LISTENING SKILLS: Let's practice!

What associations do you have with the word "pie"? I imagine a piece of pie that I'm about to taste! Do you know why? Because I am a visual learner. If you hear the sound of the crust breaking as you eat a piece of pie, you perceive information through sounds.

This time we are going to talk about how to improve your English if you are an audial learner. What do you think would be most useful for this type of learner? Yes, audio recordings and audiobooks!

A huge advantage of this type of language learning is that you can listen whenever and wherever you want. The only thing you need is to download the book or recording. On the Internet, you can find sites that offer you to buy a book with a voice actor for a nominal fee. On some of them, books are narrated by native speakers or qualified English teachers who are volunteers in this case.

However, I would like to recommend you a list of sites that are useful for finding free audiobooks:

• www.loyalbooks.com
• www.thoughtaudio.com
• freeclassicaudiobooks.com 
• www.learnoutloud.com
• podiobooks.com
• etc.usf.edu
• newfiction.com

And you can download and listen to podcasts or read books on Enpodcast for free (here you can not only listen to the audio, but also read along and add unfamiliar words to your own vocabulary).

Here are some tips to help you listen effectively:

• listen to the book or chapter several times without going into the details of each word or grammatical construction, but only to understand the main storyline;
• listen to it several more times, paying attention to unfamiliar words and trying to understand them from the context;
• try to write the words by ear, checking them against the text or a dictionary;
• read the book several more times, while listening to the audio recording of the book;
• discuss the book or write a short review with your own impressions;
• praise yourself and download the next book.