Most English learners find it difficult to understand spoken English. That isn't surprising because learning to listen to a new language requires many skills.

First, obviously, you have to understand what you hear. This means that you need a good vocabulary - a minimum of 3,000 word families to understand everyday spoken English. (Word families are groups of words that are related, like "respond," "response," "responsive" and "responsively." All of these words together are just one word family.) And, of course, you need to understand the grammatical rules of the language.

Second, in order to understand spoken English, you also have to be able to process information quickly - about 8 words every 2-3 seconds. This means that you have to hear the information and understand it simultaneously because conversation moves very quickly in English. If a listener is too slow, people complain that his or her conversation doesn't make any sense. Why not? Because the poor listener has just managed to process something that the speaker said a minute ago. A minute ago, the listener's comment or question made sense, but unfortunately it doesn't make sense now.

Third, you have to remember what you heard. This is often difficult to do in your first language, much less a second or third language!

And fourth, you have to respond appropriately to what you heard.

So how in the world does anyone become a good listener of English?

First, even though you need a good vocabulary, you don't need to understand every word that you hear. If you understand most of the words, or even just a few of the words, sometimes you can still make a good guess at a speaker's meaning. So it's important to relax! Even native speakers don't always hear and understand EVERY word, but it doesn't matter - as long as you understand the general idea.

Second, research shows that English learners understand spoken English better when they prepare to listen by activating their schema. Your schema includes all of the information that you know about a topic. For instance, if the topic is "hospitals," your schema might include everything you know about: doctors, nurses, illness, patients, surgery, insurance companies, broken bones, cancer, physical exams, medicine, medical drugs, needles, shots, hospital beds, etc. When you activate your schema before you begin listening, it is easier to understand what you hear because you can use your prior knowledge to help you understand the present conversation.

Research also shows that learners listen better when they have a purpose for listening and focus their attention on finding specific information. Even beginning listeners can listen very well to a long and complicated conversation if they focus their attention on listening for people's names, birthdays, addresses, phone numbers or similar information. Intermediate students can focus their attention on listening for sequence of events in a story - what happened first, second, third, etc. Advanced students can focus their attention on listening for emotional content of a conversation and information about people's feelings. Having a purpose for listening helps you to focus your attention and get comfortable listening to longer sequences of English.

And finally, it's important for listeners to know that they should ask questions when they don't understand something. Too often, English learners don't ask questions when they don't understand, and this can be disastrous, especially at work. It's much better to ask questions than to make a big mistake! One easy strategy is to try to paraphrase the speaker's words (to repeat what the speaker said). For example, if your boss says, "Go and get a copy of the Route 5 bus schedule out of my bottom desk drawer," you can simply repeat what you heard (or think you heard). "A copy of the Route 5 bus schedule? Out of your bottom desk drawer?" When your boss nods his head, you'll know that you heard him correctly. If your boss makes a correction, for instance: "No, the Route 9 bus schedule," you can be thankful that you asked the question and avoided a big mistake.

In summary, learning to listen to English can be difficult because listening well is a complicated process that requires all of your attention. You can help yourself listen better by relaxing, by activating your schema, by deciding on a purpose for listening and, finally, by asking questions when you're not sure if you heard correctly. Practice all of these skills frequently and you WILL improve your listening skills.

Joan Pougiales, Ph.D. has taught English as a Second Language for over 30 years to college-bound students in the U.S., as well as to adult immigrants and refugees. Her web site is devoted to helping refugees and immigrants learn English and succeed in their new lives in the U.S. Visit her at http://www.growenglish.com to read more articles and to learn more about the natural English approach.