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I am a struggling listener in the English language. Despite giving my very best attention to the speakers, most of the time, I don’t understand what is being said. Everything flies by so fast to my ears. I cope on a daily basis by asking my friendly neighbors to tell me what to do all the time. My brain is always working in the frustration nervous sweaty mode or something when it comes to listening. Something is definitely wrong with my listening ability. Would someone help me figure out how to understand what is being said to me? Thanks you in advance so much for your great and wonderful help.

You are not alone in this boat, by any means. This is a natural obstacle for all learners. I am still trying to figure out how to listen to spoken spanish. Some people seem to speak so clearly and I have no trouble understanding them, but others . . wow . . I have no idea . . it’s like all the words blend in together. I don’t know what to say except to watch Tv with the subtitles on . . that way you can hear what they’re saying and see it also. Maybe that can help you get a feel for how things are pronounced.

Good Luck!!

There are some heavy English accents that I don’t understand either.
Try listening to the voices with your eyes closed. It works for me.

You are not alone in this boat, by any means. …watch Tv with the subtitles on . . that way you can hear what they’re saying and see it also. Maybe that can help you get a feel for how things are pronounced. Good Luck!!

Hi LaReinita, Thank you so much for your reply. I feel so much better that I am not a weirdo or a really odd person. In my English classroom environment, my other English-language learners interact with the teacher so readily. As for me I am always silent and try to process to make sense of the information being said. Thank you for your recommendation and best wishes.

Hakro

I have had the same problem as you, Nick Junior. Sometimes I’ve asked the speakers to say it more clearly, but instead of slowing down they usually speak with a louder voice, as if I were deaf.

That’s why I always try to pronounce every word separately when I speak for example English to a person who is not an English speaker.

I wish that all the native speakers of any language could understand this global problem and try to speak a little slower, a little clearer, separating the words, and trying to understand the foreigner.

I’ve been travelling around the world for about forty years but I’ve seldom seen this kind of attitude.

We Brits generally seem to have some blanket ignorance of how hard it is to understand a foreign language and many people come to our country and most people expect them to speak perfect English, they’ve never tried to learn another language and they don’t understand, quote: «this global problem».

Part of it is also because they don’t understand the problem, people speak louder thinking it will be more clear, it’s ignorant yes, but a lot of us just don’t understand «speaking clearly» because when someone doesn’t understand us, it’s nearly always a volume thing, and people are conditioned to speak louder when someone has trouble listening, it’s not like the majority of it are doing it deliberately. They just don’t know.

You are not alone in this boat, by any means. This is a natural obstacle for all learners. I am still trying to figure out how to listen to spoken spanish. Some people seem to speak so clearly and I have no trouble understanding them, but others . . wow . . I have no idea . . it’s like all the words blend in together. I don’t know what to say except to watch Tv with the subtitles on . . that way you can hear what they’re saying and see it also. Maybe that can help you get a feel for how things are pronounced.

Good Luck!!

That’s exactly how I feel.

Reading Spanish and writing Spanish is quite easy for me, though I tend to make mistakes if I’m not careful. Speaking it isn’t that bad. But listening…

It’s true about the different speakers as well. Regardless of accent (which does make a difference — I have less trouble understanding Mexican or Standard Castillian Spanish then I do Andalucian or Rioplatense), some speakers talk in a way I can easily understand, even at relatively high rates of speed (like newscasters), others just seem to intone everything or join their sentences together in a way where everything becomes a rumbling mush. It’s a challenge, that’s for sure.

Some languages are in fact more difficult to learn to understand audially than others, and I believe that out of the major languages of the world English and French are in the front line in this regard — unfortunately, seeing as how they are both so important internationally.

An excellent way to work with this to get a text recited in normal conversational style along with the written text, and review it several times until you can understand it without the written copy. I believe that the BBC website has material available of that sort.

Aside from that, I’ve found that listening and repeating sentences in the target language until you sound exactly like the recording can help tremendously in your ability to grasp what you hear. Unfortunately, old-styl language labs that let you hear yourself are starting to get scarce, I believe.

Now, this will sound a bit crazy, but bear with me:

Have you had an audiology test in recent years?

Sometimes there is damage to the auditory nerve which is not readily apparent. One can be slightly or partially deaf without much difficulty in carrying on with quotidian life. However, it seems that many words in English which have fricative and plosive sounds fall right in the auditory drop-off typical of nerve damage. The result is that the listener will often miss those sounds and words will lose their distinctiveness, and the listener will end up trying to guess which words were missed. That’s usually when one gets left behind in the conversation: while the brain tries to catch up after making up or guessing the unheard sounds.

It’s just another opinion…

I appreciate all of your inputs and interesting views. I especially like the links provided by Outsider. Daniel Franco I am so happy that you are so brave and truthful in offering your suggestion.

ernest_

I don’t understand what is being said.

I’m not very surprised. One does not learn to decode the sound waves of a language overnight. It takes time. Just do not despair and keep listening to everything you can. This is my advice

That’s exactly how I feel.
Reading Spanish and writing Spanish is quite easy for me, though I tend to make mistakes if I’m not careful. Speaking it isn’t that bad. But listening…

Spanish is definitely spoken faster than English… I am convinced of that because that’s what I thought before I learnt to speak it fluently and that’s what I still think. German didn’t sound fast to me before I learnt it and now that I have a fairly decent level it still doesn’t sound that way. I think that Germans usually enunciate much better than English-speakers though, maybe that’s part of NickJunior’s problem.

I have exactly the same problem when I listen to Spanish, although I think I’m sloooowly getting better at it. Practice makes perfect, I suppose.

I don’t have a lot of advice for you other than something a friend once advised me. Maybe about a year or two ago, I started trying to watch television in Spanish every now and then, and I found that I could barely understand anything without the use of closed captioning. Anyhow, the advice given to me was to try not to concentrate as hard. As ridiculous as it might sound at first, it did seem to help me. Concentrating too hard might be just as detrimental to understanding a language as not paying any attention at all.

…watch television in [English]…try not to concentrate as hard [because] [c]oncentrating too hard might be just as detrimental to understanding a language as not paying any attention at all.

Thank you so much Zlyice for your kind advice. Welcome to the forum. My problem in listening is that I try very hard to concentrate on every word spoken in sentences. Then when I don’t know the meaning of a word, I get panicky and then stressed out over that word, trying to figure out its meaning. Then I keep getting behind and further behind in understand what is being said.

I’ve noted that I just can’t understand in a conversation (in English) a word that I’ve never heard of before. Problem is that I cannot figure out how it’s spelled, so if I hear a new word from a film/cartoon/song usually I have to give up, even listening again I can’t learn it.

On the other hand, if I read a new word, it’s hard to guess its pronunciation…Luckily there are online dictionaries where you can listen as well

Thank you so much Zlyice for your kind advice. Welcome to the forum. My problem in listening is that I try very hard to concentrate on every word spoken in sentences. Then when I don’t know the meaning of a word, I get panicky and then stressed out over that word, trying to figure out its meaning. Then I keep getting behind and further behind in understand what is being said.

This may be part of your problem, the other part being that English is a foreign language for you and for EVERYONE listening and understanding is difficult I´d say. Think of it this way: In your native language do you focus on every.single.word.of.the.conversation? No, because you would lose track of the conversation as well; there is no way that you know every single word there is. The same goes for English, play off context, relax ( I know this is hard), and if you don’t understand, it’s OK, they will repeat themselves, and those who do not and try to make you feel ashamed or as though you are stupid for not understanding are probably rather insecure and don’t know a single word in your native language. Good luck, I’m in the same boat as you right now, but I can tell you that you will get better with patience and practice.

Think of it this way: In your native language do you focus on every.single.word.of.the.conversation? No, because you would lose track of the conversation as well; there is no way that you know every single word there is.

I think English is a language in which native speakers tend to skip the less important words (like articles). -Think at the contract forms as well-
This do not happen in other languages…

English speakers do NOT skip articles. English is a stress-timed language, which means that «grammatical» words such as articles are spoken with less force than «lexical» words such as nouns. Speakers of syllable-timed languages such as the Romance languages have trouble adjusting to stress-timing.

Spanish is definitely spoken faster than English… I am convinced of that because that’s what I thought before I learnt to speak it fluently and that’s what I still think. German didn’t sound fast to me before I learnt it and now that I have a fairly decent level it still doesn’t sound that way. I think that Germans usually enunciate much better than English-speakers though, maybe that’s part of NickJunior’s problem.

oooh Sortu how can you say that?

It’s not true; it’s just that another language will always sound faster than ours, as we’re not used listening to it.

Actually you’re right about German, which is quite clear to understand, maybe because you have to pronounce almost all the wprds’ letters.

By the way Nick, I feel exactly the same about English, and I think you must keep on listening to your friend and practise with the language.

Good luck!

oooh Sortu how can you say that?

It’s not true; it’s just that another language will always sound faster than ours, as we’re not used listening to it.

Franzisca, it is true (in my opinion ). On the basis of what you’re saying, that would mean all languages are spoken at the same speed (let’s say by the average speaker), which can’t be right. English sounds faster than German to me and Spanish sounds faster than both. These are all languages I can speak. When I listen to other languages that I don’t know, some sound faster than others.
Sorry, but I just don’t go for the argument that another language sounds fastly spoken just because you’re not a native speaker of it.

