Who is this for?

This leaflet is for anyone who wants to improve their comprehension of lectures and willing to practise listening to lectures.

Aim of this leaflet

The aim of this leaflet is to introduce you to materials useful for practicing listening to lectures and give some advice for improving the comprehension of your own lectures.

Why improve your skill in listening to lectures?

Lectures are the main way of communicating knowledge at university, so it would be of great benefit if you can improve your ability to better understand lectures. Comprehending academic lectures in a second language is not an easy task, because it involve skills such as coping with the lecturer's speech characteristics (e.g. accent, speed, intonation, expressions), identifying the main ideas, and note-taking. However, it is possible to practice and improve these skills systematically using a wide range of resources in the SAC and also your own lectures as a resource.

Useful materials in the SAC

Try starting with the book Interactive Listening On Campus: Authentic Academic Mini-Lectures (on the Study Skills shelf in the Audio Area), which contains listening practice on mini lectures (of about 3 mins long) on a range of academic topics. Because of their short length, these lectures will be more manageable to begin with, so that you will find it easier to practise the necessary skills such as listening for main ideas, note-taking, familiarizing with vocabulary, and identifying patterns in the lecturer's speech, and build up your confidence before moving on to listening to longer lectures.

After you have had sufficient practice listening to short lectures try listening to longer lectures, approaching the sort of length you are used to at UST. The book Comprehending Academic Lectures (on the Study Skills shelf in the Audio Area) contains practice listening on a range of academic lectures that are longer in length (from 13 to 32 minutes), and provides further opportunities for you to practice improving your listening and note-taking skills.

Other materials

There are 3 other books in the SAC dealing specifically with listening to academic lectures, which also contain plenty of useful practice material. These are all on the Study Skills shelf in the Audio Area:

1. Learn To Listen; Listen To Learn by Roni S. Lebauer.
2. Academic Mini-lectures: A Text For Listening And Note-Taking Practice by Connie Roguski and Edith Palmberg.
3. Better Listening Skills by Jean Sims and Patricia W. Peterson.

The CD-ROM Stephen Jay Gould on Evolution containing a video lecture on the topic of evolution makes interesting viewing and listening practice. You can borrow this by asking for it from the counter staff.

Try also looking in the computer catalogue under Listening (language skill) and Lectures and you will find more materials on listening to lectures on various issues.

Techniques for learning

Apart from practicing using the books and their accompanying pre-recorded lecture tapes, you can of course use your own lectures as 'practice' material. Here are some suggestions:

• Jot down notes of the main points of the lecture and compare this with the lecturer's handout to see what you have got or missed
• Compare and discuss your comprehension and notes with another student's
• Record the lecture using a walkman and check your comprehension and notes as you listen to it again (but do be courteous and ask the lecturer for permission before making the recording)
• Review your notes shortly after the lecture to help you to remember the contents better, annotating or highlighting any key points for easy revision

Evaluating your progress

The key test would be to see whether you are actually understanding more in your lectures at UST than before you started practicing. Make a note of your progress, how much of the main points you managed to get, how well you have understood the lecture, and the difficulties you had, so that you can monitor your progress. If you use the practice exercises in the books mentioned above, check your notes and comprehension against the answer keys and see what progress you are making (all the books mentioned have answer keys).

And Now...

If ever you would like any help or advice, or just chat about your progress, please get in touch -- we are here to support your independent learning! You can contact us by:

• see an Adviser, on duty at the SAC Advice Desk (for details of advisers and their availability, please go to http://lc.ust.hk/~sac/sacadviser.html)
• e-mail lcsac (lcsac@ust.hk) with your query;
• ask at the reception counter of the SAC — if the receptionist cannot help you directly, s/he will pass your query on to one of the SAC advisers.

Note
The introductory leaflet in this series is the leaflet Improving your listening (L1).

This is part of a series of introductory leaflets supporting independent learning, produced by the HKUST Language Centre SAC team. This leaflet was written by Joyce Lee, 1997. If you copy from this leaflet, please acknowledge the source. Thanks.