Use your knowledge of grammar to guess what you don't hear

Grammar helps us guess what we don't hear clearly.

Once students have been taught about the schwa, (the weak or central vowel), they should next be taught to use their understanding of grammar to help them guess. It is impossible to hear clearly everything that is said, because often natural speech is NOT clearly enunciated.

When our students listen to English there are many holes, many places where they don't know what's being said. These holes are usually the grammar words, the function words that are pronounced weakly.
In the above, the students hear clearly the meaning words, (the verbs, adjectives, nouns). But the middle part, is not enunciated clearly. Well in the above sentence we know it's a question because it starts with "where", so we can guess what's missing easily. We're missing an auxiliary verb and a pronoun. Since it's "last night", we know we've got a past tense auxliary. Students can easily guess what's missing here.
Teach your students to fill in the gaps with their knowledge of grammar.

We need to encourage our students to guess. Language is not math. Language is not science. It's OK to guess. No need to "prove" your answers here. Tell your students to guess. It's an important listening strategy! back