Listening Skills: Listening for examples

Examples are often used to help explain unfamiliar or difficult concepts, making them easier for the listener to understand and remember. So listening for examples is a frequently-used important listening skill.

The most common way of giving examples is by using signal words and expressions such as for example, for instance, like, and such as.

Here are some examples:

I have been to many countries. For example, I have been to Russia, Canada, Mexico, and Spain.

He’s a greedy boy. Yesterday, for instance, he ate all our biscuits!

Many people, like my family, call me Jim.

I like sports, such as football, basketball, and swimming.

Apart from the expressions above, the following expressions also help to identify examples:

- including…

- by way of illustration,…

- A classic / well-known example of this is…

- X is a good illustration of…

- X illustrates this point / shows this point clearly.

- This can be illustrated briefly by…

- The evidence of X can be clearly seen in the case of…

- Another example of what is meant by X is…

Another way of giving examples is by using hyponyms (下义词). A hyponym is a subordinate word or phrase whose meaning is included in that of another word.

For example, cat and dog are hyponyms of animal; banana and pear are hyponyms of fruit; table and chair are hyponyms of furniture; the United Kingdom is a hyponym of Europe.

In the following exercise you are going to listen to a conversation in which the speakers use a lot of examples to show how companies motivate their staff. In this conversation hyponyms are also used by the speakers to give examples.