Franzisca, it is true (in my opinion ). On the basis of what you’re saying, that would mean all languages are spoken at the same speed (let’s say by the average speaker), which can’t be right. English sounds faster than German to me and Spanish sounds faster than both. These are all languages I can speak. When I listen to other languages that I don’t know, some sound faster than others.
Sorry, but I just don’t go for the argument that another language sounds fastly spoken just because you’re not a native speaker of it.

We’ll have to fill up a chart of the faster languages!
From what I know:

1) Polish
2) Spanish
4) French
5) English
6) German
7) Italian

Ok maybe the list it’s silly. But I have worked in several multi-language enviroment and hearing different languages, I can tell that the speed of a mother tongue speaker is not the same for all.
It’s true that Spanish is usually spoken faster than English.
A good example is Italian, that is the language most slowly spoken I’ve heard. And, as it is my mother language, I can tell that a mother tongue understands not only every single word, but also every single letter. A misspelled word is always spotted when it is read.
Does the same happen in English, for the mother tongue?

sortu, isn’t it strange that your mother tongue is English, and you find it the slowest talked; Hierophant is italian, and Italian is the slowest too, according to him…

I just try to understand this thinking about words’ forms; if a word ends with a vocal, it has to be bounded with the following word in a different way than if it ended with a consonant, don’t you think?
that is my very very humble opinion; consonant-ending-languages are spoken faster than vocal-ending ones.

do you like my theory?

Well…it’s correct but I don’t think it’s the point. On the other hand in English there are sounds that must be pronounced long in order to avoid confusions: the word «sheet» cannot be said too fast
I think it’s just an attidute of the people…

Cnaeius

We’ll have to fill up a chart of the faster languages!
From what I know:

1) Polish
2) Spanish
4) French
5) English
6) German
7) Italian

Ok maybe the list it’s silly. But I have worked in several multi-language enviroment and hearing different languages, I can tell that the speed of a mother tongue speaker is not the same for all.
It’s true that Spanish is usually spoken faster than English.
A good example is Italian, that is the language most slowly spoken I’ve heard. And, as it is my mother language, I can tell that a mother tongue understands not only every single word, but also every single letter. A misspelled word is always spotted when it is read.
Does the same happen in English, for the mother tongue?

If you are native Italian I don’t think you can argue anything from the speed of your language. You cannot be objective. To me Italian is slow, because I know it perfectly, but I’ve heard a lot of non-Italian saying that Italians speak as faster as spanish, for example. I wouldn’t know where to put Italian in that list

sortu, isn’t it strange that your mother tongue is English, and you find it the slowest talked; Hierophant is italian, and Italian is the slowest too, according to him…

Franzisca, if you read my post again you’ll see I said that I think English is spoken faster than German.

I just try to understand this thinking about words’ forms; if a word ends with a vocal, it has to be bounded with the following word in a different way than if it ended with a consonant, don’t you think?
that is my very very humble opinion; consonant-ending-languages are spoken faster than vocal-ending ones.

do you like my theory?

Your theory sounds plausible to me.

jinti

There is an interesting — and fairly short — piece here on the topic of whether there are differences in speaking rates among languages and how we can judge.

Arrius

I think that English is sometimes spoken extremely fast: I was listening to our ex-prime minister yesterday whose speech was at maximum speed to try to keep up with his thoughts. (Possibly it has accelerated since he no longer has to be so careful, for the moment, with what he is saying). I thought at the time, «I pity some poor foreigner trying to grasp all that!» Besides its vast vocabulary, one of the main problems of understanding spoken English is that vowels in unstressed syllables, particuarly in the British version, lose their full value and become murmur vowels or schwars, so that, added to the vagaries of English spelling, the learner cannot always be sure even what word he has to look up. One great aid to understanding is to listen over and over again to the recorded dialogues of a record course, such as Berlitz, and gradually learn to do without the written text. Another, and cheaper, technique that helps is to listen to the texts in the public domain on Librivox whilst looking at the written texts from Gutenberg, accessible from the former site:
http://librivox.org/librivox-catalogue/
You will be able to use earphones and adjust volume and tone to suit yourself. The readers of the mainly English texts are usually either English or American, both of which I would advise the questioner to get used to. DVDs of feature films are also a great boon because you can repeat small sections of dialogue ad infinitum with visual support till you have absorbed them.

On the point that sortu raised about the rapidity of Spanish speech, I would say that men generally speak more slowly and clearly than women in Spain. And when a group of youngish women get together, the resulting cascade of consonants one hears is reminiscent of machine-gun fire, and a truly incredible phenomenon of bucal dexterity. It sounds as if they don’t really care if they are understood by the others or not (though I assume they are, for the most part at least).

I think English has all the potential to be one of the fastest Indo-European languages mainly because of these facts:

1. Most words have just one or two syllabes (regardless of how many letters need to be written)
2. The consonant to vowel ratio is high
3. Nouns can easily be converted into verbs, adjectives, etc. Creation of new single words that would otherwise need to be explained in 2-4 words is part of English magic.

Italian and Spanish abound in polysylabic words with a rather 1:1 consonant/vowel ratio. They tend to be spoken slower.

As an example of what I am talking about, listen to any song in English and then its translation in Spanish or Italian. In a song, each syllable must correspond to one note. So, to say what the lyrics say in English, you need much more notes. Indeed, you could easily come to a situation in which you would absolutely distort the music to make room for all syllables you need to say the same thing. What translators do to go around the problem is avoid translating literally and offer a sort of «summarized» version, that frequently missess many details.

Franzisca, if you read my post again you’ll see I said that I think English is spoken faster than German.

Your theory sounds plausible to me.

oh yes sorry, my mistake
by the way you find that for example Spanish is spoken faster than English..
Trust me, I know a very little Spanish, and even though I understand it better than English, that I studied for a long time (ehm, maybe I should’t confess it ).
Happy to hear that you like my theory :cool:
Bye!

And when a group of youngish women get together, the resulting cascade of consonants one hears is reminiscent of machine-gun fire, and a truly incredible phenomenon of bucal dexterity. It sounds as if they don’t really care if they are understood by the others or not (though I assume they are, for the most part at least).

I love how you describe that, ahahaha that’s what they say to Italian women too, sometimes!!

Arrius

I think English has all the potential to be one of the fastest Indo-European languages mainly beacuse of two facts:
1. Most words have just one or two syllables (regardless of how many letters need to be written)
2. The consonant to vowel ratio is high
3. Nouns can easily be converted into verbs, adjectives, etc. Creation of new single words that would otherwise need to be explained in 2-4 words is part of English magic.
Italian and Spanish abound in polysylabic words with a rather 1 to 1 consonant to vowel ratio. They tend to be spoken slower. Hotu Matua

We have not specified what we mean by speed. It we mean the delivery of syllables then I think the gossiping Spanish women I referred to must take the prize. Though a group of excited Italian females,as recommended by Franziska, would probably come in a close second. But if we are talking about the time it takes to convey a message, then I would bet on English. The qualities you describe that facilitate this in English are actually shared by both Norwegian and Afrikaans, also shorn of most of their Germanic inflections, which in some ways would have made better world languages than English because they are so much simpler and more consistent. But history did not go that way and that is another question.
If you have a paragraph written in English with parallel Spanish and German translations, the Spanish will be longer than the English and the German longer than the Spanish, so that if the passages were read aloud at the same rate of uttered syllables, they would finish in that same order.
English (or at least the standard British variety) has yet another advantage that aids speed: it is possible to speak it with very little muscular activity in the speech organs. One may speak intelligibly to those with a good knowledge of it with slightly open mouth but without moving the lips at all! This I have demonstrated a couple of times to the surprise of foreign friends, the varied intonation helping comprehension. This is not possible with any other language I am aware of. Thus English not only has the advantage of brevity but is a reliable language to use with little effort when under stress or in an emergency — and, of course, a boon to ventriloquists!

Loob

English speakers do NOT skip articles. English is a stress-timed language, which means that «grammatical» words such as articles are spoken with less force than «lexical» words such as nouns. Speakers of syllable-timed languages such as the Romance languages have trouble adjusting to stress-timing.

I think this is a key point: English is a stress-timed language, whereas many other European languages are syllable-timed. It makes a huge difference….

Loob

Have you tried reading along with book on tape? That may help you’re speech abilities even out with your literary skills.

Arrius, your link was very interesting.
I could say that what I mean is more or less this
«Speaking slowly, I might pronounce the sentence “She looked particularly interesting” as /SilUktp«tIkj«l«liInt«r«stIN/, which contains 27 sounds, but speaking rapidly I might say /Si lUk p«tIkli IntrstIN/, which only contains 20 sounds«
That’s what happen when English is very fast spoken, you skip sounds! And that’s why, I guess, we often have difficulties in understang a conversation.
On the opposite, I know that for example Spanish and Italian can talk really really fast, but it’s just «producing more sounds pro second», and not cut some of them off.

Both situations are hard to handle, good work and have fun everyone

Arrius

Awkward sounds do tend to disappear in English, whether fast or slow: many people pronounce sixth form as six form, and I have even been present when a very avant-garde EFL teacher has told his class to pronounce good boy as goo’ boy! If you can find an old film with Sir John Gielgud you will hear a beautiful English with every syllable given its full value. It is better to start with such a model and give way to slovenliness later. He never rushed his delivery.

