Podcasts.

Podcasts are audio shows (English conversations) which you can download from the Internet for free.

To download podcasts to your phone, you need a podcast app.

Go to your app store and search for “podcast app” and pick one with good ratings.

Once installed, open the podcast app and search for podcasts by entering a search term. (Just enter something you’re interested in.)

After that, you will be able to listen or download podcast episodes.

Driving.

Riding a bus/train.

Doing house chores (washing dishes, cooking, etc.)

Working out.

Waiting for something.

Idea #1: Subscribe to Entertaining Channels on YouTube

Idea #2: Binge-Watch Popular Television Series & Movies

It’s not a big deal if you don’t understand some parts of the conversation as long as you understand the main idea. You don’t need to read the transcript just because you can’t make out some words or sentences.

Now you might be wondering, “If I don’t read, how will I learn the meaning of new vocabulary?”

This is a common concern. Some English students believe that in order to learn new words, they must look up those words in a dictionary. They believe that it’s the only way to learn new words.

But that’s not true! The truth is, your amazing brain has the ability to learn the meanings of new words from context (surrounding words). This is how you learned your native language (without using transcripts or dictionaries).

So%2c don’t worry if you don’t know some words when listening to English. If you hear people use those words multiple times in different contexts, your brain will eventually figure out the meanings of those words.

When some students start listening to something, they try to finish it even though it’s too difficult to understand. Trying to do so is painful. After a while, these students usually quit improving their listening altogether!

This behavior is ridiculous. There’s a lot of free English material on the Internet. And new English material is created every day. Therefore, there’s absolutely no need to “finish” what you start.

If the material you’re listening to is very difficult (or boring), just delete it and find something else to listen to.

If you feel like almost everything you listen to is too difficult to understand, your vocabulary is probably very small. That’s why you have trouble understanding most English conversations.

In that case, I suggest that, other than listening to English, you also read in English to quickly learn words and phrases commonly used in conversations. For recommendations on what to read, check out this resource.

Listening to something that’s quite difficult to understand.

Forcing yourself to listen to English for several hours a day.

Beating yourself up when you feel like you’re not practicing enough.

This is the kind of material in which you can’t even understand the main idea.

If you listen to something and think, “I have no clue what they’re talking about”, then you’re listening to this kind of English material.

It’s a waste of time to listen to something you don’t understand. So, you should avoid this kind of listening material.

This is the kind of material in which you can understand almost every single word. (Example: a talk by a native speaker who speaks slowly and clearly.)

The reason intermediate students have trouble improving is that they only listen to this kind of material.

Challenging English material are conversations in which you cannot make out every single word or sentence, but you still understand the main idea.

– Don’t keep listening to people whom you can perfectly understand. Some speakers are more difficult to understand than others. Listen to those people as well.

– Don’t keep listening to conversations on the same topics. Make sure to listen to topics that you aren’t familiar with as well.

– If you’re already good at listening to one of these accents%2c practice listening to the other accent as well.