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Effective Ways To Improve Your Listening Skills

Do you find yourself feeling lost or zoned out in the middle of lectures quite often? Then you should work on improving your listening skills. Messages can be easily misunderstood if you don’t listen properly. Listening plays a key role in understanding, which affects your education. It is also said that children with listening difficulties face serious challenges in learning.

Listening helps in solving problems, improves accuracy and builds healthy relationships. Being an attentive listener is as vital as being a good speaker. You have to keep in mind that listening is not the same as hearing. Listening requires more than hearing. It requires focus and concentration, both mentally and physically.

Here are some effective ways which will help students to become good listeners.

• Be Attentive

Stay relaxed, but attentive. Students who lack listening skills often have difficulties in concentrating. So distract yourself from the background noise and activities in your classroom. Put away your mobile phones and tablets during the lecture.

Maintain eye contact with your teacher and pay attention to each and every detail discussed. If you have any doubts regarding spelling words or any queries, make sure to clear it at the end of the lecture.

• Maintain a Good Posture

You must be physically and mentally ready for your lecture. Maintain a good posture while listening and sit up straight and avoid slouching or getting too comfortable. If you aren’t mentally ready, your mind may start to wander and you might find yourself staring outside a window or falling asleep.

• Take Notes

Make sure to jot down the important points when your teacher is teaching. Writing down so many points will lead to confusion. So focus on the central concepts and jot down the important details.

Once the lecture is over, recollect the points and cross-check if you’ve recollected them all. Repeating this process every day will improve your listening skin as well as your ability to understand.

• Practice Listening

In this modern era, there are many educational websites like SpellQuiz which allow you to practice listening. They have different sets of words for kids of different grades and for adults too.

Since they are designed for particular grades, the words won’t be overwhelming. It is a fun way to improve your listening skills as well as your pronunciation and vocabulary.

• Listen to Music

This might sound simple but it is an effective way to be a good listener. All you have to do is listen to a new English song, pay close attention to its lyrics and sing along with it. It boosts your concentration and helps you to discover new English vocabulary as well. It enhances your language comprehension and even helps with your pronunciation.

• Participate in Group Assignments

Active participation in group assignments and other team building activities can sharpen your listening, writing, and oral skills. Working and interacting in small groups can reduce the pressure and gives you an opportunity to express your opinion. So next time when you are assigned a group project, make sure to give in your 100%.

If you have decided to practice listening with SpellQuiz, select your grade and start practicing. For instance, click on 3rd Grade Spelling Words.

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Written by Robert Johnson