Arrius, your link was very interesting.
I could say that what I mean is more or less this
«Speaking slowly, I might pronounce the sentence “She looked particularly interesting” as /SilUktp«tIkj«l«liInt«r«stIN/, which contains 27 sounds, but speaking rapidly I might say /Si lUk p«tIkli IntrstIN/, which only contains 20 sounds«
That’s what happen when English is very fast spoken, you skip sounds! And that’s why, I guess, we often have difficulties in understang a conversation.
On the opposite, I know that for example Spanish and Italian can talk really really fast, but it’s just «producing more sounds pro second», and not cut some of them off.

Both situations are hard to handle, good work and have fun everyone

My dictionary states that it is acceptable to pronounce «interesting» as a three-syllable word. English is not always spoken as it is written, and nor should it be: speech came before writing. Nor is it correct to give every syllable the same weight. Native speakers say «I am going to the library», pronouncing «go» and «li» with more force than the other syllables. A flat pronunciation — «I-am-go-ing-to-the-li-bra-ry» — is incorrect. English has a much heavier stress accent than Italian or Spanish. The unstressed syllables are pronounced much more softly than the stressed syllables, and this can cause problems for Spanish speakers. I knew a Spaniard who could not hear the second, unstressed, syllable in the word «British».

But still, I think Franzisca is right that English speakers tend to shorten and eliminate sounds when speaking fast (and, for many, even at a normal pace) and/or speaking informally. Consonant clusters are probably the first to go. The way the language is spoken on television is usually not what’s heard when strolling around the city. Anytime I step foot outide my door I’m likely to hear «prolly» (probably), «whatcha doin?», «usally» (usually), «em» (them), «aready» (already)…the list is practically endless. Couple that with the stress-timed issue (grammatical words being barely spoken) and other issues and it can be quite difficult to understand what’s being said.

The same happens to me with French. When I listen to the news or a documentary, I understand almost everything. But if I’m watching a movie or I’m on the streets, I barely get by (and it’s not only because the latter have more idiomatic expressions.)

My question to non-natives: Is it more difficult to understand a conversation when it’s full of the [standard] contractions «why’s», «how’d», «What’s», «he’s»..etc? Do you have to think about it a little more?

I ask so that I know if I should adjust how I speak so that I’m better understood by English learners.

My question to non-natives: Is it more difficult to understand a conversation when it’s full of the [standard] contractions «why’s», «how’d», «What’s», «he’s»..etc? Do you have to think about it a little more?

Not at all. I never even notice the contractions.

What is difficult (and annoying) is when an ESLer overestimates the quality of his English, and insists on talking very fast while speaking with a very thick foreign accent.

Not at all. I never even notice the contractions.

What is difficult (and annoying) is when an ESLer overestimates the quality of his English, and insists on talking very fast while speaking with a very thick foreign accent.

Well, I guess I didn’t mean all non-natives, I really was thinking about English learners (I consider you pretty much close to native, Outsider).

Or maybe you can answer from the point of view of when you were an English learner, in the intermediate stages.

But I guess you’re right either way. It shouldn’t be difficult because it’s usually auxiliaries that are contracted, and the more important verb is the main verb (to convey the meaning of the phrase) and its conjugation.

Well, I guess I didn’t mean all non-natives, I really was thinking about English learners (I consider you pretty much close to native, Outsider ).

Thanks.

One mistake I have noticed English learners make (regardless of how good an accent they have) is to overuse or misplace contractions when they speak or write. So my guess would be that they are not a great hindrance to comprehension. I think that people are often well exposed to English contractions abroad, due to pop music.

Arrius

Especially gonna, wanna and gotta (pronounced godda).

It’s not true; it’s just that another language will always sound faster than ours, as we’re not used listening to it.

Right! And interestingly, phonologysts classify Spanish as a syllable-timed language, which compared to a stress-timed language like English, should be regarded as a «slow» language.

But the fact is that when we are learning a language, it always seems «faster» than ours.

What is also interesting is the fact that when we learn a foreign language, we have more problems with the listening skills, which are the first skills we developed in our L1. Don’t know why.

I think there’s a strong case to be argued for teaching people of all nationalities how to speak for maximum comprehension by foreign (to them) speakers. There is a set of skills here that possibly has not yet been studied and defined, and perhaps instead of relying on the non-native speaker to do all the work with incredible feats of comprehension, we should be sharing the burden by improving people’s skills at making themselves more comprehensible.

So where’s the first «Speaking English TO Foreigners» course going to be held then? (Or French, Swedish, or whatever).

Loob

Intriguing point, mally!

I wonder what a «Speaking to Foreigners» course would stress…

Not speaking pidgin, of course (I’ve been on the receiving end of some Spanglish, which was horrendously difficult to decipher).

Speaking slowly and clearly, I guess.

And using as many words as possible which are kin to words in the target language…

What about
:idea: speaking the relevant language?

Loob

Your experience with Spanish is very close to mine. An example of a challenging situation for me is watching a Spanish-language movie. Often, I have to read the subtitles.

I have observed, however, that my female friends are often more comfortable listening to someone speak in Spanish than actually speaking the language. Is it possible that listening to others speak foreign languages is more difficult for men than for women? If so, what would that say, if anything about gender-based differences in ones approach to language acquisition?

Speaking slowly and clearly, I guess.

You don’t necessarily have to speak slowly in order to be make yourself understood by a learner as long as you stress the syllables and key words carefully. Native speakers tend to relax and speak in a monotonous way among themselves (by monotonous I mean without much rhythmic variation) making it harder for non-proficient foreign speakers to tell words apart. It’s all too easy for me to get lost when I’m listening to an AmE speaker simply because I’m more used to BrE stress patterns. I think stress is everything when it comes to spoken language.

My question to non-natives: Is it more difficult to understand a conversation when it’s full of the [standard] contractions «why’s», «how’d», «What’s», «he’s»..etc? Do you have to think about it a little more?

I ask so that I know if I should adjust how I speak so that I’m better understood by English learners.

No, that’s not the biggest problem, because you can understand what the contractions stand for by the context.

To me, the matter is actually understand where a word ends and when the next begins…
:eek:

And by friday I’ll be in Chicago, say a prayer for me

Arrius

When teaching a foreigner English, the teacher may slow down when concentrating on new words and phrases or particular difficulties, but always to talk at a speed much slower than normal would be a disservice to the learner, as firstly it distorts the sounds and second, this is not the kind of language they are bound to meet in real life and have to get used to.
Far better for the teacher to pause briefly between short segments of speech delivered at a natural speed. This will give time for the message to sink in, and is only a slight exaggeration of what really happens. If the learner does not get used to listening at the normal speed and, when «in the field» asks natives to speak more slowly, it is my experience that they may do so for a short while and then forget about it, or just go into the I-can’t-possibly-communicate-with-this-foreigner mode and give up. This is particularly the case on the ‘phone. It is also a good idea for a learner to be exposed to various kinds of accent, as few native anglophones speak in exactly the same way, and if one is learning RP English one should recall that more people in the world speak the American variety.
Added to the link I originally gave to help the questioner, there is this useful news service that may be unfamiliar to him, with audio and video. The spoken text provided for English or any of the other languages used is exactly the same as the written text in that language and can be paused as well as repeated as required. The basic small screen, capable of enlargement, permits the simultaneous hearing and reading of the text whilst viewing the newsreel.
http://www.euronews.net/index.php?lng=1&page=accueil_info

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Are you afraid of listening to natives too?

How well do you understand English from listening? I have never met an adult learner in 15 years who would say it’s a walk in the park for them. Really. Never.

‘Boy, this is the hardest part, because you not only need to understand what the other person is talking, which is hard due to all the different accents there is, but you also need to comprehend what they are talking!’

‘But listening, oh boy, that’s the tough one. You have to face native speed of speech, accents, intonation… I always thought English as a “hungry language”, its speakers “eat” a lot of letters we were taught they were pronounced. And you seem to say full sentences without moving your lips. We just hear a mumble.’

These are just some answers I received when I asked which skill is the hardest in learning English.

Listening is a difficult skill to master. We can’t deny that.

In a situation like that, we usually end up blaming ourselves (I am hopeless, I have no language talent, learning languages is not for me) or native speakers (they ‘eat’ words and they speak too fast – crazy language, crazy people).

The thing is English is no exception in that. It’s equally hard for any other foreign language to master. The French speak incredibly fast and so do Spanish speakers. Try to listen to a German native speaker when you are a complete beginner. I will not even mention Chinese with their tonic system.

What you need to know about listening and understanding

As I said, listening is hard to master. But not because there is something wrong with our ears. It happens because people try to learn listening using the same methods they learn reading. But how is it possible? They are so different, reading and listening.

When you read a text, you can see it in front of your eyes. It means two things:

you can see all the words separately in the page
you have time to stop, to return to some point and think about it.

What happens when you listen?

You need to decode a line of sounds, with no breaks, because they are all connected together.
It’s usually quick, especially in conversations.
And you have no control over what’s going on (I mean you have less opportunity to ‘rewind’ and to think about it). You rely on your memory.

In fact, a listener very often hear something like:

Extract from JJ Wilson’s ‘How to teach listening’

So, you just can’t learn to listen like you have learnt reading.

Another popular myth: you will learn to understand what people say if you listen a lot. But again, just listening to a lot of stuff in unadapted English is a long (and frustrating) way. It’s not focused learning. Without strategies, it will take you years.

It’s a bit funny how most listening tasks you will find on the Web or in the textbooks are tests.

