With our first week of Cambridge coming to an end, now is a good time to look at ways to improve your English through listening.

How can we learn to speak if at first we don’t know how to listen. The following pieces of advice are taken from the Cambridge learning tips section, a link can be found at the bottom of the page.

• Implement Regularity

Like any other skill, it is important to keep a steady study habit of learning. When you wake up in the morning, rather than looking at your phone, listen to a podcast for 15 minutes while you make breakfast. Do this on a daily basis so you can maintain the routine and ultimately improve your listening skills.

• Expansive Learning

Try listening to different material, not just things that you like. This way, you’ll become familiar with a wide array of different sounds and rhythms and ultimately be prepared to respond in a variety of scenarios.

• ‘Chunk’ Learning

It is easy to assume that in order to be better listeners, we need to continuously listen for hours at a time. That is simply not the case. Implement ‘chunk’ learning into your schedule. This is where you listen for a period of time and then take a break. 15 to 20 minutes is a good amount of time, almost the same as an episode of your favorite Netflix show.

• Repetition

Probably the key to learning any skill is repetition. For listening, it is a great idea to listen to the same song over and over again to understand the melody and become familiar with the lyrics.

Listening can be quite challenging, especially in Australia with the ‘Aussie Accent’. There are so many nuances within phonemes and intonation that it can make it near impossible to understand completely what someone is talking about, especially when they speak at a rapid pace. Luckily, at Lexis English, one of our key focuses is to elicit and demonstrate effective listening techniques. Each day you will study, in one form or another, relevant and applicable listening strategies to take with you into the big wide world.

Interested in Studying at Lexis – Sydney? Click on the link below to find out more.

To check out the official Cambridge document, click here.