ELT365 · Day 152 — Why listening is harder than it looks

Idea — Listening in a second language means decoding sound, parsing grammar and building meaning at once — in real time, no rewind. Learners usually fail at decoding, not comprehension: train the ear as a skill, don’t just test answers.

Example — A learner who reads I should have gone with ease may miss it in speech: /aɪ ʃədəv gɒn/ — four words compressed to a blur. The problem is acoustic, not grammatical.

Try — Record three natural phrases of your own speech. Play them back and mark what you compressed. Would your learners hear words — or noise?

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ELT365 · Next: Day 153 — Bottom-up vs top-down listening · Course home: Open Teacher Training

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