VOSCREEN

How can I improve my listening skills?

This is probably one of the most often asked questions by students.

My answer is always the same: Practice. There is no other secret to it, there's no magic formula.

So the point is to practice as much as you can while you enjoy.

I've found a nice application which might help you improve little by little while having fun.

Its name is VOSCREEN and it is free, although you need to sign up. This app allows you to test your listening skills while you listen to short video clips from films, series, songs ...

You will be asked to choose the best translation (if you set the language to Spanish) or the best rephrasing (if you set the language to English) of the phrase/extract you hear in the short clip to check your comprehension.

You will listen to real English in all the videos but you can choose the level of difficulty, the grammar structure you want to appear in the clip or even the number of words of the phrase you will hear.

You can use it on your computer, your tablet or even on your mobile phone.

I hope you find it useful. If you try it, let me know how it went.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LISTEN TO MUSIC AND YOU'RE HUNGRY

Before you play the videos below, here's a challenge for you:

Pieces of well-known songs appear in these two videos, can you identify any of them playing the video with the sound off?

In this two funny videos the comedian Bec Hill creates humour with a common phenomenon I'm sure you have all experienced at some time when listening to songs in English: MONDEGREEN.

Mondegreen happens when a misheard word or phrase that makes sense in your head, but it's in fact entirely incorrect.

When we listen to something we don't clearly understand we try to extract meaning from "the noise". This happens a lot when we listen to songs, even in our own language, as many times songs tend to have lyrics that are a bit unexpected or unusual.

If you enjoyed the videos you might also like the following website, an archive of misheard lyrics:

Enjoy it (but avoid creating your own mondegreens in listening exams!😉)