So, somehow you learnt to listen already (when? where?) and now you check yourself. But when was the actual learning happening? If you just hear a lot of text in English, it doesn’t mean learning. If you don’t understand what’s going on, how would you learn?

Even if you come to a teacher for help, it is not always productive. First of all, teachers try to speak comfortably for you, even native speakers. That’s why many people say they understand their teachers well, but can’t understand people in the streets.

I remember one colleague of mine who just came back from her internship in the USA and started teaching English to adults. She used to be saying: ‘I spent so many years learning English. I don’t want to spoil it by speaking unnaturally. I will show my learners how real English sounds’. Well, intermediate and advanced students loved her. Elementary students hated her. At first. But somehow, after a month or so, each of her students developed a better listening understanding of English than mine, for example. Guilty on the spot. I DO speak too comfortably for my students. I can list you many explanations for this, but I won’t. This is just a reality.

So, the first takeaway from this article: Don’t be afraid of being exposed to original listening material. I also vote for variety. Listen to the texts of different difficulty and of different origin. The more accents (both native and non-native) you hear, the more prepared you will be for real life. Learn which TV series you can start with.

The key thing in this process: LEARN to listen, don’t just wait for a miracle to happen one day.

What kind of strategies could help you improve your listening skills?

I will switch now from general linguistics to English. What exactly do you need to know about English to hear it better?

First of all, ‘what you see is not what you hear’. Don’t expect the words will be separate like you see them in this written text.

Let’s take an example.

You see a phrase: ‘half an hour ago’. If you could hear it the same way it is written, the sound would be something like that:

In reality, even in slow pronunciation, the words won’t have pauses between them.

If this phrase is a part of a longer text, it will be pronounced even faster.

Ok, is it all non-stop stream of speech? No, it isn’t. When we speak, we divide our speech into units, not into words. The words serving one meaning will live together. We call them ‘tone units’. We use them in all languages to organise our speech and put accents on the parts which are most important for our message.

The phrase from the example: ‘half an hour ago’. It means 1 unit of information. All the words here constitute 1 meaning. The speaker will pronounce them together, in 1 unit, to serve the meaning. The non-stop speaking all the time is not possible: we need to breathe. These breathing pauses made between short ideas constituing a bigger one.

So, in the sentence: I came home half an hour ago (7 words) there are actually only 3 tone units: I came // home // half an hour ago. They will say it: /aikeim//heum//havenaueegeu/. Just 2 pauses.

Of course, it is not:

Nobody speaks like that. You don’t speak like that.

Here is your first step in improving listening: your brain should get used to the fact that it hears not words but tone units containing one idea. Train yourself for that.

Some practice.

How many tone units can you identify in these sentences:

– When are you going on holiday this year?

When // are you going // on holiday // this year? (4 tone units)

– What kind of books do you prefer?

What kind of books // do you prefer? (2 tone units)

Practise with this ‘difficult’ piece. This one should be hard:

(video source – 00:27)

Even in this fast talking, we can hear some small pauses the speaker does between the tone units:

‘Thanks // for coming back on//. – How is it going? (one tone unit, that’s why so fast) – It’s going awesome! (again one tone unit – they all seem to be stuck together). We’re gonna // have // some fun today…’

I recommend you to practise this way: listen to some short extracts (up to 1 minute long) with the transcript to hear how sentences are divided into tone units in natural speaking. Let your brain learn to hear it differently from what he reads. Listen to the same extract several times until you can hear which small groups the words are organised into in every sentence.

You can use listening materials from the web or some podcasts.

Here are some example resources I always recommend my students:

English Numbers | Listening Test

Deep English

Listen a minute

6-minute English

It’s crucial that you practise listening to very very short extracts, as I said, not longer than a minute. Also, always practise with the text in front of your eyes. You will need some time to re-wire your brain from trying to listen for single words to listening to tone units. They are logical. After listening to 10 or 15 sentences (not at once, every day or every other day), the whole listening process will become different.

Inside the tone unit, words will be organised hierarchically (what a word, hah), so to say, by their importance. Your next step will be to learn the hierarchy of these words and ways how they are connected together. If it seems like a lot of work, no, it isn’t. It’s, again, quite logical. It’s focused work and it is some work, yes. But it is much better than just ‘listen to as much English as possible for a long time’ without any control of what’s happening with your English skills.

Divide this ‘stream’ you hear into into units and then learn how words work together inside each unit. This way, you will focus and start improving. And you will start understanding English, even the films, quite soon (of course, if your vocabulary is good enough 🙂

So, the key takeaways from the today’s post are:

– listening is a skill to train; you can’t learn to listen the right way just by random listening;

– don’t be afraid to vary the difficulty of your listening material;

– expose yourself to as many accents, both native and non-native, as possible;

– develop a simple short routine to learn listening using short (up to 1 minute long) extracts to train yourself for the right focus;

– learn not to expect to hear single words (like they are written in the page) but tone units where words are grouped around 1 small idea.

In the next post, we will continue re-focusing your brain from what it reads to what hears. Stay tuned!

Please share this article with your friends if you find it useful.

Learn about the 50 most commonly mispronounced words in English

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They say language sounds like music with its different sounds and musical lyrics. However, English learners often find it hard to discern different sounds when listening to English speakers. Fortunately, like music, there are ways to improve your speaking and listening language skills by focusing on the phonemes!

Let me tell you about Veronique:

She’d studied English for three years. She had great vocabulary and she understood English grammar (She even knew how to use present perfect!). But she hated talking to English speakers.

Why? Because she couldn’t understand spoken English, and when she spoke, people couldn’t understand her. Sound familiar?

In this article I’m going to show you some exciting and effective new ways of improving your speaking and listening skills… So, let’s get started.

How many sounds do you know?

Imagine you wanted to play beautiful music on the piano. Which of these pianos would you buy: a piano with all the keys, or one that has some keys missing?

Well, you’d choose the one with all the keys! It’s obvious that if you want to play beautiful music, you need the piano that has got all its keys.

The same thing is true with learning a new language. There are 88 keys on a piano, and there are 42 vowel and consonant sounds (phonemes) in English. Each language uses a different set of phonemes. Some sounds will be the same as your first language, some will be different.

This means that learning a new language always involves learning new sounds.

For example, if your first language is Russian, there are 10 English phonemes that will be new to you. Sounds you don’t use in Russian. Or if you’re a native Italian speaker, you’ll need to learn 18 new sounds.

If you find it hard to understand spoken English and your own pronunciation makes it hard to be understood, then it is incredibly frustrating – because, after all, learning a new language is all about connecting with other people, being able to talk about things that matter to you in the best way you can.

You can’t become a good piano player just by listening to other pianists.

And like with English, you can’t become a good English speaker just through osmosis (unconsious absorption of knowledge, ideas, or language)! Remember Veronique? She had studied English for three years, mostly using her eyes, hands and brain to read and write. She hadn’t spent much time training her ears and tongue to listen and speak.

Sure, she’d listened to lots of spoken English, but her attention was always on the meaning, not the sounds she was hearing.

If you were learning piano, there are three things you would need to do:

#1 Really understand the sounds of piano music…

#2 Hear new sounds clearly so you can tell them apart…

#3 Then train the muscles in your hand to produce those sounds as fluently as possible.

You can improve your speaking skills in exactly the same way. Here’s how:

#1. The first step is all about getting to know the phonemes that exist in English, but don’t exist in your first language.

I really recommend getting support and feedback with new sounds – here’s why:

Our brains are amazing, they help us learn new things every day. But the brain likes to organise new information by comparing it to things it already knows. When the brain learns something new, it remembers the new information better if it can match it with something it already knows.

SO, when you hear new phonemes, the first thing your brain will assume that the new sound is actually the same as one it already knows. AND if the brain doesn’t recognise the phonemes as new and different then it’s nearly impossible to train the ear to hear the difference. AND if the ear can’t hear the new phoneme then it’s impossible to train the tongue to produce it.

Here are two examples:

Korean and Japanese languages don’t distinguish between the phonemes /r/ and /l/. The two sounds are not differentiated in these languages: /r/ is known, but /l/ is not.

French speakers have a similar difficulty with /i:/ and /I/. There are two different phonemes in English, and in French there is only one.

BEFORE we can learn how to hear and produce new sounds, we need feedback to help us conceptualise the new sounds. The best person to help you here is your teacher: We all study phonetics as part of our training, so ask your teacher for help and advice.

ACTIVITY #1

Listen to the audio recording here. It contains two exercises comparing related phonemes:

The first exercise looks at the difference between the /ae/ sound in ‘bad’ and the /e/ sound in ‘bed’. This often causes problems for native speakers of German, Scandinavian, Russian and most South Asian languages.

The second exercise looks at the difference between the /p/ sound in ‘pen’ and the /b/ sound in ‘big’. This often causes problems for native speakers of Arabic and Chinese languages.

If you find it hard to hear the difference, then this is an English sound you need to work on with your teacher. When you have compared the two sounds in each exercise, why not try recording yourself as well?

#2 The second step is all your ears: Learning to hear sounds is important.

Remember Veronique – her problem was that when she was learning English she only listened for meaning, not sound. Of course, it’s really important to listen for meaning, BUT, learning to hear sounds is important too.

