Listening: linking skills development and pronunciation

Students generally find listening the most difficult of the four skills. It is because when people are speaking English at natural speed, they are using all sorts of pronunciation features that make their speech sound different from what students expect when they see written English text.
Therefore, understanding pronunciation features and then training the ear to decode authentic speech are the fundamental steps in helping learners progress in listening comprehension. These two aspects of listening are exactly the focuses of my session, and we will look at a number of practical examples of how to implement listening training with students.