What are the three reasons why listening is difficult?
If you can’t understand what people say, it’s difficult to reply to people, or to take part in conversations. Listening in English can be particularly difficult because of some of the pronunciation and vocabulary features of English. These can cause misunderstandings (when you believe you understand something, but you don’t) and confusion
(you don’t understand at all). Here are the three main problems with listening in English, with some solutions. Here are three ways in which English pronunciation makes it hard to understand spoken English. 1. Stress Why this causes
confusion Listen to the audio to hear the difference between the positive and negative form of the modals
“must” and “should”. 2. Connected speech In connected speech, we add sounds: “he isn’t” adds a “y” and becomes “he_y_isn’t”; or “go away” adds a “w” to become “go-w-away”, for example. We also eliminate sounds. For example, we omit the “d” before another consonant, so “go and see” becomes “go an see”. We also combine sounds to make a new sound. For example, “Do you know her?” can become “Dj-oo” when we speak fast. Even when you’re an advanced speaker of English, it can be difficult to link what you hear to how the words are written. Some solutions are to read the transcript after listening (so you can see the differences between the spoken and the written words), as well as to practise speaking with connected speech yourself. 3. Accent and dialect If you work for an international organisation, most of your conversations are likely to be with speakers of English from other countries as well. Some accents will be more difficult for you to understand (at least at the beginning) than others. The best way to understand different accents and dialects is to listen to a variety of English! English Vocabulary FeaturesLike with English pronunciation, there are three features of English vocabulary that can make it difficult to understand conversations. 1. Many words have multiple meanings In fast English, how do you know that you’ve understood the correct meaning of the word? A good knowledge of even basic words will help you with this problem. 2. English vocabulary is huge and constantly developing In addition, some conversations can be formal or technical, while others are informal where people use a lot of slang. (Slang changes so quickly that it’s hard to understand – even for native speakers.) 3. English collocations and fixed phrases A few solutions for vocabulary problems: You can ignore an unknown word, or try to work out the meaning from the general context, your understanding of a subject, or the person’s face and body language. The challenge is to do this before the conversation moves on. Trying to “translate” the word in your head will slow you down, so that you miss the next part of the conversation. This is why developing your listening through watching movies or listening to music is so helpful, as you can slow down, or pause and replay. Other English Listening ProblemsOther problems in listening are caused by how people speak and the situation that they are in. When you listen to a conversation, it’s hard to predict how the conversation will go. Sometimes we change the topic of conversation, or we go back to something we said before. We make grammatical mistakes when we speak, we hesitate, or we repeat words. We might stop ourselves in the middle of a sentence to correct what we’ve said, to explain or rephrase – or even to give more detail. We use filler words like “like” and “you know”, and sometimes we don’t finish the sentence properly. Then other people interrupt, or speak at the same time. There might be background noise, and some people might speak so softly (or fast) that it’s difficult to understand them. The Best Way To Improve Your ListeningIt’s important to listen to as much English as you can, including both “scripted” English (news programmes, TED talks, etc) and unscripted English, such as natural conversations. It’s also a good idea to listen to as many different varieties of English as you can so that you get practise listening to different accents. A great place to do that is in the English Fluency Club, where you can meet people from all around the world, and practice speaking and listening in English. As a special offer, get a 50% discount on your first month! Just add OFFER into the coupon field at checkout. What are the 3 things that make listening difficult?Why Listening Is Difficult. Noise. Noise is one of the biggest factors to interfere with listening; it can be defined as anything that interferes with your ability to attend to and understand a message. ... . Physical Noise. ... . Psychological Noise. ... . Physiological Noise. ... . Semantic Noise.. What are 3 reasons for listening?10 Reasons Why Listening Is Important. #1 Listening builds trust.. #2 Listening reduces misunderstandings.. #3 Listening helps eliminate conflict.. #4 Listening encourages empathy.. #5 Listening improves romantic relationships.. #6 Listening improves business relationships.. #7 Listening helps deepen your friendships.. Why is listening difficult for students?The biggest problem with listening comprehension is that listeners are not able to control how quickly speakers talk. Second, listeners cannot have words repeated and this can cause critical difficulties for them. Students cannot replay a recording section.
What are the three most common barriers to listening?Common Physical Barriers to Listening. Too much noise around you. ... . Trying to listen to more than one conversation at a time. ... . You are distracted by something else in your environment.. |