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 try to understand every word, and we don’t try to repeat every word. We try to catch what we can from the flow of speech.
2. Listen and take notes: As we listen, we try to make quick notes on paper and try to focus on writing down key words and phrases that we are catching. 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 high school students protesting against climate change, some of your notes might include:
school students - skip school - go on strike - climate strikes - combat climate change - 2,000 demonstrations in 123 countries - more than 1 million students - push world leaders to act on climate change - global protests - slogans: "Denial is not a policy" / "Our future is in your hands"
3. Self-talk: This is when we say to ourselves what we are listening to or what we have heard. Self-talk is what we do naturally, like young children learning their first language; for example, when we listen to songs that we like, we sing along with the song.
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.