First Online Meeting

In our first online meeting we talked about:

• course expectations
• the difference between listening for gist and listening for details
• what we can do to improve our listening skills
• the importance of acquiring vocabulary
• the importance of pronunciation for listening

What can we do to improve our listening skills?

The answer is practice, practice and practice. We have to try to be in contact with the language as much as possible. Suggestions were made:

• listen to music and learn the lyrics
• watch movies with subtitles in English
• listen to online radios (www.shoutcast.com is a good start)
• do listening exercises online (www.elllo.org and www.esl-lab.com contain hundreds of listening exercises, from easy to difficult)

How can we improve our vocabulary?

It is important to increase our vocabulary because we cannot recognize a word in a listening segment if we have not come across this word before. The best way to gain vocabulary is by reading. We can read books, magazines, articles, internet sites and newspapers, for example. But it is important to learn the word and its correct pronunciation, so that we can associate them. Dictionaries (paper and online) can help us with the pronunciation.

• newspapers / news sites (www.nytimes.com, www.cnn.com)
• e-books (www.planetebook.com)
• comics (www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/comics.htm)
• lyrics ('google' the name of the song + lyrics)

Pronunciation x listening

One of the most important topics we discussed was pronunciation. It is important to know how to pronounce words correctly so that we are able to recognize them when we hear them. We also talked about how to use dictionaries to also learn how to pronounce words, using the phonetic symbols that come with the dictionary. Each dictionary brings a table with the key to the pronunciation symbols used. Take a look at the resources below.

• online dictionaries (www.thefreedictionary.com, www.answers.com)
• phonetic chart
• pronunciation videos (www.youtube.com)