Listening

Many of you made comments about wanting to improve your listening skills , so here is some advice:


Although it can be difficult to find things in English to listen to in Vietnam, it's not impossible. There are a number of things to do. There are pros and cons to each one

radio
A small shortwave or world band radio is an inexpensive way to listen to programmes from all over the world. The most useful are BBC World Service and Voice of America. Other countries also have international broadcasters as well. These are an excellent source of live, natural English 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There are a few disadvantages with short wave, though. It can be difficult to listen to because the signal strength is variable at different days and times. Because of the nature of the atmosphere, shortwave broadcasters put their signals on different frequencies at different times of day. It can be annoying to chase a signal all over your radio dial. There is an element of serendipity though and occasionally you hear things you weren't expecting to find. I enjoy listening to shortwave in English and Russian and try to spend a few minutes every day listening to the news.

cable tv
Another way to practice listening is watching TV. If you have cable tv at home, programmes on Discovery Channel are interesting and informative. You can also watch National Geographic Channel or any of the (movie channels or even MTV for exposure to natural dialogue. Remember that you don't have to understand every word. Listen for main ideas, supporting ideas and opinions. The drawbacks to tv are that you have to subscribe(pay for the service) and sometimes there's just nothing on. With any kind of listening you should try and find subjects you are interested in.

video
Video cassettes and DVDs of English language films are easy to find. Many of them have subtitles in English but these are often indecipherable because of poor grammar or vocabulary. You can turn that to an advantage by deciding how to correct the mistake or covering the bottom of your screen so you don't see them.


internet
Many of the radio stations I mentioned earlier can also be heard over the internet.
You need a computer with a sound card, speakers and some software like winamp or real audio . These are free to download. The disadvantage is that unless you have a high bandwidth(ADSL) internet connection, it can be difficult to listen to long programmes. You can do it in the ILA ILC which does have ADSL.


lab
The ILA Independent Learning Centre has a collection of practice tests for TOEFL. These include listening modules which you can do on your own.

These are suggestions that I think can help anyone who wants to improve their listening skills. None of them are very easy but I don't know of any that are. If you have something useful that I haven't mentioned, post it to the list.

Happy listening,

Michael