Listening comprehension (for Sylviawu)

Listening comprehension (for Sylviawu)

Sylviawu: 想请教各位，向我这种情况该怎么提高英文才更有效

我发现我现在的英文水准就是很奇怪，平时和朋友聊天，基本没有问题。但是如果10几个人的话，我不太容易插进去。还有就是有些时候参加学术会议，听众问的问题我不太明白意思是什么，字面都听清了，但是反映不过来她们想问的重点再那里？就像有时候我看电视里的采访，如果不是很直接问的话，往往不太明白主持人的问题。因为还是算经常和别人讨论论文什么的，所以抓住别人问题的关键，然后很快反应很重要。这个应该怎么提高呢


Sylviawu of WXC posted her problems with the English language. 1) She has no problem chatting with friends in English. But when there are several people in the group, it would be hard for her to join in the discussion. 2) When attending a seminar or conference, sometimes it is hard for her to understand what the audience is really asking about. She knows all the words, but it was hard for her to get the points what they are asking. When watching a TV interview, sometimes she does not know thoroughly the questions of the interviewers. 3) She wants to improve her language skills so that in discussing academic issues, she could get easily to the point, and respond quickly.

Answers:

When you are chatting with someone, both of you know your topic, and you are interacting with each other. If difficulty appears in the conversation, you may try to accommodate the other by using words that you know better, in combination with a body language, or change to a topic that you are more interested or know better. However, when you are joining in a group, you have to adapt yourself to the topic already started. The topic that the group is discussing may not be something that you are familiar with, or you are interested in. The solution is to improve your general knowledge of every thing possible. However, do not waste your time on something that is not important to you, solely for the purpose of perform occasionally well in a group.

Again, in the cases of conferences and TV interviews, the key solution is also to expand your overall knowledge so that you will have enough background information to understand what they are talking about. In my personal experience, when answering questions on international conferences, people with French or Japanese accents are really hard to understand. In that case, I asked them to discuss further in private. For academic discussions, it is important you have extensive background information. The rule is to read as much as possible.

Listening comprehension is a combined process of reasoning, guessing, and decision making, etc. All the knowledge of the English language, the overall everyday knowledge (including culture, history …), and the special knowledge in your field are important.

Hopefully this helps. It is also my goal of writing this passage to start a discussion about such issues on this forum.