Listening Skills: Predicting a change of thought

One of the strategies of making predictions is to listen for signal words. Speakers often use some contrast signal words to indicate a change of thought. These signal words include but, however, nevertheless, in contrast, on the other hand, although, on the contrary, otherwise, yet, despite, still, and instead. When you hear these words, you can predict that a change of thought may occur.

The following are some examples showing how these contrast signal words are used to indicate a change of the speaker’s thought.

e.g. It will be rainy in the morning, but it will be sunny in the afternoon.

I like your idea, however, it is difficult to put it into practice.

I love vegetables. In contrast, my husband loves meat.

So as you can see in these examples, listening for contrast signal words will help you predict the contrastive connections between ideas before and after these signals.

Now you are going to listen to an interview, in which the signal word but is used many times. Pay attention to the information before the word but and predict the ideas after but.