Your teacher will probably use ‘minimal pairs’ with you to help you hear the difference between pairs of words where just one sound is different. These are very useful – have a look at these examples:

/i/	/I/	/p/	/b/	/f/	/v/
been	bin	pour	bore	safe	save
heat	hit	prick	brick	foul	vowel
sheep	ship	cup	cub	leaf	leave
feel	fill	triple	treble	refuse	reviews

English speakers talk very fast, and the spoken English habit of ‘swallowing our words’ makes it even more important that you can quickly recognise different phonemes. Once you’ve trained your brain to conceptualise these new sounds, you’ll begin to hear them clearly.

Practice regularly, and this will really help you improve your listening skills.

ACTVITY #2

Click here for a short audio recording to help you practice some pairs of phonemes. Look at the texts below: You will hear me read each text twice. The first time I will read the whole text, but the second time, I will just focus pronouncing a pair of phonemes. Listen, and try these for yourself.

A: People bring big presents for babies. Harper gets upset when Bob disturbs his camping table.

phonemes: /b/ and /p/

B: Maria’s an amateur. She cures fear. She uses pure beer to clear insecure ideas.

phonemes: /ɪə/ and /ʊə/

Practise the phonemes first, listening carefully until the sound is right, and then try reading the whole text… Can you hear the sounds more clearly?

#3 The third step is training your tongue and vocal muscles.

It will feel awkward at first.

When you speak your first language, you move your tongue and other muscles automatically. You don’t have to stop and think about where to put your tongue to make the sounds in your first language. With new sounds, you need to train your tongue to make different movements.

Different phonemes are produced by changing the position of the tongue, lips and other speaking muscles. Think about how you are moving your tongue when you learn new sounds. It will help you produce new English sounds.

Practise the /i:/ and /u/ sounds (seat – suit) – you’ll be able to feel your tongue moving backwards. Then practice /i:/ and /æ/ (seat – sat). Can you feel your tongue moving down to the bottom of your mouth?

Take plenty of time to practice the phonemes that are new to you, and you’ll soon be able to them to your muscle memory and improve your speaking skills.

ACTIVITY #3

For this activity, you’re going to practice some tongue twisters. These are like gym practice for your vocal muscles. It will feel awkward at first, and after a practice session your vocal muscles will ache, and your throat might feel sore. That’s normal.

Listen to the audio activity here, and see if you can feel the tongue moving in your mouth as you produce these sounds.

Red lorry, yellow lorry

A proper copper coffee pot

OVER TO YOU:

I hope I’ve encouraged you to think differently about learning to hear and produce English phonemes. Veronique made lots of progress using exercises like these – What about you?

I’d love to hear your feedback – please do leave comments below ????

Start Learning English now

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If you have difficulties in listening and understanding English, you’re not alone – this is one of the most common problems for English learners while learning English. It’s frustrating and embarrassing when you can’t understand spoken English – but in this English lesson, I’m going to explain why it’s so difficult and teach you how to improve your English skills.

There are three reasons why listening to English and understanding it is difficult

Many English words are pronounced different from the way they are written

For example silent letters in words

Eg: Laugh, thought, honest (These words have silent letters in them which aren’t pronounced while talking, making it difficult to pronounce them if you are not used to hearing enough English if you are a non-native speaker.)

Also, the same letter can be pronounced different in different words

Eg: E in egg is a short “eh” sound.., E in eat is a long “eee” sound

When native speakers talk they connect the words together..so individual words aren’t pronounced clearly. This sometimes makes it difficult for English learners to understand what they are saying.

For example: what are you doing today sounds more like “Whatcha doing today .” when a native English speaker says it. So, therefore, it’s difficult to understand

People read too much and don’t listen enough

When you were a baby or a little child, you first heard words, learned to speak, then read or write..yes.? But English learners often try to read and write more than they listen to enough English. That is another main reason why learning and understanding English becomes more difficult.

But even though English listening is difficult, you can learn to listen well in two different ways:

Practising listening daily.Create the habit of listening to English for at least 15 minutes a day. Even if you’re busy and don’t have much time you can listen while driving to work/school..While taking public transportation..in a bus or a metro or a train, while exercising or doing household chores.

What should you listen to:

CD’s, English websites where you can download dialogue

Practising the right way

Have you been practising the wrong way?

Relax and understand that it is normal for you to have less or limited understanding the first time you listen. So don’t expect to learn everything all at one..or don’t expect to learn to understand English very fast. Set realistic expectations

Listen at least three times.

First time: Listen to the general topic. Don’t try to understand every word. Just try to get the summary or the main idea of the paragraph that you are listening to.

Second time: Listen again and now try to understand some more specific details. It’s ok not to catch every word.

Third time: Listen the third time while actually reading the text. Now pay attention to the individual words. Mark individual words that you may want to learn and try to see how they are applied in sentences. Try to form sentences of your own if possible.

So going from general to more specific helps you listen and understand English better.

So practising, but practising in the right way

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Эта статья окажется полезной, без сомнения, для всех изучателей английского языка. Знаете, какая самая востребованная фраза для изучающих иностранный язык? Правильно, «Я не понимаю». Ну хорошо, допустим, вы знаете, как выразить свое непонимание. А как быть дальше? Как переспросить? Или попросить уточнить? Мы решили вам помочь и предусмотрели наиболее возможные варианты развития событий. Надеемся, они вам помогут!

Как переспросить?

Таблица 1.

I beg your pardon?	Простите? (Как правило, используется, если вам показалось, что кто-то сказал что-то неприятное или обидное)
Excuse me?	Простите?
This is confusing, I don’t really see what you’re getting at.	Я запутался, не понимаю, к чему вы ведете.
I’m sorry but I don’t understand.	Простите, но я не понимаю.
I don’t quite understand you.	Я не совсем вас понял.
I don’t understand you very well.	Я не очень хорошо вас понимаю.
I don’t really understand what you mean.	Не совсем понимаю, что вы имеете ввиду.
I don’t understand a single word of it.	Ни понимаю ни слова.
What I don’t understand is why he decided to do that just the other day?	Чего я не понимаю, так это, почему он решил это сделать только на днях.
I don’t follow you.	Не понимаю тебя.
I don’t get it!	Не пойму!
I’m completely lost!	Я совершенно запутался!
I’m totally confused!	Я совершенно запутался!
I am a little bit puzzled.	Я в небольшом замешательстве.
I’m afraid it’s beyond my understanding!	Боюсь, это за гранью моего понимания.
I’m sorry but it’s too vague.	Простите, но это слишком неопределенно.
I’m sorry but I don’t see the point.	Простите, но я не понимаю смысла.
I’m sorry but I don’t follow your train of thoughts.	Простите, но я не могу проследить за вашим ходом мыслей.
What puzzles me is the way the committee decided to select a winner.	Что мне непонятно, так это то, каким образом комитет решил выбирать победителя.

Как попросить дать разъяснение?

Таблица 2.

What do you mean?	Что вы имеете ввиду?
What’s that supposed to mean?	И что это значит?
What does he mean by this phrase?	Что он хочет сказать этой фразой?
What’s the meaning of that word?	Каково значение этого слова?
Would you be more specific?	Вы не уточните?
What are you aiming at?	К чему вы ведете?
I don’t see what you’re driving at.	Я не понимаю, что вы хотите сказать.
Could you explain it in detail please?	Вы не могли бы подробно объяснить?
Could you clarify this point, please?	Вы не могли бы пояснить этот момент, пожалуйста?
Could you write that down for me, please?	Вы не могли бы это написать для меня?
I’m a bit confused. Would you mind explaining that?	Я немного запутался. Вы не могли бы объяснить?
Can you start again please, it was too quick.	Вы не могли бы начать заново? Это было слишком быстро.
Can you repeat please?	Не могли бы вы повторить?
Can you speak up please?	Не могли бы вы говорить погромче?
Does that mean that you failed to explain her behavior?	Это что, обозначает, что тебе не удалось объяснить ее поведение?
Just to check that I haven’t misunderstood anything: was the answer yes or no?	Просто чтобы проверить, что я все правильно понял: ответ да или нет?
So, in other words, are you saying that we won’t be able to offer better conditions to our customers?	То есть, другими словами, ты хочешь казать, что мы не сможем предложить нашим клиента условия получше?
I’m afraid my English is not very good. Could you say that again more slowly, please?	Боюсь мой английский не на очень хорошем уровне. Вы не могли бы еще раз это сказать, но помедленнее?
Sorry, I didn’t understand that word. Could you spell it for me, please?	Извините, я не понял это слово. Не могли бы вы произнести его по буквам?

Добавлено: 24.10.13

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How to understand English by ear? 5 tips for beginners

When learning English, almost everyone is faced with the problem of listening to the speech of native speakers.

Typically, difficulties are caused by three reasons:

High speed of speech, at which it is quite problematic to determine where one word ends and another begins. In addition, many words have the same sound, while others often “lose” individual sounds in a fast flow of speech.
The specific accent of the carrier, which makes familiar words sound differently.
Lack of vocabulary of the listener, because a large number of unfamiliar words makes the interlocutor’s speech just a set of meaningless sounds.

Also specifics of the English language is that almost always words are pronounced differently than they are spelled (unlike, for example, from Spanish). In addition, help words — articles, conjunctions, prepositions — in the stream of speech are reduced to one barely distinguishable sound or completely drop out. Additional difficulties are created by a large number of sounds compared to the number of letters, in particular, there are more than 20 vowel sounds in English.

Despite these difficulties, you can improve your ability to perceive and reproduce sounds of a foreign language, regardless of age.

Tips for learning English

Here are some tips to help you understand English by ear.

