Listening is the first step towards learning any language. Many people don’t know how to listen and what to listen properly. Listening skills are imperative for learning any language. But the question is what listening skills are and how they can be improved? This article is focused on highlighting how to improve listening skills. You may also be interested in reading an other article on influence of EFL students oral proficiency on their participation in class .

The most important skills a student might have to develop before start learning the English language are the listening skills. For speaking proper English it is must to listen, understand, and interpret the crucial words. The student can improve his performance both professionally and personally by improving his listening skills. How well you listen to others has a good impact on your personality and effectiveness. It also enhances your academic performance and quality of building relationships with your colleagues and friends.

There four basic or primary reasons why the humans require well developed listening skills and they are:

For gathering or obtaining of relevant information
For understanding
For enjoyment
For learning new knowledge and information 

It is very shocking fact that being most developed animal, human can recall or remember only 25 to 50% of what he hears at all. Although, the human beings can develop their listening skills and they do so as much as possible. But yet they cannot remember all what he hears. The big reason of it is, when we listen to our employer, friend, or spouse for 10 minutes we pay half attention to the conversation and half to the other things. This fact reinforces the need of developing our listening skills as much as possible. For developing listening skills you have to do some effort. And for English learning, those students who are not native English speakers have to do some more effort than native speakers.

Though, it is possible to develop best listening skills with persistence, attention, and dedication. “Active listening” is an approach or technique in which the listener has to make conscious effort to hear exactly what is being said. In this practice student tries to hear completely the word which is spoken and understand the message which is conveyed by this word.

The students have to pay close attention to the words what a speaker is uttering. Then they make an effort to stay focused on hearing. When you listen to someone in a party many voices distract your listening. When you are hearing at the same time others are speaking. This is the common place where everyone is giving his opinion and discussing his interests with others. Hence there are many counter-arguments to hear in the party. It creates difficulty in listening properly what a speaker is saying. You cannot absorb the information or message of the speaker in this situation.

One another tip is, you can focus on the face expressions of the speaker to assess what he wants to say. By this it does not mean to become expert in body language or micro expressions. But the student only has to learn what the physical cues the speaker exhibits.

Best way of developing listening skills is watching videos either online or through any other electronic media. So you can listen and watch videos for developing your best listening skills.

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