Listening/Learning Strategies

From Lessons from Good Language Learners edited by Carol Griffiths:

1 Cognitive strategies: these are activites which learners use to remember and develop language and to facilitate comprehension.
- predicting what a pice of listening will be about, or what language/information will come next;
- drawing inferences when information is not stated or has been missed;
- guessing meanings of unkown words;
- using intonation and pausing to segment words and phrases;
- other micro-strategies to do with processing language - identifying stressed words, listening for markers, listening for structures etc.;
- using schematic and contextual information (top-down) together with linguistic information (bottom-up) to arrive at meanings;
- visualizing the situation they are hearing about;
- piecing together meaning from words that have been heard.
2 Megacognitive strategies: these are activities which learners ue to organize, monitor and evaluate how well they are understanding.
- focusing attention, concentrating and clearing the mid before listening;
- applying an advance organizer before listening (I think the topic is going to be ..., so ...);
- going in with a plan (I'm going to listen for ... words I know/key words/cognates ...);
- getting used to speed and finding ways of coping with it;
- being aware when they are losing attention and refocusing concentration;
- deciding what the main purpose of listening is;
- checking how well they have understood;
- taking notes;
- paying attention to the main points;
- identifying listening problems and planning how to improve them.
3 Socio-affective strategies: these are activities in which learners interact with other people in order to help their comprehension and encourage themselves to continue listening.
- asking for clarification;
- checking that they have got the right idea;
- providing themselves with opportunities for listening;
- motivating themselves to listen;
- lowering anxiety about listening;
- providing a person response tot he i nformation or idea presented in the piece of listening;
- empathizing with the speaker and trying to understand the reason for a particular message.