There are many video tutorials on the internet, recorded by native speakers, with the pronunciation of each sound. In this case, it is important not only to listen to the sound many times, but also to repeat it yourself. Note the differences between American and British pronunciation.

Similar sounds present another challenge for ear recognition. Practice the so-called «minimal pairs» — that is, pairs of words that sound very similar, but differ in one sound (for example, «had» / «hat», «pen» / «pan»).

Listening from private to general

Practice private-to-general listening. Think of school dictations — this is a very useful exercise for improving your listening skills.

Select a small piece of audio with text transcription or video with subtitles, listen to it several times (without looking at the text) and record what you hear. Then check yourself for transcriptions or subtitles and correct any mistakes.

Thus, you will see where your weak points are, the boundaries of which words you did not define and which words you missed. If you enjoy learning English from songs, an exercise in filling in the gaps in the lyrics can be effective. For example, the LyricsTraining portal allows you to simultaneously watch a video clip and insert missing words into the text.

Develop this listening skill. Before watching or listening to something in English, explore the context… Find out more about your chosen topic, find common terms, listen to their pronunciation a few times, watch a video trailer, or read a podcast description.

Enjoy learning

Enjoy. What makes you laugh or think? Find and focus on those English resources that you are really interested in. Many people enjoy watching TV series or movies in English. Set a goal, for example, to watch at least one episode of the show per week in the original language.

Bring regular listening to English into your daily life.

Do you like to read? Pay attention to audiobooks in English. The best place to start is with a book you are already familiar with so you can concentrate more fully on pronunciation.

Do not strive to instantly achieve perfection. You don’t have to immediately understand everything by ear. Rewind and listen to the difficult moments as many times as necessary. Remember to resort to subtitling or transcription — this is completely normal and does not mean that you are not learning.

It also takes time to get into the habit of listening to foreign speech.

By completing the above points on a regular basis, combining them with each other, gradually increasing the presence of a foreign language in your daily life, you will definitely overcome difficulties in understanding English and each time you will spend less and less effort on it.

Source: https://ucheba.club/kak-ponimat-angliyskiy-na-sluh.html

How to learn to understand English by ear Instructions of «Meduza» and Puzzle English — Meduza

Many people read and write in English well, but at the same time have difficulty understanding live speech. First, we are frightened by the very fact of live communication with the carrier. Secondly, the situation is often complicated by a lack of knowledge. Meduza, together with the online service for learning English Puzzle English, have put together a few simple tips to help you better understand a foreign language by ear.

Do not panic

We are all afraid to make mistakes and do not want to look stupid in front of others. And this prevents us from trying new things, including learning foreign languages. In fact, mistakes are okay — on the contrary, they help us gain experience. Language is not a subject for which someone evaluates, but a method of communication.

It was created so that we understand each other, and not be afraid. Before each lesson, meeting with a native speaker, or watching a movie in English, try to turn off your inner critic.

Close your eyes, take a deep breath and remember that you don’t owe anyone anything, but learn the language because it’s interesting to you.

Start simple: surround yourself with English to get used to it. Your goal is to ensure that its sound is not a stressful situation, but a familiar background. For example, listen to podcasts. Don’t focus on what the recording says and what percentage of it you get it perfectly. Do not try to immediately make out all the unfamiliar words and figure out their meaning. Just listen and have fun with how foreign speech sounds.

We recommend: Puzzle English has its own podcasts, in which teachers and native speakers of English discuss a variety of topics: favorite dog breeds, relationships with relatives, and even traffic jams.

Look for something that is interesting to listen to for you

The learning process can be annoying and tiring — everyone has such periods. The main thing at this moment is not to lose motivation. Switch to what is enjoyable. Watch an episode of the new series in the original, listen to your favorite song, turn on an audiobook or an English-language blogger on YouTube. It’s not scary if you don’t understand the material you listened to, but English will interest you again — and there will be an incentive to learn it further.

The next step is to use your favorite audio materials as tutorials. While listening to a song or audiobook, read the text version at the same time. Translate the passages, and then listen to them again without the text at hand. Such exercises expand vocabulary and train the perception of foreign speech by ear. And they are also pleasant to perform — after all, you are training English with your favorite characters.

We recommend: Try the puzzle exercise. This section of Puzzle English contains clips, excerpts from TV series and TV shows. is played according to a sentence — each of them must be assembled from the puzzle words at the bottom of the screen by ear. Turn on subtitles in English or Russian if your level does not allow you to hear speech. Use the filter to select the difficulty level and emphasis with which the characters in the video speak.

Learn new words and expressions

It is impossible to understand someone else’s speech if you do not know the meaning and pronunciation of the simplest words used in everyday communication. Set yourself a norm and practice regularly: learn 10 new words per lesson, three to five times a week. There are many ways to memorize new vocabulary.

For example, you can write down words and their translation into flashcards or create a separate notebook that will become your personal dictionary. Try to remember not only the meaning of the word, but also the pronunciation, which can be checked in Google or any online dictionary.

Start each lesson with a repetition of the learned words — this way they will be better remembered.

Pay attention to phrases, abbreviations, and slang. Literary English is one thing, and conversational English is quite another. Carriers, for example, like to abbreviate want to to wanna — these are things you just need to learn. Slang can be learned from songs, bloggers’ videos, and native speakers while playing online. If the context does not allow you to understand what a particular slang expression means, take a look at the online Urban Dictionary.

We recommend: Puzzle English has Word Training. Set a goal for how many new words you want to learn per day. Select subject categories based on your interests and practice vocabulary building exercises. Translate words from English to Russian and vice versa, collect from letters scattered in a chaotic manner, and write by ear. Play the game «Danetka». The task is to answer if the English word is translated correctly. You need to act quickly, everything has 60 seconds.

Listen to and emulate native speakers from different countries

British and American English sound different. Even residents of one country have their own accents: in Texas they speak differently from New York, and in London they speak differently from Glasgow. Unsurprisingly, understanding the native speaker isn’t easy.

Only practice will solve the problem of accepting accents: search and listen to audio materials with native speakers from different countries and regions, with different dictions and speech speeds. Repeat aloud the words and phrases that caused the difficulty. Sing along to your favorite performers, copy their intonation and pronunciation.

In addition to musical exercises, it is helpful to do assignments in which you need to distinguish words with similar sounds.

We recommend: You can listen to the phrase, and then assemble it from similar-sounding words in the «puzzles» exercise. And in the game «Master Phrases» you need to collect whole sentences voiced by native speakers. The game is played at speed, each participant sees his name in the ranking of the best players. To enter, you only need to press the first letters of each word.

Use different types of memory

To understand English, it is not enough to train only the auditory perception. New words and expressions are better remembered when you not only hear them, but also write them down, read them and associate them with specific images.

Therefore, it is useful to do exercises that involve several types of memory at the same time: auditory, kinesthetic and visual.

Conduct an experiment: try to memorize 8-10 new words by ear and the same number, but having already written them down by hand and choosing the appropriate picture for each.

We recommend: Most Puzzle English exercises involve different types of memory. For example, the game «Word Baggage». You need to listen to the word, and then write it. Together with the correct answer, the program will show the translation and a picture showing the named thing. Go to the section «My Dictionary» and select a video example for each word you study. So you will also hear its use in speech.

Speak English

Speaking practice is the main exercise for anyone learning a foreign language. In the course of the conversation, we use all the accumulated knowledge and skills: we need not only to understand the interlocutor, but also to support the conversation — to answer in time, choose the right words and build a phrase. Doing all this, you transfer the accumulated stock of knowledge from passive to active, which means that new words are memorized faster, old ones reliably settle in memory, and you yourself learn to react to live speech right on the go.

Don’t be afraid to help foreigners lost on the subway. While you are worried about your imperfect pronunciation, they are just as worried about not being able to navigate the terrain. Speak as best you can — the interlocutor will definitely understand you, in extreme cases he will ask you twice. Even one successful experience of communication with a foreigner is guaranteed to raise your opinion about your abilities and spur you to learn English.

We recommend: If you want to learn English in a comprehensive manner, try the author’s Puzzle English methodology — «Teacher’s Method». It is a curriculum consisting of video tutorials, exercises and of course exams. In addition, it includes regular consultations with teachers who will not only analyze the mistakes, but also draw up a further lesson plan. You can study the Teacher Method at any level of knowledge. In addition, Puzzle English has thematic courses — Business English and Travel Classes. And if you choose the «All Inclusive» tariff, get access to all Puzzle English exercises for an unlimited period.

Source: https://meduza.io/feature/2017/09/12/kak-nauchitsya-ponimat-angliyskiy-na-sluh

How to learn to understand English by ear. English Speech Recognition Technique

Many people teach English for years, but, to their deep disappointment, they do not understand anything, barely faced with live English speech. What to do to English speech became clear? How do you train to build the muscles of your English speaking understanding?

Analyzing my experience, the experience of my students and the advice of linguists, I came to the conclusion that there are several stages that we go through when we learn to understand information by ear. Understanding cannot come overnight without proper prior training.

Stages of understanding English and English speech.

Step 1

At first, the brain does not perceive English speech at all. This is a foreign language. And you need to “listen to it”. It is important to understand that you are a Russian-speaking person with a “Russian-speaking” brain firmware. Therefore, a foreign language containing many new sounds and unusual intonations, the brain at first does not perceive at all and cannot «decode» so that you at least understand something.

It should be borne in mind that in English, words are pronounced a little differently than in Russian. There are sounds in English that are not in Russian.

