Introduction

Listening (or viewing for signed languages) is one of the first steps of learning any language. After all, it’s going to be hard to replicate any word, sound, or sign if you don’t know what it sounds or looks like. Most people listen, see or overhear language far more than they speak, sign or read or write. Focusing on listening/viewing skills is a crucial step that shouldn’t be ignored in the language learning process, so how can we maximize its effectiveness at different stages of our target language learning?

Before we answer that question in this chapter, let’s watch a video of Abhay, one of our authors, navigating some L2 listening skills and reflecting on it. He takes us into a scene in his life where he’s listening to a song in Arabic to familiarize himself with the sounds of the language before taking an Arabic class. This is an example of interpretive listening (one-way listening). He also shows a clip of himself ordering from a taco truck in Spanish and shows how he successfully manages this interpersonal mode (listening in interaction).

Now that we’ve watched the video, take a moment to reflect on what Abhay’s example shows us:

• Abhay’s goal was to familiarize himself with the sounds of a new language.
• His method was to listen to a song and catch some of the bits and pieces he heard, even though he does not understand the meaning of the song yet.
• By repeating some of the chunks of sounds and words he heard, he is highlighting for himself and for us what he is hearing as he gets familiar with the language.
• Abhay also explains his explicit strategies for listening in interpersonal mode, such as how to use context clues and follow-up questions to catch the overall gist of the meaning.

Abhay is showing us some strategies that he enjoys and feels are working for him. You might decide to adopt one or more of these same strategies, or you might choose other strategies instead.

This chapter will dive deeper into some general approaches to improving your listening skills that we are suggesting you keep in mind as you learn a language. It also reviews some of the research behind these principles, and provides a range of many additional example strategies for how to implement listening into your day-to-day life. Some of these strategies are accompanied with stories from past LING 144 students to provide some additional inspiration! We are hoping to add additional stories to this chapter with future LING 144 cohorts.

Media Attributions

The original video on this page © Abhay Pawar is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 (Attribution NonCommercial) license.