A few of my overseas students have been telling me that they are finding it difficult to understand their lecturers. I feel for you! Whilst the British students are just having to cope with the new ideas from the lecturer which in themselves might be challenging, the overseas students are having to cope with understanding the language in the first place, before they even get to the new challenging ideas. It’s important that you know how lectures are structured, because believe it or not, they usually are structured! If you know what to listen for, you can pick out the different stages of the lecture. Usually the lecturer lays out the lecture at the beginning and tells you what is coming and in what order. Warwick University has developed some excellent English for Academic Purposes materials called EASE, and you can access some of these materials online for free. Most of them are unavailable, but the initial unit in Listening to Lectures is available to all of us. You can do their unit on ‘lecture openings’ by accessing the material here.