Successive Listening: Conversational
This exercise targets the following goals:
- Increasing your ability to understand conversational English that is spoken fast
- Understanding more and guessing less during conversational listening
- Understanding the nuances and not just the main ideas of conversational talk
- Understanding a wide range of English accents
- Understanding jokes and sarcasm in English
- Write today’s date at the top of your notes
- Choose a conversational talk that interests you (To increase your English listening flexibility, choose talks from a wide range of speakers – and accents!)
Elementary everyday conversational listening
(jam-packed with very high-frequency vocabulary and grammar)
- Learning English (VOA: Voice of America)
- BBC Learning English (BBC: British Broadcasting Corporation)
- EnglishCentral
Intermediate everyday conversational listening
- TV series: The young and the restless (Characterized by mostly direct speech acts)
- TV series: Friends (Characterized by mostly indirect speech acts and frequently includes jokes/sarcasm/cultural references)
- TV series: Seinfeld
- Transcribed YouTube videos: http://transcriptvids.com/videos.htm
Interpersonal academic/professional listening
- The PhD Movie and PhD Movie 2
- YouTube videos from Piled Higher and Deeper (PhD Comics)
- The Lab (YouTube)
- The Office
- Listen to the talk 3 times:
- Listening #1: Listen without pausing the recording, taking the best notes you can (if possible, turn off any captions/subtitles)
- Listening #2: Simultaneously listen and read the transcript and/or captions, pausing where necessary to look up unfamiliar vocabulary
- Listening #3: Listen again without pausing the recording and improve your notes
- Use your notes to record a brief audio report on your listening so that you’re prepared in case your English Speaking Consultant asks you to give a 1-2 minute report on today’s listening the next time you meet. Your audio report should include your answer to the following questions:
- “What did you listen to?” (topic, source)
- “What was it about?” (summary)
- “What did you like and dislike about it? Would you recommend it to a friend or classmate?” (evaluation) OR “What key thing(s) did you learn from the listening and how do they connect to your life?” (application)
Note: For more difficult talks, insert an additional step of reading without simultaneous listening (while looking up unfamiliar vocabulary) before the simultaneous listening/reading step described above.
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