How to Improve Your English Listening Skills: My Top 10 Tips [2025]

Listening is one of the English skills that most students have trouble with. In this post, I bring you 10 STRATEGIES that you should start practicing right away.

I can’t understand a word!, What did you say?, Sorry, I didn’t catch that!

If you study English, you’re probably all too used to having to say that frustrating phrase. In fact, you might think that oral listening activities are the worst. But that doesn’t have to be the case. Listening is one of the 4 main language skills. The other three are reading, writing, and speaking. However, generally, when we learn English, we tend to think that Speaking and Listening are considerably more complicated than Reading and Writing. But as I’ve said before, this doesn’t have to be the case.

The problem is that, normally, oral skills are often ignored more than written ones, unintentionally, of course. And I say «unintentionally» because it’s not always the learner’s fault for not receiving enough oral practice. The main issue is that there’s much less oral material adapted to improve English Listening skills, as well as Speaking. For this reason, students have less knowledge and fewer strategies on how to improve in this area. Therefore, in this post, I’m going to give you 10 top tips to improve your Listening skills in English.

1. Improve Listening with subtitles, song lyrics, and transcriptions

One of the main difficulties of listening is that oral communication in English (or in any other language!) is not governed by the same rules as written communication: there’s no spelling, no spaces, no rigid order, words can sound different when they are in a sentence, etc. All of this makes it difficult to understand a language we are learning.

For this reason, it is essential to build a relationship in our brain between the oral and unpredictable form of a language and its written form, which is relatively more predictable and easier to control and understand. This relationship can be built through the use of subtitles, song lyrics, or transcriptions of listening exercises.

If you like watching films or series in their original version, use subtitles. It goes without saying that to build that relationship we’ve discussed, the subtitles must be in the same language as the film, not in your mother tongue. 😅

Reading and listening to a word or sentence at a time will help you recognise and understand the sounds of words the next time you encounter them. Similarly, we can use songs and their written lyrics, or English listening exercises with their transcription. Any of these strategies is good for building and understanding the relationship between the oral and written forms of the language, and, therefore, improving your Listening skills.

2. Combine Listening with other skills

Listening or doing English listening exercises, on their own, is not the best way to improve this skill, however ironic that may seem. But if we pay attention to how we use language skills in our daily lives, we’ll realise that in our everyday life, we rarely listen in isolation.

All language skills usually appear in combination, especially oral ones (Listening and Speaking). We probably listen most and best when we are having a conversation with someone. Therefore, to improve our English listening skills, we should not limit ourselves solely to listening; rather, we need to make it as natural an activity as possible. To do this, we should simulate real situations. Here are some examples:

• Listening + writing: if you like podcasts for learning English or listening to the radio, you can, in addition to listening, take notes as you do so. This would be like taking notes in class. I know, it doesn’t sound fun, but if we want to improve… 😬
• Listening + reading: you can read an adapted book with an audio narration. In this way, as we saw before, we build that fundamental relationship between the oral and the written, i.e., between Listening/Speaking and Reading/Writing.
• Listening + speaking: there are many ways to do this, but the one I usually recommend to my students is to do language exchanges. Language exchanges have numerous benefits, but here I’ll just say that we can improve Listening and Speaking while being exposed to a language spoken by a native speaker.

3. Improve your Listening through internal and external repetition

Repetition, whether we like it or not, is a fundamental aspect of learning English. If we implement repetition appropriately, we can gain great benefits for improving our Listening skill. Although there are many ways and strategies to use repetition, here I will discuss two basic forms:

• Internal repetition: Have you ever had a conversation with yourself in your head? That’s what we mean by «internal», something that happens within us, in this case, in our mind. But why is it useful to repeat in this way? Because the simple act of imagining how a word sounds is useful for our oral skills, both for Speaking and for Listening.
• External repetition: If we repeat a word, phrase, or sentence aloud, we are repeating it externally. This, as you’ll know, is very important. Firstly, we get used to how something sounds; and secondly, we are building a relationship between how something sounds in our head and how we feel it and how it sounds to us when we pronounce it. This is absolutely essential for learning English or any other language.

I know that repetition as such can be boring or make us seem crazy, but we can use it for short periods, so it’s not tedious, and only when we are alone. Besides, we already know that repetition is also fundamental for learning and retaining new vocabulary.

4. Instant repetition (speech shadowing)

The technique of speech shadowing, or instant repetition, consists of repeating something immediately after hearing it, and continuing to do so for the duration of the speech. That is, it’s like being the «sound shadow» of another voice. Imagine you’re listening to the radio and you start repeating everything that’s said while you continue listening. That’s instant repetition.

Now, speech shadowing is difficult and you won’t be able to do it straight away, but it is really effective. You have to bear in mind that if you want to get the most out of it, you should start with something adapted to your level, and always work on each passage thoroughly. You can start by reading the transcription silently, then aloud. And only when you are familiar with the text should you start doing instant repetition. This will have a very positive impact on your Listening and also your Speaking. And if you don’t believe me, you can read how Arizio Sweeting, a Cambridge English oral examiner, practices it with his own students.

