Posts Tagged ‘listening’
Advice about improving your English and passing an ICAO English test from Aviation English Asia.
Article written/adapted by Michael Egerton
We’ve had a few requests for advice on how to develop listening skills for ICAO tests recently. One of the easiest ways to build your comprehension skills for an ICAO English test is to read a lot and become familiar with the subject matter. Of course, you still need to know how to recognise the oral form of new vocabulary. In this article you can practice listening comprehension by playing the audio file below. But first of all, can you explain what happened in this picture (from a different event)?
Describe this picture
Practice listening for an ICAO test
File unavailable due to excessive downloads
Reading comprehension
Now read through the article and try to answer the comprehension questions. You can answer the questions by adding a comment to the article and we will give you some feedback.
The article:
A JetBlue Airways airliner that blew out its main landing gear tyres after making a hard landing at Sacramento International Airport on Aug. 26 had its parking brake on, according to the National Transportation Safety Board in a preliminary finding.
The airplane’s Flight Data Recorder indicated that the parking brake became engaged during the landing and remained engaged throughout the landing. The NTSB said neither pilot recalled any abnormal indications or warnings associated with the braking system prior to landing.
The first officer was flying the plane during the landing and the captain took over when the problem occurred. The airplane began a rapid deceleration and the first officer told the captain it felt like a main landing gear tyre blew out. Around the same time, air traffic control tower personnel reported observing sparks and smoke around the main landing gear.
Eighty six passengers and five crew members were evacuated. According to the report seven passengers received minor injuries. Neither of the two pilots nor the three flight attendants were hurt.
Besides blowing out the main landing gear tyres, a minor tyre-related fire erupted.
A Federal Aviation Administration inspection revealed that damage was limited to four deflated main landing gear tyres and the wheel rims, which were ground down. Damage to the tyres showed evidence of being locked on touchdown.
Damage to the runway was limited to “minor grazing” of its surface.
Comprehension questions
▪ Which airline was involved in the incident?
▪ Where did it happen?
▪ What do the NTSB think caused the incident?
▪ How did the pilots discover there was a problem?
▪ How did the ATCs become aware of the problem?
▪ What other damage was caused and how did it happen?
When you look back at the picture do you have more vocabulary to describe the picture now?
What to do next
For feedback and more information about Aviation English Asia’s courses please visit http://aviationenglish.com. We can help you improve your English whether you are an experienced pilot, a cadet entry pilot, a controller, aerospace engineer or flight attendant, with custom courses designed specifically for your needs. If you haven’t already please join the Aviation English mailing list for instant access to free demonstration units of the ICAO Aviation English Online course, special offers and details of courses in your area.
Of course, feel free to leave a comment or even a suggestion for a future article. We value all of your feedback.
Making use of free Aviation English Resources
Advice for learning English from Aviation English Asia.
Article written by Michael Egerton
We’ve had a lot of interest from readers looking for free online courses for improving their Aviation English. In this article I’m going to share with you my recommendations for free Aviation English resources. Of course, this blog will continue to give you some free Aviation English lessons, but the best possible resource is our mailing list.
The best way to get free ICAO Aviation English exercises
Visit our website http://aviationenglish.com and subscribe to get:
- FREE instant access to 4 demo units of ICAO Aviation English Online
- FREE advice about learning English
- FREE downloads and study guides
- News about courses in your country
- Special offers and promotions
The first of these is very special – the ICAO Aviation English Online course has 4 levels, each of 12 units. Each unit is about 8-12 hours of English practice. Subscribers can try 4 of these demo units from each of the four levels before you buy the course.
The content of the course is also very interesting for pilots and controllers because it covers important information that you will need in your career, not just for the ICAO test. It’s also the only conplete Aviation English course, offering courses from ICAO levels 2-4. If you are preparing for an ICAO English test I strongly recommend that you join our mailing list and try out these free Aviation English lessons.
What do you get in the free demos?
Over 30 hours of Aviation English exercises including.. listening and reading comprehension, true or false questions, gap fill exercises, multiple choice, vocabulary practice and the opportunity to practice radiotelephony. If your grammar and listening skills are weak I recommend that you try the lower level courses which give you more grammar and listening practice. The ICAO Level 3 Upper level course is more focused on technical vocabulary, so don’t worry about trying out the low level units. There is plenty of good practice material there for you. After trying the demo units, I’m sure that you will want to buy the complete course.
Looking for more free ICAO English exercises?
One of the most important skills that you can develop easily is reading. There are thousands of aviation articles on the internet but only a handful are suitable as learning material. Such is the skill of an aviation English teacher who can carefully select suitable articles for use in the classroom. Keep an eye on our blog and Facebook Page for these articles.
You can also read technical websites like http://www.skybrary.aero which is a wiki created by a number of flight safety and training organisations. It makes fascinating reading and you can learn something new each time you visit.
For listening practice try listening to a favourite airport on http://liveatc.net. Always listen for the key information in each transmission and you will soon become familiar with different accents. Be careful though, listening to air traffic control can become addictive. There is now an iphone application available which makes listening in, even more convenient.
Our YouTube channel features a selection of videos, some even with ATC transcripts. If you have any interesting videos to share, please let us know.