The bad news is that you don’t initially hear sounds that are unfamiliar to you. The good news is that English is not that far from Russian. Many bundles of English sounds are the same as in Russian. You already know most of the Russian sounds (especially consonants).

Learn to hear new sounds for yourself. This happens gradually. Remember, a baby at birth does not understand any language. It is through his conversation with his parents that he gets used to one language. By the way, in English “mother tongue” is mother tongue.

The task is to activate the understanding of new sounds.

Step 2

First, you start to hear some familiar words. For example, when I started to train my understanding of spoken English, I only heard the names of the heroes and the word I (I).

Imagine that you have an antenna in your head that needs to be tuned to receive a signal. Tune in to «catching» from the stream of speech at least some familiar words, even if they are the names of the heroes. Gradually, you will learn to hear more and more words.

What you do not understand may be not only a word, but also an unfamiliar grammatical construction. Therefore, in parallel with the study of words, be sure to study English grammar.

You must understand that the number of words in speech is not unlimited. The average person uses about 2000-4000 words in a conversation. That’s a lot, but they are THE SAME words. 4000 words can be read aloud in less than 1 hour. Among them there are the most common ones that sound more often than others. There are popular combinations with these words that you will hear after you start picking out familiar words from the flow of speech.

Step 3

Gradually, you will learn to highlight separate semantic groups of words. This means that you understand exactly what you are hearing: this is a single word / this is a bunch of words / this is a whole sentence. Your gut says (Gut tells you) that you heard a verb / noun — i.e. you intuitively sense the order of the words in the sentence.

At this stage, you begin to develop a sense of language. And in no other way than through regular listening can you come to this.

Your task is to listen carefully, despite the almost complete misunderstanding of what you are hearing.

Step 4

When something becomes clear, it is important to learn how to complete the meaning based on what you see, feel, hear. Those. you understand that in such a situation they will say something like this. Gestures and non-verbal cues will help you.

For this reason, listening to the radio and music at first does not work at all. It is better to take films with good actors or cartoons that are made so that any child understands what’s happening here. I recommend taking familiar films and cartoons.

The task is to correctly understand the situation and think out what is not clear. Completing the grammar, grasping the meaning without knowing a specific word.

Step 5

Active vocabulary building — you understand most of what you hear. Don’t be lazy, spend at least 100 hours training your ears to English. Faster will not work, no matter how much you want to believe in it.

Remember the golden rule — quantity turns into quality. Your work will gradually begin to bear fruit.

Step 6

Complete understanding of English. Achieved after you have listened to hundreds of hours of English. Do not be under the illusion that 2-3 English films or a week in an English-speaking country will take you to this level. The key to success is that your brain needs to be trained to instantly process the flow of information in English. This can be done if you are constantly exposed to spoken English.

Also consider this psychological moment — the brain will fight against the new language. He is used to working with Russian information, he is used to maintaining your comfort zone. So allow yourself to hear English, allow yourself to use multiple languages. Tell yourself, “I want to. Can. I’ll do it! » Many people do not realize that they resist understanding English or do not believe in themselves. But such thoughts will not lead you to success.

Introduce yourself a daily practice — listening to something in English (say, watching 1 episode of your favorite TV series or show). But English shouldn’t be in the background, which happens when you listen to music. There should be some deliberate work on your part that will help bring your understanding of English to the level of autopilot.

Listening comprehension is being developed. This is not a gift from God, this is a long training session. Practice your English every day and gradually you will learn to understand English by ear.

Source: https://ok-english.ru/kak-nauchitsya-ponimat-angliyskiy-na-sluh-tehnika-raspoznavaniya-angliyskoy-rechi/

How to quickly begin to understand English by ear

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I started learning English quite late, at the age of 30. I was always sure that the most difficult thing is to start talking. But when, at the very least, he began to squeeze out the first meaningful phrases, he suddenly realized that this was not the worst thing at all. After all, it turned out that you still need to understand that you are being answered.

Alas, people don’t use standard textbook phrases. On the contrary, they use contractions and slang, speak with different accents and speed, in a word, they use real live speech. I had to pull myself together and purposefully train my listening comprehension. I still don’t understand what is the use of phrasebooks if you still cannot understand what they answered.

So, let’s figure out what to do in order to achieve the goal relatively easily.

Watch movies in English

Probably only the lazy one did not give this advice. But it works. If you watch a movie anyway, why not watch it in English.

What does it do? You get used to the sound of live English speech (and to different accents and to the manner of speaking), listen and remember how grammar is used. In addition, you hear all the surrounding sounds, intonations, shades of emotions that disappear during dubbing.

How to watch:

If the problem is only in listening comprehension, and the general level of English is above average, then you need to watch without subtitles or with English subtitles.
If you are not very good with English yet, you can start with Russian subtitles and gradually get used to the peculiarities of the language.

The sooner you start watching movies without translation, the weaker the accent will be.

One of the reasons why everyone in Scandinavia speaks English very well is the habit of watching films without dubbing from childhood.

Movies with subtitles take some getting used to. At first it seems that you are only reading the text and do not see the picture. But after half an hour you get involved. After a couple of films, you understand what a thrill it is, and you begin to look sideways with contempt towards dubbing.

It is better to start with sitcoms, blockbusters, adventure films, where there is a lot of spoken language and short, simple dialogues. The first parts of «Harry Potter», «The Matrix», «Forrest Gump», «Black Panther», various cartoons are perfect. Then you can go to «Game of Thrones» and revise «Pulp Fiction» in the original.
If you are afraid of missing something and are feverishly reading subtitles, you can watch and revisit your favorite films.
If it doesn’t work at all, don’t suffer. Better try playing another movie. It happens that the speech in the film is really complex and incomprehensible, and it’s not about you at all.
There are many common words, expressions and phrasal verbs in films. A useful habit is to write and memorize these.
Search the movie channels for learning English. For example, the Pro English channel has a breakdown of episodes from Harry Potter, Sherlock and Supernatural. And on the OXANA DOLINKA channel I met an excellent analysis on the example of «Friends» and phrasal verbs from the same place.

My vocabulary has grown quite well thanks to films and TV series. Now even in the cinema I try to find films in the original language.

Listen to podcasts

Key points: for the process of listening comprehension to go faster, you need to interact with the podcast; at least 70–80% of the vocabulary should be clear in audio.

Several smart podcast sites specifically for language learners

learningenglish.voanews.com — Podcasts and videos from different walks of life. Most of them are very slow and with text;

Source: https://www.aviasales.ru/blog/kak-nauchitca-ponimat-angliyskiy-na-sluh

D> What else strongly confuses beginners? Abbreviations. They are in every language, and are part of every spoken language. Not knowing the most popular acronyms greatly complicates the listening experience of English.

For example, «wanna» is nothing but want to, «gonna» is going to, and «gotta» is go to. I will also write an article on spoken English.

Understanding the structure of fluent colloquial speech in this matter is not enough. It takes practice, practice and more practice.

How to practice to finally understand English by ear?

Train Your Ears — Spend time (a lot of time) listening to the rapid speech of native speakers.

Do not take on too much in the first days of practice — start listening to English materials for 2 minutes a day, gradually increasing the time.

Increase your vocabulary. Moreover, learn the correct pronunciation of words.

Don’t forget about grammar. Oddly enough, but a complete lack of understanding of English grammar greatly complicates the process of listening to speech.

Remember to practice your own pronunciation. The reasoning behind this advice is simple: if you don’t learn how to pronounce the words, then it will be difficult to catch them in someone else’s speech.

Take advantage of technical advances. Thank God, this is not the twentieth century. There are many useful programs, applications, and resources for improving your listening comprehension.

Listen only to what you like.

Subscribe to English-language blogs on Instagram. This vibrant social network can be a great way to improve your listening skills. Short videos in the target language are great for beginners.

Try to understand what people are talking about first by ear — start listening with audio podcasts or audiobooks. Why? Listening to audio podcasts or books is much more difficult than, for example, watching videos. Learn to hear speech without seeing the picture, this will be 80% of success.

And most importantly, speak English. Try repeating after the announcers, or start talking to someone on Skype. At first, you will have to ask the interlocutor to speak more slowly, ask again or clarify what he meant, but over time, listening will not seem like an impenetrable forest.

I hope this article was useful and helped answer the question: how to learn to comprehend English by ear?

How to learn to understand English by ear

I started learning English quite late, at the age of 30. I was always sure that the most difficult thing is to start talking. But when, at the very least, he began to squeeze out of himself the first meaningful phrases, he suddenly realized that this was not the worst thing at all. After all, it turned out that you still need to understand that you are being answered.

So, let’s figure out what to do in order to achieve the goal relatively easily.

Listen to podcasts

Key points: for the process of listening comprehension to go faster, you need to interact with the podcast; at least 70–80% of the vocabulary should be clear in audio.

learningenglish.voanews.com — Podcasts and videos from different walks of life. Most of them are very slow and with text;

Source: http://organic-english.ru/2017/09/16/kak-nauchitsya-vosprinimat-anglijskij-na-sluh/

How to learn to understand English by ear — useful tips

Listening comprehension, or listening comprehension, is often very challenging for students, especially beginners. Surely you have heard from your friends and said phrases themselves such as “I don’t understand English / Americans at all”, “I watch a movie and read subtitles all the time — nothing is clear without them”, “Failed listening at the exam” and others. Let’s figure out how to forget about such phrases forever.

