When you are learning another language, the listening is one of the most important skills for fully understanding a new language. Therefore, training this skill in the classroom is essential, and this is to help you with this. post is here.

CCAA is a language school that has been in the market for over 60 years, and this experience has helped us identify the best ways to practice listening in English. If you want to know more about the subject and see the tips we have selected, just keep reading!

Understand what is listening and the importance of practicing it

CCAA listening can also be called listening comprehension. That is, is the ability to understand what is being said by another person or media. It is present in language study because it is essential for someone who wants to achieve fluency.

After all, there’s no point in learning new words or even the correct pronunciation in another language if you can’t actually communicate in that other dialect, right? That’s why learning a language should focus on the four ways of expressing yourself:

• Listening (hearing);
• Speaking (he speaks);
• Reading (reading);
• Writing (writing).

All of them are important so that you have the freedom to communicate without difficulties and even avoiding any problems arising from misunderstanding. However, many people think that hearing doesn't need as much training as the rest, but that's where they're wrong: it needs to be trained even more intensely!

For example, if you want to apply for a higher education position outside of Brazil, you will need to take the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language), which proves the candidate's proficiency in the English language. In this test, the ability to understand what was said through listening has the same weight in the final grade as your ability to read the questions.

Success in this test can also affect your professional career, as many job openings require foreign candidates to prove their fluency. To check how much English you know, you can take the online placement test so that you understand exactly what level you are at in that language and what skills you need to improve before seeking a proficiency certificate.

Listening in English: the native accent factor

CCAA listening in English is considered more difficult to learn than reading and even correct pronunciationThis is mainly due to the accent, which makes it difficult to understand each term. It is common for students to complain about this characteristic for two main reasons:

• North Americans speak very quickly, so those who have little practice cannot follow their reasoning;
• Native speakers tend not to speak sentences in full, just joining words together in a grammatically incorrect way, but in informal communication it works very well.

Combining these two factors, who does not practice frequently listening ends up facing many difficulties in communicating correctly, because he does not understand what is said.

For example, while with correct grammar this student learned to say “Do you want to help them?”, in a daily situation a native would only say “Wanna help'em?”. Not understanding this type of abbreviation can leave someone outside the country in a difficult situation when asking for information, having a conversation or doing any other activity!

Discover ways to practice to improve your listening

Understanding or not understanding what is being said, even with an accent, helps define how fluent you actually are. But do you know how to improve this skill?

Check out our tips!

1. Include native speaker audio in your daily life

How the American accent can be one of the biggest challenges to improving your listening in English, The first step is to start familiarizing yourself with this way of speaking. To do this, try watching programs, listening to music and even creating the habit of listening podcasts in English.

2. Use technology to study

There are apps with content in English and even educational games that help you make learning even more fun. Invest in this type of resource, especially if you already use digital media most of the day. You will end up discovering great exercises that will help improve your English listening skills.

3. Start practicing in parts

Many students fail to advance in practical listening, as they try to understand very long passages at once, and this does not make learning effective.

That's why, separate the material you want to try to understand into small parts and think about what you understood the first time, then try to interpret the rest of the sentence in the context of what you already know. Then, repeat the passage to pay attention to what you were unsure about the first time.

4. Use movies and series that you already like

Movies and series have the power to mark in our minds some jargons that work as an inside joke among the group of people who also like that work. For this reason, ease with which we can memorize some subjects that we like, it is interesting to consume this content with audio in English and subtitles in Portuguese.

This way, you will be able to associate the natives' way of speaking with what you are reading and you will gradually begin to understand these passages without subtitles. If you are out of ideas of what to watch to help you study, we have made a selection of movies to learn english. Don't miss it!

5. Study the correct pronunciation

Many times, you will have difficulty identifying what was said simply because you do not know the correct pronunciation of each term. Therefore, do pronunciation exercises to get used to the phonetics of English words. This way, when you hear them, you will no longer find it strange and will be able to understand what was said.

Of course, the alternatives we have brought here to improve your listening work, but that doesn't mean that these habits make studying unnecessary. classroom, at a trusted language school.

To access more tips listening and English study in general, follow our publications here at blog from CCAA. We bring content for students of all fluency levels, so keep an eye out so you don't miss anything!