Interact with Aviation English Asia
If you want to improve your English, talk to us! We have a wide range of methods that you can use to engage in a conversation. If you have a question, ask it on our Facebook Discussion forum, you can also make contact with other Aviation English learners having similar experiences.
Our team of pilots, Subject Matter Experts and Aviation English teachers will be happy to talk with you. We will post a discussion question each week. If you have friends and colleagues, suggest that they “like” our page too.
You can find us here:
Disadvantages of free Aviation English resources
It is always good to practice English at every opportunity, and make good use of free resources on the internet. But if there is so much free material out there, then why pay for a course? As aviation English teachers we want you to be independent learners so doing as much self-study as you can is a good thing. The difficulty is when you get information overload and don’t know where to direct your attention. With self-study you also lack the feedback and guidance of a teacher, who could perhaps show you your errors or teach you an easier way of practising a skill.
Another difficulty on the internet is that it is easy to become distracted by advertisements and other things like msn messenger. It can be very easy to lose track of time and study is not always productive. ICAO Aviation English Online is more effective as it has a Learning Management System that tracks your progress and time spent on the course. As well as showing you your mistakes, if you miss too many study sessions, or fall behind in your study we can give you a reminder. When you have a consistent study rhythm it’s relatively easy to achieve a half-ICAO level within 12 weeks.
It’s also easy to take the things that you learn online into the real world as it’s also designed for blended learning in a classroom. So you can practice and expand everything that you learn online with a teacher and other learners in a classroom. At the end of the day it’s all about being able to communicate effectively with real people.
What to do next
For feedback and more information about Aviation English Asia’s courses please visit http://aviationenglish.com. We can help you improve your English whether you are an experienced pilot, a cadet entry pilot, a controller, aerospace engineer or flight attendant, with custom courses designed specifically for your needs. If you haven’t already please join the Aviation English mailing list for instant access to free demonstration units of the ICAO Aviation English Online course, special offers and details of courses in your area.
Of course, feel free to leave a comment or even a suggestion for a future article. We value all of your feedback.
English learning advice from Aviation English Asia.
Article written by Michael Egerton
In this article I’m going to show you how you can improve your ability to paraphrase. Paraphrasing is the ability to express someone else’s ideas in your own words. It is an essential skill for pilots and controllers, as there may be times when you need to communicate with other non-native speakers who don’t know (or can’t recognise) the words that you are trying to use.
Therefore you should improve not just your own vocabulary, but learn how to communicate information clearly using other words and structures. It’s an effective way of checking, confirming and clarifying information. Communication strategies like this will contribute to making aviation safer.
Paraphrasing for pilots and controllers
Paraphrasing requires several skills:
- Good listening comprehension
- the ability to understand the main points of a message
- the ability to understand why the speaker/writer expressed himself this way
- the ability to express the same ideas in more concise terms without changing the meaning
This means that you need to develop the ability to use the context to understand the new vocabulary that you hear, while ignoring the parts that are not relevant to the main points. Pay attention to key words/phrases, tense and factual information.
You can practice paraphrasing/summarising by picking out the key words/phrases in the text and expressing the way they are related to each other.
Practice paraphrasing while reading
In aviation you will probably be more concerned with improving your listening rather than reading, but nevertheless you can improve your paraphrasing skills by reading a varied range of text.
When you read an article first skim read it to understand what the article is about and what the writer is trying to say. You should be able to guess the meaning of words that you don’t know from the context. Then consider:
- What are the main points?
- What is the key information?
- What information is not useful?
- What questions does the article answer or raise?
You can then change the structure of the article to be clearer and easier to understand. If there are uncommon words you can describe them using different words. If the word represents something physical, eg a foreign object left on the runway, you can consider it’s shape, size and dimensions or even the material it is made of. If the word represents something abstract eg “aerodynamics”, consider the situations in which the idea occurs.
Exercise:
Paraphrase the following passage:
As mankind advanced further and further, throughout history there were lots of trials and designs for flying machines. In order to establish flying, mankind looked at the only available example of flying: namely birds. Thus, everyone was trying to copy the designs of the birds to design a flying machine that paralleled their development: The Ornithopter. In essence, an ornithopter was a machine that had birdlike wings and a place for the operator to be attached. The operator would flap his arms and the wings of the ornithopter would be flapped also. In essence, mankind would fly by simulating the flapping of the bird’s wings. However, since the principles of aerodynamics were not yet discovered, no one was aware of the ratio of the wing to muscle power and thus all of these projects and attempts were doomed to fail.
It should be easy to state the important information within a few sentences. It’s easy to see which information can be discarded.
Exercise:
- Explain what an ornihopter is without using the word “birds”.
- Explain why ornihopters were not successful without using the words “aerodynamics”, “flapping” or “power”.
Practice paraphrasing in aviation
Watch the following video.
- Do you think that the controllers were surprised to hear of that object on the taxiway?
- How do you think it got there?
- What other words sound similar or could easily be misheard?
- How would you describe that object if you weren’t able to communicate clearly on the radio due to interference?
What to do next
For feedback and more information about Aviation English Asia’s courses please visit http://aviationenglish.com. If you haven’t already please join the Aviation English mailing list for special offers and details of courses in your area.
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Conan She
Michael Egerton
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