Thinking of questions will help you become a more active listener. Good listeners ask questions. While you listen, think of questions you can ask to help you understand more. Try to make specific questions. After you listen, ask your teacher or other students about things you don’t understand.
Focusing on the key ideas helps you to concentrate. Before you listen, look at the listening task or questions. While you listen, focus on the key words. You don’t have to understand every word. Use the words you do understand. Try to form a main idea. If there are some words you don’t understand, that’s okay. Keep listening.
This, sometimes called making inferences, can make you a more successful listener. When we listen, the information is often incomplete, or unclear. There are words and ideas we don’t understand fully, and there are ideas that the speaker doesn’t express clearly. In order to listen, we have to guess. Make your best guess at the parts you don’t understand.
This helps you become an active listener. It doesn’t matter if you’re right. Before you listen, think about the ideas. Look at illustrations and photographs. Look over the vocabulary words. Try to guess what will happen. Try to predict what the speakers will say.
This makes you a more interactive listener. While you listen, pay attention to the speaker. After you listen, respond to the ideas. Think about the content. What do you think?
This helps you develop your memory. After you listen, think about the meaning of what the speakers have said. Try to say the meaning in your own words.
Listen to other listening strategies:
[ Ask ] [ Focus ] [ Guess ] [ Predict ] [ Respond ] [ Review ]
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