Listening for information.
In order to
understand spoken English, e.g. personal conversations, telephone calls and
interviews as well as lengthy talks and lectures, you should know how to
prepare yourself for the situation and how to separate essential information
from ‘padding’ (non-essential words and phrases that contain no real
information).
How to
proceed:
Conversations, telephone calls and interviews.
Step 1.
Before going into a communicative situation, prepare questions you may want to
ask.
Step 2.
Then collect words and phrases relevant to your topic.
Step 3.
While communicating, ask for clarification when necessary. If for any reason
you do not understand the information you are being given, do not hesitate to
ask the other person to repeat, spell out or explain a piece of information or
to confirm that you have understood it correctly. Example:
-
Excuse
me, could you repeat that/what you just said?
Or
-
I’m
not sure I understood you correctly. Could you please rephrase your question/what you
just said?
Lengthy talks and lectures.
Step 1.
Before attending a talk or lecture, write down key words that deal with the
information you are looking for or expect to get.
Step
2. Collect words and phrases relevant to
the topic you are going to hear about and check that you fully understand them.
Step 3.
While listening to a talk or lecture, note down information you want in key
word form.
Step 4. Use
the context of each section of the talk or lecture to help you to understand
words you don’t know.
Step 5.
Look out for signpost words (e.g. however, in my view, in short…). These will
help you follow the structure of the speech (e.g. when a new argument is
introduced; a personal opinion is given; a summing up is offered, etc.).
