IELTS Listening: using online videos

In my opinion, online videos are a revolutionary tool for language learners and teachers. If you want to work on your listening, there's no end to the practice that you can do.

Here are three quick tips on using online videos:

1. What should you watch?
Almost any English listening practice is good because it all helps to improve your 'ear'. But I recommend that you choose videos on topics that you find interesting - you'll be more likely to keep watching and note down vocabulary if you enjoy what you're watching.

2. Short videos (under 5 minutes)
I often use short videos in my lessons. If the video is short, we can watch it several times and take all of the good language from it. If you watch a video that is under 1 minute long, try transcribing it and aim to understand every word.

3. Longer videos (over 5 minutes)
If you watch a longer video, don't worry too much about understanding every word or phrase; just try to follow the overall message. Note down only the most useful words or phrases that stand out.

Comments

[Xuân Đức]

Hi Simon,

Recently, I am trying to transcript video for English learners such as Ted Talk or CNN Student News. I sometimes feel discourage to go to the end of the video when I missed the whole sentence, and I cannot follow what they are talking about then.

Please give me some advises about this as I have not made the full transcript from the date I started (one month).

Thank you a lot!

[samiyat]

Thank you Simon. You are a great teacher. It feel great when I can see someone has tried to help learners here for FREE.
God Bless You!

[Anhslondon]

Hi Simons,
I intend to buy some books of IELTS for study. I'm an IELTS beginner at immediated level so can you suggest me some books to learn first ?

[Xiao Rong]

hi Simon,
I think it's really a good way to improve my listening English by transcribing the video! Do you have any ideal video/website to recommend?
Much appreciated!