How To Improve Your Listening Skills
Wednesday June 18, 2008
From the forum: "I was wondering if people could share what has helped them to improve their listening comprehension. I find that mine fluctuates and I get frustrated sometimes. I suppose it's not just the comprehension, but the ability to hear the actual words, even if I'm not familiar with them. Sometimes I understand most of the words on my novela, but other times it's like I'm starting all over again. So, if anyone has some ideas, please share them." Share in comments here, or join the forum discussion.
Comments
Not knowing where you live, I can only offer what I tell my students–eavesdrop shamelessly at Walmart! Or wherever there is a great confluence of Spanish speakers in your area. Television AND short wave radio are a great help also.
One good thing about many of the shortwave broadcasts is that newscasters and announces usually enunciate carefully and speak fairly slowly. It isn’t too hard to find broadcasts from Radio Havana, and there are a fair number of religious shortwave broadcasters as well.
I believe that I made the greatest strides in comprehension after taking conversation classes where proper pronunciation was stressed.
My pronunciation was not as good as I thought it was and I know now that I needed to be corrected until I got it right. Following one particularly rigorous such class, where the instructor did not cut us any slack, my comprehension improved immediately and dramatically.
Interestingly enough, I’ve shared this with other students of Spanish and almost all have said, “Oh, I don’t need that. My pronunciation is fine”.