Pay attention to the intonation.
Listen for keywords.
Listen for words that are repeated or paraphrased.
Speaker´s attitude and feeling.
Listen for signal words
A speaker may not directly say he or she is angry, but you can tell whether he or she is through the tone of voice.
How speaker´s voice goes up and down will help you understand more clearly what a speaker is saying.
A speaker will often use words to indicate the introduction, major steps or ideas, examples and the conclusion or summary for example: First, then, after that, finally, to sum up.
A speaker will often use different words to express the main idea while giving details.
These are often stressed by a speaker because the words indicate essential information in a sentence.They will sound louder, longer and higher pitched than other words.