“The rest of the exam was fine, but the listening was awful.” This is a very common complaint we hear from exam students. When we ask why, the answer is usually something like: “The quality of the cd player was bad.” or “There was a lot of background noise.” or “The room was too big and I was too far away from the speakers.”

Listening skills are often very hard to improve if you’re not living in an English speaking country and surrounded by English speakers.

So what can you do to improve?

Try to create an environment for yourself where you are surrounded by English. Use anything you have at your disposal – the radio, the t.v., even your favourite music. Use all of these things as “white noise”, background noise. Just like babies who learn the sounds of their native language by being surrounded by them from an early age, surround yourself with the sounds of English. Then, when you have time to “study”, use one or all of the following tips to improve your skills.
Below are four quick tips (plus one extra bonus tip!) to help you improve your listening skills in English.
Enjoy!