To begin with, let’s talk about
Why we might not understand what we hear
1)Because we don’t know the construction/expression/word yet
If we already know it, but still don’t understand when listening then
2)Because we have never heard how the construction/expression/word actually sounds
a)In speech
b)In real-life speech
с)In a quick speech
Not to mention the fact that in different accents the same thing can sound differently
What improves Listening
The fact that we have heard the construction/expression/word more than once (being aware of how this is written). The more times we hear the same word or phrase the better we perceive the sounds in it individually, rather than as a noise when we hear something for the first time.
How to practice Listening
Strategy
1)Obviously, you need to choose material for practice in the first place. And the stuff you have chosen should be neither too easy, nor too hard to follow. Therefore, ensure that you understand not less than about 70% of it.
2)Listen to it without the transcript (or you can do with it) to grasp the main idea.
3)Listen to it twice with the transcript, making pauses and translating words selectively in between times, especially the ones which prevent you from understanding the main idea(or you can translate everything if you wish). As regard the places which you omitted, you just try to guess them by looking at the context.
Plus write down 10-12 new vocabulary and constructions (which seem most interesting and useful to you) along with the context. Use a monolingual dictionary. Add your own example of their usage. For instance,
‘Any tough situation has a way out‘
(way out – a way of escaping from a difficult situation)
There was a difficult time, but we always helped each other to find a way out
The main thing is to rewind the audio and try to catch the moments you wrote out. The point is that you need to ensure what you hear is (almost) equal to what is written. For example, you wrote down a construction like
Should + Present Perfect
Let’s suppose that before that you came across a sentence like this:
‘We shouldn’t have bought that book’
And at first you might not have the faintest idea what is being said, but next, you rewind the recording, listen to it one more time while looking at the transcript and identify the sentence much better. And when you listen to it for the third time everything makes sense, you hear the full sentence just as it is written,
‘We shouldn’t have bought that book’
*Attempt to pronounce the lines you’ve chosen as close to the native speaker as possible, like intonation, individual sounds (strange as it may seem, it also improves your listening)
4)Listen to the recording as a background while doing your daily routine, travelling on a bus, walking on the street, etc. and in the meantime try to catch the vocabulary you wrote down. Not only will it sharpen up your Listening skill, but also help you memorise new words and phrases (especially if you will relisten to the audios more than once)
As a result, if you encounter the same vocabulary and constructions when listening to a new material you will hear them much clearer this time as opposed to the first listening to the recording when usually a noise is heard.
If the audio is too long divide it in into chunks and deal with them one by one