As for speaking and listening, listening is more important than speaking. If you understand others, you can communicate with broken sentences together with gestures. If you fail to understand others, you can say nothing. Listening ability is improved only through listening. There is no short-cut.Here are some advice.

I.Some Factors Affect Your Understanding
Are you often troubled by unsatisfactory understanding of spoken English? Before blaming yourself too soon, ask yourself whether incomplete understanding is the result of one or more of the following language independent factors.
-tired? (after a heavy lunch)
-nervous? (facing a stranger who is a native speaker of English)
-not in the mood to receive any information, not attentive (after a hard day's work)
-a long way from where speaker is (on the other side of the road, on the telephone)
-disturbed by background noises (too much traffic; a plane passing over your head)
-unfamiliar with the topic (two strangers talking behind you in a bus; walking into a public lecture on Greek mythology or renowned South American writers)

II.Language Specific Factors
If none of the above factors seems to play a major role, then misunderstanding may well be the result of a combination of the following language specific factors:
-accent of speaker(s) e.g. British, American, Australian, Singaporean...
-intonation patterns e.g. "He's coming." vs. "He's coming ?"
-stress e.g. "John will come, not George." Vs "John WILL come, there's no doubt about it."
-unfamiliar words e.g. 'rendezvous' in place of 'appointment'; 'to procrastinate' instead of 'to delay'.
-idioms e.g. "out of sight, out of mind"; "a bolt from the blue".
-colloquialism .e.g. "He's gonna graduate this year." He ain't heavy, he's my brother."
-words used in informal style e.g. 'bobby' for 'policeman' or 'pal' for 'friend'
-speed e.g.[ican'ttaldtoyounowcauseI'mlateforclassandwehaveatesttoday...]
-sound pay attention to the liaisons(联读） and assimilation（同化）
If -you feel that your command of English is inadequate to meet your academic needs, such as taking notes in lectures, expressing yourself in tutorials:
-you are anxious that it might be a potential obstacle to your future professional pursuits, then -do something about it NOW before it is too late!

III. What Can You Do on Your Own Beyond the Classroom
Since English is easily accessible in the media, they make good, natural sources of input:
1.TV -choose your favourite programs and make regular appointments with them. Since familiarity with what is being talked about (i.e. context) facilitates understanding, a good practice would be to watch news broadcasts on the English channel after viewing the Chinese version. In so doing, you can pay maximum attention to how the news items are presented in English.
2.Radio - even more handy than TV, particularly on campus. Listen to BBC and VOA every day. News -like songs, the news is full of frequently repeated broadcast items. First listen to the slow English and then the normal speed. You are free to do other things while listening - having breakfast, preparing to go to class, having a picnic, even jogging! In short, anything except intellectually demanding tasks such as intensive reading.
3.Tapes-find some good English tapes including some English songs and listen to them intensively and extensively.
4.Internet-there is a lot listening materials on the internet. You can listen to them and also you can download them and practise them. You can enter some chat room to have the talk with others.
5.Software-choose some software for listening and practise them on the computer.
6.Films-select some English films from tapes and VCD and try to understand them. If there are Chinese subtittles, don't look at them first. Then you watch them again and scan those words on the screen.

There are many ways for you to improve your listening ability. The problem is to insist on doing it. Where there is a will, there is a way.