This lesson will show you how to leverage your Emotions. And we will solve some problems you may have when you listen.

1. Why listening does not always improve your listening skill?

2. How you can improve your listening skill effectively?

3. What to do if you are too lazy to search for good listening materials?

To improve your English listening skill is really easy. All you’ve got to do is listen to a lot of English… Right? Well, yes. But also no. The thing is there are some problems with this way of thinking. Why?

For example, do you find yourself listening to English, but sometimes stop paying attention? You don’t even realize it, but several minutes have gone past and you have been thinking about something completely different.

I am sure, you don’t catch any of the English words or phrases that you heard. Or maybe even what the thing you were listening to is about.

This is probably because you were not really listening. Your mind is going somewhere and you cannot concentrate. Obviously, this is not going to improve your English listening skills.

So why does this happen?

This happen because probably the following reasons:

• The material is too hard (and you don’t understand it)
• It’s not interesting to you (and you don’t care)
• It’s boring (and you don’t really want to listen)

If you are listening to things that have one of these reasons, it’s only natural you can’t concentrate or suck up the English like sponge!

What you need is to have audio that has three things opposite to the three things listed above.

• The audio is easy (and you understand)
• It’s interesting to you (and you care)
• It’s exciting (and you want to listen)

We will clarify the reason why.

The audio is easy

First, let’s talk about the audio which is easy. Listen to audios that are easy for you to understand. This is not a waste of time like many people think. Basically, you should already understand 90% of that audio. Listen repeatedly until you understand 99% or 100% and then find some other easy audio at 90% understandable.

It is better to listen to five things which are tiny bit difficult once than it is to listen to something really difficult five times.

Listen to things you are interested in

It can be an audiobook or radio show for native speakers that you have picked because you like the subject of matter. It is always better than a CD stuck at the back of a textbook which has content you should learn, but you don’t really want to.

Forget about “should” learn. If you don’t want to learn it, forget it. Even if it is really useful, if you don’t like it, then forget it. This might be illogical, but believe me, this will speed up your learning a lot.

Emotion, something that is exciting.

This is something really important. Even if the content is interesting and useful and everything else. If the recording of the audio is very boring, it’s useless!

This is why 90% of the CDs which come with the textbooks are a total waste of time. Emotion always seems to be missing from English learning materials. Our minds are programmed to react to emotion, whether it is happiness, rage, love, sadness, frustration, we are drawn to emotion. It’s hard to ignore emotional content and it’s hard for our minds to wander when we are listening. So you always want to listen more and more. It’s just like you always want to watch more and more of your favorite TV programs.

In summary, three things can actually improve your English listening, listen to audio that is easy, interesting to you and moves you. It will surely help you to learn English listening comprehension effectively.