1. Shadowing: When we shadow, we listen to somebody speaking, and we try to repeat in our head what we are able to catch. We don’t have to understand every word or try to repeat every word. It's okay to catch what we can from the flow of speech. It's usually best to try shadow a short listening (or short part of a longer listening) and easier to shadow slower speech. (Singing along to the words of a song is a type of shadowing).
2. Listen and take notes: As we listen, we try to make quick notes on paper and try to focus on writing down the key words and phrases that we are hearing. This kind of practice can be useful with listening to radio, television and Internet news reports. Try to catch key words and combinations of words. For example, if you listened to a news report on the Zika virus, some of your notes might include:
Zika virus – tropical areas – pregnant + women (pregnant women) – mosquito – mosquito bite – infection – global air travel – global health emergency
3. Self-talk: This is when we talk to ourselves what we are listening to or what we have heard. Self-talk can be out loud or in your head. Self-talk is what we do naturally in our first language, for example when children say things out loud or adults discuss things with themselves in their head.
4. Repeated listening: We listen to something short, a few times, not just one time. At first, we try to shadow some of what we hear. When we listen the third or fourth time, we try to listen and make notes. Perhaps a final time, we try to listen and self-talk, but each time we focus on what we can understand; we don’t worry if we can’t understand everything.
5. Listening with and without subtitles: If you’re using a DVD or YouTube and watching a video, movie or a documentary, watch part of it with Japanese sub-titles first. Next, switch the subtitles to English and watch again. Then the third time, switch the subtitles off. Try to shadow or make notes for short periods of time.
6. Narrow listening: This is also a good way to develop your real-world listening ability. Narrow listening is what you do, for example, when you follow a news story over several days, so that you hear the same kind of key phrases again and again as the news story develops. Again, you don’t try to catch everything; rather, you build up your understanding of the news story through doing narrow listening on one topic
7. Reading and listening: If you’re listening to an audio new story from a news website, sometimes it helps to read an article about the issue first, and, before you listen, write down some key phrases that you expect to hear. Then, when you listen to the story, try to make key point notes. Or if you have a book that you like reading, perhaps you can find an audio recording of the book, and listen and read at the same time.
8. Colour listening: This is good for training yourself to catch what you sometimes miss. You need a short listening text, perhaps one minute long. The first time you listen without stopping, and you write down in one colour (say, black) what you can catch. The second time, you change colours and write down in a different colour (say, blue) what you can catch. This time, you can stop the text as many times as you want to, as you try to catch as much as you can. The third time you again use a different colour (say, red). This time you check what you have written against the script of the listening text, and write in what you missed. When you have done 'Colour listening' several times, you will understand your listening development more clearly.