Embedded Files
Pre-listening discussion
Pre-listening discussion
- Do you find your smart phone has a positive or negative effect on your memory and concentration?
- Have you ever taken an IQ test?
- How much do you know about twin studies? Why can studying the behaviour of twins be useful?
Comprehension questions
Comprehension questions
Click the button to the right to watch the video clip. You will need to sign in to Box of Broadcasts with your university ID.
Click the button to the right to watch the video clip. You will need to sign in to Box of Broadcasts with your university ID.
- What is the purpose of the experiment?
- How was the experiment carried out?
- According to current evidence, what problems can smartphones cause people?
- What was the outcome of the experiment?
Follow up discussion
Follow up discussion
- Do the results of this experiment worry you?
How can I improve my listening?
How can I improve my listening?
The most important things you need to do to improve your listening fluency are to:
The most important things you need to do to improve your listening fluency are to:
- Find out what you enjoy listening to.
- Listen regularly in your own time (i.e. not just in listening class)
- Find a way of recording interesting language. This could be with a listening diary or a vocabulary notebook where you write down phrases and lexis. This helps you develop 'recall', which is one of the steps we all need to go through to learn new words and structures and to be able to use them in our own speaking and writing.
Task
Task
Explore some of the links below to find something you'd like to listen to in your own time. Compare your choices with a partner.
News
News
Keeping up to date with world events isn't just essential for many areas of study, it's also a great way to get daily language practice. Read the major stores of the day first to pick out new vocabulary and cultural references that you might miss when listening to the spoken news.
TV
TV
Terrestrial UK TV channels have online services where you can watch dramas, documentaries and pretty much anything else. And most of them let you switch subtitles on. Box of Broadcasts is a service which catalogues all terrestrial TV and radio, so it's a place where you can find almost everything, and has transcripts too! You can access BoB with your university account, but you will need to register for BBC and Channel 4. If you're watching TV off university campus or in your accommodation, please make sure you are covered by a TV licence.
Podcasts
Podcasts
You can find a podcast for anything and everything. From sport to education to politics and the flying spaghetti monster. Download as an mp3 or just listen online. Below are two kinds of 'hubs' for podcasts. Stitcher is more app based, and has podcasts of every type from all over the world. The BBC produces hundreds of its own podcasts, and many of them are short (30 minutes or less), and are very accessible for learners of English. There's even a dedicated Learning English podcast.
For many though, podcasts will be a real challenge. Many of them are interviews and discussions, so they have people talking over each other and using a lot of colloquialisms and cultural references. There are no transcripts either, so choose carefully!
A good one to start with for those who want to practice following intellectual discussions is the TED podcast hosted by Chris Anderson. He spends about an hour talking to prolific TED speakers individually about their work and ideas.
YouTube channels to explain everything
YouTube channels to explain everything
There are some very useful channels that give engaging short talks that act as introductions to academic topics and get you thinking about life, the universe and everything. They're also accompanied by animations that you'll either find helpful and entertaining or highly distracting. Look through some of these channels and see if you can find any talks that relate to your field of study.
Independent listening
Independent listening
Over the term we'll spend some time talking in groups about what we have been listening to in our free time, and what new ideas and language we've encountered. The first thing we need to do is to create a space to make notes. This could be a paper notebook, a blog site such as Wordpress, a Padlet or even just a Google doc.
Choose something to listen to to make your first entry. Note down the source (where it is from) and purpose: is it meant to provide information, change your mind about something or just to entertain? Finally, what were the main ideas and/or plot points. Try and note down five useful pieces of language from each programme/clip you listen to.
For example:
In a podcast interview with a cyber security expert, the host asked if there were bright lines between the behaviour of social media companies like Twitter and Facebook. This seems to be a way of asking if there are big differences, or if something's easy to notice.
In a news story about the UK economy, the reporter said that the UK lags behind other European countries in terms of house building. According to the dictionary this is a negative term which refers to a lack of progress compared to other thing, people or places.
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