"Narrow Listening" - Effective Method of Listening Comprehension Improvoment
One of the best ways to improve your comprehension of English is to listen to things you can understand. But what should you listen to? Many people believe that they should listen and watch programs about many different subjects to build their vocabulary. It is possible to do that, but there is a problem with this method: the vocabulary is different for each new topic, and you never get to hear the words used more than once. We know that it often takes hearing something several times before you really understand it. If you do “wide listening” – listening to many different topics – you will not hear the vocabulary repeated very much, and will not be able to pick up the words very quickly.
There is another way to listen, what we will call “narrow listening.” Narrow listening is when you listen or watch different programs on the same topic. For example, if you are interested in the World Cup, you listen to three stories in English about a specific game. Each story or program will talk about the same things, using very similar vocabulary. By using narrow listening in this way, you can hear the same words used over and over again, and have a more opportunities to understand and acquire them. You may listen to a story about a certain topic from three or four different Internet news programs in English, such as the BBC, Voice of America, CNN, and others. Be sure to listen to stories on the same topics or about the same news event. After listening to them a couple of times, you will begin to understand more and more.