5. Improve your Listening in English with thematic diversity

Although this in itself is not a strategy, it is something we should always keep in mind. Whether we like it or not, in everyday life we are exposed to different types of conversations, texts, vocabulary, linguistic registers, etc. For this reason, the materials we use to improve our listening skills should be as varied as possible.

It’s true that we will always be more willing to use topics that interest us, and this is very reasonable and recommendable. But we cannot limit ourselves only to those topics. Bear in mind that if, for example, you are very interested in education and only listen to English education podcasts, you will be missing out on a variety of expressions, structures, and vocabulary used in other areas. If that were the case, when you have to deal with unfamiliar topics, you would find it more difficult, despite having good oral skills.

Furthermore, it is essential that you familiarise yourself with as many topics as possible, as this will help you learn a multitude of English collocations, which will, on the one hand, improve your listening skills, and on the other, make you sound more natural when speaking and writing.

6. Predicting is essential for your oral skills

Predicting what we are going to hear can be as important as listening itself. But before we go on, you should know that there are two processes through which we listen: top-down processes and bottom-up processes.

The first, top-down, occurs when we use our knowledge about a topic and the context to decipher a message. The second, bottom-up, takes place when we decipher the message using the individual sounds of each word or sentence. It is normal for these two processes to occur simultaneously, but now we are going to focus on prediction as a top-down strategy.

For a better understanding, I’m going to give you an example mentioned on teachingenglish.co.uk:

Imagine you are with your friends, speaking in your native language, in a noisy bar. It is likely that you will guess the content of large sections of the conversation based on your knowledge of the topic of conversation and what has already been said during the conversation.

In the previous quote, you can appreciate how important it is to apply our prior knowledge to the listening process. For this reason, trying to guess or predict what is going to be heard can be essential.

Most of the time we do this unconsciously, but I recommend that when we are working on English listening, we do it in a fully conscious way. For example, if you are going to listen to a podcast about mobile phones, you can try to think of the typical vocabulary related to mobile phones and technology. Think of it as preparing for a topic before attending a conference. If you want to get the most out of it, you should prepare beforehand.

7. Practice makes perfect, as the English say

In studies and learning, whatever the subject, it is essential to be tenacious and persevering and never stop practising. Bear in mind that our progress will disappear if we stop working.

Learning English is like going to the gym. If you stop, you’re lost! Imagine your language skills, including listening, as your physical fitness. If you exercise regularly, you’ll stay fit. If you push yourself a little, you’ll gain fitness. But if you stop exercising, your physical fitness will deteriorate, and the longer you remain inactive, the more it will deteriorate. With languages, and language skills, it’s that simple: if you want to keep your Listening skills in shape, don’t forget to practise regularly!

8. Be positive, my friend

Your attitude towards learning is also essential. Psychologists and educators have already shown how important motivation is for language learning and for anything else. And although having a positive attitude doesn’t necessarily mean you’re motivated to learn, it can be decisive, as it will prevent you from becoming demotivated at the first obstacle you encounter on your path.

A positive mindset will help you get back on your feet every time you stumble, and it will make you find the motivation and strength necessary to continue. In this way, you won’t give up and at some point, you will achieve your goals. Furthermore, it is important to know how to maintain that motivation and positive attitude.

9. Immersion and exposure

Have you ever heard the following famous quote?

If you want to learn a language, go to the country where it is spoken.

Author: Everyone 😂

I’m sure you have heard it and, moreover, in a way it is true.

Although going to another country is not the only effective way to learn a language, it is worth considering. When we live in another country, we are immersed in the language, culture, society, etc. Therefore, we are forced to read, write, listen, and speak that foreign language incessantly, which is great for improving our Listening skills and all other skills.

But let’s be realistic, not all of us can or want to go to another country for extended periods. For this reason, if you are in your own country, you can simulate that immersion. It may not be as effective, but it will certainly help you a lot.

If you want to expose yourself as much as possible to English, do everything you can in English: listen to music, the radio, podcasts, read, write, speak, etc. The more you expose yourself to English, the more effective your learning will be and the better your Listening skills will become. This will help you enormously with Listening, and you will soon realise how much you have improved your oral skills in general.

10. Identify and address your weaknesses

When we talk about listening, we cannot use terms like «failures», «errors», or «spelling mistakes», but we can talk about «weaknesses».

A weakness in our receptive oral skill (Listening) can be a topic, an accent, a word, or a structure that we find particularly difficult to understand. For this reason, we must identify our weaknesses and address them. If we do, we will soon stop having these problems with understanding.

It’s like when we have a list of words that we struggle to write because they have difficult spelling. If you have a list and review it from time to time, you’ll stop making the same spelling mistakes, right? The same thing happens with Listening. Make a list of words, phrases, or expressions that you haven’t understood, and review it from time to time. In this way, you will overcome those weaknesses as soon as possible.

What do you think of these 10 tips for improving Listening? Do you already use these strategies or others that you have found useful? Tell me in the comments.

Well then, let’s get improving that Listening!

Oh, and don’t forget to keep smiling!