careful as not all questions are synonyms of the information represented in the recording.

15. Dealing with Distractors
Distractors are the words that sound similar to the words used in the recording. Such words are used to make up a wrong opinion or lead you away from the correct answer. These are usually generalizations like the words: always, all, everybody, everywhere, etc.

References:
1.J. Gear, R. Gear.Cambridge Preparation for the TOEFL Test / Jolene Gear, Robert Gear: Cambridge University Press, 2006. - P.249-294
2. B. Hastings. Exam Activator. Classroom and Self-study Exam Preparation / Bob Hastings, Marta Uminska, Domonika Chandler, Kristof Hegedus, 2010. - P.10-19