How do you improve your listening skills?

[sillylucy]

I improve my listening skills with active listening. I check out audiobooks from my local library or I listen to Ted talks on my computer and force myself to listen that way I get into the habit when I am listening to language CDs that I check out from my local library. 

[reverserewind]

One of the things I do is googling the lyrics before listening to a song. Or after, it doesn't matter much. If you're a lover of music, I guess it would be interesting for you to understand the meaning of the songs you're into. That helps me train my ear.

[wolfette]

I find that if I'm able to listen to music in that language then I'll be able to pick up words fairly easily. If I hear words in the song I don't understand I'll look it up to make sure I'm understanding it correctly. I may even take a look at the written lyrics until I understand and can sing along to the song. I'd recommend artists like Shakira, Pitbull and Enrique Iglesias for Spanish, for example, because they have songs that are the same song but sung in both English and Spanish. Those are useful because you know the gist of the song already from the English version and can therefore sort of fill in the gaps in Spanish. I know many Korean and Japanese artists also sing parts of songs in English so you're able to pick up some that way and can fill in the gaps more easily that way, or I find you can anyway. 

[Lakeisha Brown]

No matter how hard I listen to movies in Spanish with the subtitles, I can not comprehend at all. I learn better by reading in Spanish but still it takes me a long time so I become frustrated. I definitely need to improve my listening skills.