7 Live listening skills
So far, you’ve been learning about study techniques.
But what about when you’re travelling abroad or talking to a native speaker? How can you use your listening skills to survive in the heat of the moment?
Luckily, there are some powerful techniques that can help you get through a conversation, or understand a key piece of information, even when you’re still a relative newbie in the language.
This will now be demonstrated by taking a typical travel scenario.
Activity 10 Asking for clarification in English
Allow about 5 minutes
You can use exactly the same principle in conversations – listen for the key information you want. However, in conversations you have the huge advantage of being able to ask for clarification.
Asking for clarification is an important speaking skill, and happens all the time even with native speakers:
Listen to this typical conversation in English and note all the times clarification is required or asked for.
One of the most valuable things you can do is to learn three phrases to ask for clarification in your target language. So, if you are currently learning a language, find out three expressions or set phrases for asking for clarification, check their pronunciation, learn them and use them several times a day over the next week – even if you are just talking to yourself!
OpenLearn - How to learn a language
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