How to Master Listening Skill in English

Najwa Harlika Chandra, 1906349803

Listening skills in English is not easy to do. Listening skills require critical ability to
hear effectively. In establishing human relationships, it requires communication, in this
communication requires good listening skills. If listening skills are not good, then
communication will not run effectively and can lead to many misunderstandings. A well-
developed reading skill will be someone's supply to be a successful person (Ministry of
Education Guyana, 2017). Communication will run actively and effectively if they have good
listening skills. Therefore, listening skills in English desperately need to be improved. English
is an international language spoken in all countries of the world. English skills can be obtained
through education ranging from primary education to university. However, there are still many
students who still do not have good listening skills. Many school students do not know
vocabulary, pronunciation, word order, and many other things because for them English is not
very important and considers English to be a second language. Therefore, students need to
practice and learn listening skills effectively to improve their overall listening and English
skills.

First, we need to pay close attention to what the speaker is talking about by listening to
the main idea or the core of the conversation. Listening to the core of a conversation can have
an impact on the overall content that the speaker wants to convey. The best way to see the main
ideas is to listen to important words and sentences such as "first...", "therefore...", "this is
why..." and so on. Another way to see the main idea is to listen to content words, such as
adjectives, nouns and verbs from a sequence of listening information. To practice the skills in
seeing the main idea can be done by watching short english videos without subtitles. Choose
the videos we like and the most interesting. After that, listen to the content words of the video
we watch and pay attention to what's in the video. Then listen again using subtitles and see how
much information we can understand from the video. And done repeatedly until we get the
skills to listen to the main idea well (Ahmed, 2015).

Second, when we listen to the information the speaker is talking about, we need to
predict what is in the information we hear. Predicting this can help a person understand and
anticipate the type of information heard. In addition, when we predict a topic of conversation
or conversation, all related vocabulary stored in our brain is 'activated' to help us better
understand what we are listening to (Ahmed, 2015). This predicting skill can be improved by
watching videos or television shows. Pause after every few sentences and try to predict what
the next speaker might talk about. Pausing between sentences can help improve these skills.

Third, when listening to an information, we must be active by creating conclusions

based on the information that has been heard. The technique of describing these conclusions
uses prior guidance and knowledge of the information to know the meaning of what we hear.
In drawing conclusions, we need to increase sensitivity to lower linguistic processes such as
sound, words, structure, and so on, then added to higher process interpretations (Karimi &
Naghdivand, 2017). To improve these skills, you can use how to search for videos or television
shows. However, we don't watch it but just listen to what the video is talking about. Then, we
conclude the information obtained after listening to the video. Next, the video is rewatched and
sees if the conclusion is correct. A tip to improve these skills is that when listening to an
incomprehensible word, we try to guess the meaning of the word using context or situation to
help understand the word. The more training, the better skills will be gained (Ahmed, 2015)

Fourth, the skills required in listening effectively are summarized. These skills are used
to repeat the core of the information heard, then rewritten so that it can be re-examined to
ensure the information has been obtained. This summarizing skill is based on identifying the
main ideas of an information being listened to. So, determining the main ideas is very important
so that the summarizing skills can be done appropriately. A good and true summary needs to
be supported by the use of interesting materials (Pourhosein, A & Sabouri, N, 2016).

Fifth, the skills needed to get information from the speaker are to listen actively and the
specific details of the speaker. Ahmad (2015) argues that this skill is to focus on the details we
want to understand, such as age, name, date, number, object and so on. Thus, when listening
with detail, we can eliminate or ignore all other details that sound irrelevant or need not be
known and focus only on the details needed. These skills are also very effective at building an
understanding of listening to a greater information when combined with prior knowledge of
the topic being discussed. A way to practice these skills by practicing to listen to and watch
any program to get the information you want. For example, listen to weather reports for details
about the weather, or listen to sports news for information on the latest sports results.
 Sixth, every time we listen to a foreign language as well as English, we may hear
familiar words in our ears, this is called cognates. Cognates are words that descend from the
ancestral language. However, since indonesian language does not come from english
derivatives (no ancestral relation), these cognates can be interpreted as borrowed words. For
example, the word "dokter" in Indonesian means "doctor" in English. We must be adept at
listening to english words borrowed directly from English to improve understanding of
listening skills in English.

Seventh, active listening is so important that we can compose those words and be
sorted, and can improve our grammar skills. As is the case in Bahasa Indonesia, English also
has a word sequence that is Subject-Predicate-Object. Every time we encounter a noun, we
need to pay attention to the words before and after to determine whether the noun is placed as
a subject or an object. So that we can know and find out the meaning of the concept in question.
Therefore, we must be sensitive and pay close attention when listening to information. So, in
order for us to have the ability to recognize word sequence patterns, we need to get used to
finding a word to analyze the pattern of the word sequence in the sentence as a whole.

It can be concluded that listening skills are indispensable in communicating with others
in order for the information obtained to match the material that the speaker wants to convey.
Listening skills need to be improved and need continuous training. To improve listening skills,
we need to improve skills in listening to key ideas, predicting, concluding, summarizing,
listening to specific details, recognizing cognates, and recognizing word sequence patterns. If
we have mastered all seven aspects of those skills then we will have very good listening skills.

References

Ahmed, R. (2015). Five Essential Listening Skill for English Learners. Retrieved November
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listening-skills-english-learners
Karimi, M. N., & Naghdivand, R. (2017). Literal and Inferential Listening Comprehension:
The Role of L1 vs. L2 Auditory Working Memory Capacity. Journal of Modern
Research in English Language Studies, 4(4), 67–84. Retrieved November 10, 2020
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Ministry of Education Guyana. (2017). How to Improve Listening Skills. Retrivied
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Nor, Hidayah & Alfa. (2015). Developing A Workbook of Basic Listening Course for The
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Pourhosein, A & Sabouri. (2016). The Significance of Listening Comprehension in English
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Teng, Flora. (n.d). Teaching Listening. Retrieved November, 10, 2020 from
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