How can I improve my listening skills?

The best way to improve your listening skills in a language is to listen! Start with easier activities and then work your way to the harder ones. Step 1 - Start off by listening to tracks appropriate to your course, and see if they come with a transcript. Take your time and listen to it sentence by sentence, trying to understand every word. It's very important to understand as much as possible, as sometimes the examiners try to throw you off. If there are words you don't know whilst you're practicing, look them up! Step 2 - Try listening to a childrens nursery rhyme, or a children's audiobook, there are lots on youtube. The vocabulary shouldn't be too challenging here, though you will encounter lots of rhymes and similar sounding words. Write down words that have the same sound, how do you think you can avoid mixing them up? Step 3 - Pick a movie trailer in English (something with lots of dialogue, maybe a movie you've seen before like The Incredibles), watch it and then find the version in your target language and watch that. The images are identical, but the audio may be slightly different, could you understand all the words? If not, could you predict what the other words could be? Can you spot any differences between the languages? Step 4 - Music! This is where it gets a bit harder. Maybe start with a slower song, or a song from a movie which has different versions between languages. Listen to the songs and focus on the words - they're usually quite fast and maybe there are some new ones, but using the skills you've built up (predicting meanings, listening closely), try and understand as much as you can. After this, it will be much easier to tackle your listenings!