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3 Common Mistakes In Your English Listening

A lot of people say that the biggest challenge in English is listening.I know it can be difficult to understand native English speakers when we speak quickly. I want to share with you the three biggest mistakes that you may be making when you are listening to English. Alright. So let's get started.


1. Listening Is Not The Same As Reading

This may seem obvious but the way that we often learn English in school, the way you may learned English is with focus on reading and writing for academic purposes.

May be in high school you had to read in English but maybe you didn't have as much listening practice in English. Or maybe you didn't know how to approach listening.

The way our mind works is with reading we are visual learners. We are looking at the text on a page in a book and we are associating the letters and the words, and these shapes that we see on the page, which are letters, we associating those with meaning.

When you listen to English it's completely different process. We hear sounds, words, phrases and we need to associate those sounds with meaning. This is especially difficult in English because the way that we write words, the way that we spell is crazy. It is just crazy.

We have silent letters, we have diphthongs, we have words that come from other languages and pronunciation varies widely. So remember not to listen the same way that you read. Alright.

2. Translating

It takes a lot of effort to translate. Well, when you hear words in English, do you automatically try to translate them into your native language? You might do this because of course you are familiar with and comfortable with your native language and you want to make sense of English, you want to understand. So you naturally try to translate it into your first language. So that you can understand what's going on.

But translating actually is waste of time. Why? You're putting a lot of effort into converting the meaning of a word into your native language. And then converting your thought back to English. In that time you are not hearing the words that are being spoken while you are translating and you are not able to focus on the person you speaking with.

So your mind is wasting a lot of energy trying to translate the words that you heard in English into your native language and then back to English so that you can add to the conversation.

Now, another reason why you shouldn't translate is that when you get passed basic words, when you get into phrases, idioms, metaphors and some cultural ideas or words that really only exist in English, they are difficult if not impossible to translate correctly in other languages. So I encourage you to listen and match what you hear with meaning, directly. Cut out the middle man, cut out the translator.

3. Expecting 100 %

The biggest mistake that you may be making is expecting to understand 100 %. Don't be perfectionist. It is impossible. Even native speaker with good hearing don't catch 100 % of what we hear. It's normal. Aim for 60% - 80 % understanding of what you're listening to.

Alright. Stay calm, stay relax and it will become easier to listen to English and understand what you're hearing.

Good Luck !

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