How to listen and understand: 10 important steps in between(Easy examples for non-native speakers)

Many learners of English want to listen to a song in English and immediately understand. They expect themselves to immediately understand everything that their English-speaking colleagues or people on the movie screen say too.

It's not how listening works.

First, we need to learn to hear what we're listening to. Then, when we hear it, we want to learn to identify what's new and what's familiar information.

Then, we need to be aware of the following elements and how they work:

Stress, Rhythm, Emphasis, Pitch, Melody, Diction, Thought Chunking, Intonation, and Tone.

And then comes understanding.

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Here is a passage I was reading at the end of the episode. You're welcome to use it to practice with me.

It is difficult to arrive at a precise definition of the term intonation. However, in simple words, it refers to the melody that every language manifests in speech. During speech, the voice goes up and down (known as the pitch) and these different notes of the voice make up the tone patterns or intonation of a language. In some languages, if you pronounce the same sequence of syllables, i.e. the same word, in different tones, it changes the meaning of the word. For instance, in Mandarin Chinese the word maː said in different tones changes the meaning of the word: if said with a level tone -maː means mother; with a rising tone ̗maː it means horse; and with a falling tone ̀maː it means scold. Such languages are called tone languages. However, in many languages, the tone does not belong to an individual word but to a word group. Such languages are called intonation languages and English is one of them. If we say yes in any tone in English, it will still mean “yes”. Tones, nonetheless, play an important role in English. They give the listener an idea about the speaker's emotions and/or intentions. Intonation can reveal the speaker's interest, anger, anxiety, surprise, etc. When we add such elements to our speech, we are using intonation.

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