Develop your listening and speaking Developing academic English

You will need to use your listening and speaking skills if:

• your module includes online tutorials or face-to-face residential or day schools
• your study materials contains audio and video resources
• you need to contact administrative staff at the OU.

In this video, students share their stories about the challenges of listening and speaking.

Listening and speaking skills activities

Here are some activities from the University of Southampton to help develop your listening and speaking skills. They are intended for students who don't speak English as a first language but native English speakers will also find them useful.

Contrasting spoken and written language

The following activities use audio extracts to explore the features of spoken language and how they differ from written English.

• Activity: Contrasting spoken and written language
• Activity: Using idiomatic language
• Activity: The structure and meaning of phrasal verbs

Prediction skills for listening

The following activities use audio extracts to explore clues that help you predict what comes next when you listen to someone speaking.

• Activity: Prediction skills for listening
• Activity: Listening for signposting language
• Activity: Focusing on language in a lecture
• Activity: Researching specialist vocabulary

Word and sentence stress

The key content in a sentence can sometimes be picked up from the words that are emphasized or stressed. Use the following activity to practice which syllables to stress in a word and which words to stress in a sentence.

• Activity: Word and sentence stress