First of all, you need to understand that listening is not knowledge, but a skill, the same as reading, writing and speaking. It is impossible to learn all the grammar and a lot of vocabulary, and then suddenly start to perceive any speech by ear without problems. The principle of the gym works here: the more you train, the better your result.

If you are currently at Elementary, you shouldn’t listen to half-hour economic podcasts, especially if you are not well versed in the subject.

Choose interesting topics

Again, if you are into art, you shouldn’t listen to programs about politics and vice versa.
Watch the video. the material is an excellent audio accompaniment, because even if you did not understand everything by ear, the video sequence will help you. In pedagogy, there is even such a thing as «embodied» or «disembodied» listening — whether you see the person speaking or not. It’s good if the video has subtitles. The best way to work looks like this:

Watch the video 2-3 times without subtitles
Watch a video with subtitles, write out unfamiliar words and see their meaning
Watch the video again without subtitles for pinning

Why watch or listen multiple times? The answer is simple: again, the principle of the gym — on the third or fourth approach to the simulator, the exercise will be given to you much easier than on the first. Agree, it’s illogical to do one push-up, one squat and end there.

Give preference to short video or audio recordings

At the initial levels, 30-60 seconds will be enough. Why so few, you ask? First, as we said, the material must match the level.

Secondly, in 1 minute an English-speaking person pronounces about 150 words, which is pretty good material for work. At higher levels, when you are already good at listening, the only limitation is the time you are willing to devote to the practice.

Thirdly, a small piece of material will allow you to listen to it 4-5 times in a fairly short period of time.

Watch movies and TV shows

For a start, you can take familiar films in order to pay more attention to the language and not the plot, and simply not to fall asleep in the middle of a boring film. At the intermediate level, you can watch popular TV shows such as Friends, The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, and others.

Do not be afraid to watch cartoons: as a rule, the episodes in them are quite short, and again in 50-60 minutes you will have time to watch the episode several times and work out the vocabulary.
By the way, we have a detailed article about this — How and why to watch movies and TV shows in English: tips for beginners and more.

We recommend that you familiarize yourself!

Useful links

www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/multimedia/archive_ent.shtml Here you can listen to various podcasts and read the text to them, as well as familiarize yourself with the vocabulary
www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts Find longer and more complex podcasts here.
ted.com Collection of talks on various topics
www.eslpod.com/index.html Podcasts specifically for English learners

Source: https://www.start2study.ru/blog/english/kak-nauchitsya-ponimat-anglijskuyu-rech-na-sluh/

How to start understanding English? Tips from teachers at PEOPLETALK

“I read it — everything is clear. I listen — a dark forest. » Many English learners have a hard time recognizing speech by ear. Experts from Skyeng Online School tell you how to learn to comprehend spoken English.

Step # 1. Train yourself to English

At first, the sound of someone else’s speech instantly triggers a stressful reaction — we get scared, tense and do not even try to understand what they are telling us, because we are sure in advance that we cannot do it. Therefore, at the first stage, you just need to get used to the very sound of the language.

You can listen to songs by English-speaking performers or English podcasts on the way to work, and include news in English in the background. Do not try to listen attentively and immediately understand everything. It is enough to get used to the sounds, and soon you will begin to catch familiar words in this stream.

Andriy Shevchenko, teacher at Skyeng

There are two types of memory: mediated, when we learn something consciously, with effort, and direct, when we just memorize something in a natural way, because we have heard it many times.

For example, many can remember the lyrics of a popular song, although they have never tried to learn it by heart. Immediate memory retains information better. Therefore, songs in English are so good for pumping listening — rhymes and melody help to memorize words and constructions.

I advise beginners to listen to Swedes — Roxette, ABBA, JJ Johansson, Kent — they have a clear pronunciation.

Step # 2. Determine your level of English

This is necessary in order to adequately select educational materials. If you, being at the Intermediate level, take up listening to texts for the Advanced level, nothing good will come of it: too complex material can give the false impression that you will never master English for anything and never.

Step # 3. Find interesting content

You won’t get very far if you learn from something that makes you yawn. Look for what is interesting and necessary for you. It’s great if it is something really exciting: audiobooks by your favorite authors, series with subtitles that you are ready to watch 10 times, podcasts. The main thing is that the text is also attached to the audio — at first it will be difficult to do without it.

Andriy Shevchenko, teacher at Skyeng

While developing your ability to understand speech, do not forget about grammar. You can speak without knowing grammar — yes, you will make serious mistakes, but they will at least understand you. But it is impossible to perceive speech by ear without grammar and vocabulary expansion. Otherwise, you will not be able to dismember what you heard into elements and instead of I’ve been (I was) you will hear ave bean (welcome beans).

Step # 4. Develop a strategy

Many people do not understand exactly how to listen to English in order to learn to understand it.

Stop recording every second and translate every word? Listen while reading the text? Ignore unfamiliar words and phrases, trying to understand the main point? Professional teachers advise you to use this scheme: first you need to listen to the recording, just trying to catch what is at stake.

If the recording is long, break it up into small 3-5 minute chunks. After listening to a piece, open the transcript and see how words that you do not know or did not hear are spelled and translated. Play the recording again, pause and repeat from time to time.

As soon as you feel confident, try to copy not only pronunciation, but also the intonation and tempo of speech during repetitions. This will not only help you develop good pronunciation. By learning how to pronounce sink and think, damn and dam, rather and razor correctly, you will begin to hear the difference between these words and be able to better understand native speakers.

Yana Sher, teacher at Skyeng

Phonologist Richard Caldwell divides 3 types of speech sounding: «greenhouse» (all words are heard clearly, like on old audio recordings for school textbooks: I — AM — A — STUDENT), «garden» (coherent slow speech) and «jungle» ( the reality we face when people speak at their normal pace). In the «jungle» all words and sounds are mixed.

But in order to survive in them, you need to learn to perceive spoken language. Listening to public speaking with subtitles helps a lot. As a rule, people in such speeches speak clearly, but at a normal speed.

After listening to a small fragment, you can try to repeat it behind the speaker, and then listen again without subtitles, so your ears will be more trained to recognize listening.

Step # 5. Use a variety of recordings

Often students say: «I want to speak perfectly correct English!» A wonderful aspiration, but it is worth knowing that as TV announcers only TV announcers speak. For your English to be functional, you need to learn to understand the different accents, slang and abbreviations. Therefore, listen not only to audiobooks performed by the impeccably British Stephen Fry, but also to American TV shows like Breaking Bad and Friends, where you can hear spoken American English.

Skyeng
English
learning

Source: https://peopletalk.ru/article/kak-nachat-ponimat-anglijskij-5-sovetov-kotorye-realno-rabotayut/

How to learn to understand English by ear: 5 effective methods — Ours in the USA

It is very difficult to perceive someone else’s language by ear, especially since we often need to do this in an emergency: for example, ask for directions and understand the answer. In order to make it easy to understand English by ear, we suggest that you use these methods.

Listen to audiobooks

As well as podcasts, radio programs and watch TV shows without translation. It is important that you surround yourself with English speaking every day and in large quantities — then your hearing will gradually rebuild and get used to the unfamiliar language.

Only you need to do this regularly and on an ongoing basis, otherwise this method will not bring any result.

Increase your vocabulary

Make it a rule to learn a few new words every day. Not necessarily complicated or abstruse. On the contrary, you will need extremely simple and everyday words and terms: it is this kind of vocabulary that will help you understand everyday English speech.

The more vocabulary, the easier it will be for you to understand what the interlocutor is saying to you.

Understand grammar

Sometimes it is difficult to understand English speech due to the fact that you do not understand the structure of sentences and how words interact in English. Therefore, grammar helps a lot in training, take this into account.

Work on your own speech

When you learn to speak English, you practice all the skills you have previously learned. Including the ability to perceive English speech by ear. How to use this rule? When you learn a word, at the same time you learn how it “sounds”, so you can easily recognize it in oral speech. So just check how the new word sounds and learn to pronounce it correctly.

Learn to think in English

It is very difficult, but worth it: this habit literally divides the world into “before” and “after”. It will be difficult at first, but thinking in English is very helpful while learning the language.

Source: http://nashiusa.com/english/kak-nauchitsya-ponimat-anglijskij-yazyk-na-sluh-5-dejstvennyh-metodov/

Hearing and Hearing: 4 Secrets to Successfully Understanding Speaking

Do you successfully master grammar, understand what you read, but have difficulty comprehending spoken language? After reading our article, you will understand how to listen, to hear and understand!

Secret # 1: Listen without thinking

So, her first postulate: “Don’t think! Listen!»

You have noticed that often, listening to the interlocutor, we think about something of our own. Therein lies the problem: in addition to the “external” voice of the person speaking, you hear your own internal monologue — as a result, you have two conversations, as it were, which leads to confusion: after all, you cannot follow two conversations at once. That is why we do not like it when people speak in parallel to each other and ask: One at a time, please! (Speak one at a time, please!).

In order to successfully understand oral speech, you need to temporarily «turn off» your own thoughts (which is not so easy to do). However, it is possible: when they speak, just listen without trying to understand. You still perceive information, even if it seems to you that you are not analyzing it properly.

Secret # 2: Break it into pieces; ask questions

Let’s move on to the second «secret»: it stems from the problem. If you listen to someone for more than 10 minutes, you get tired and start missing out on important information. It is very difficult to listen to a long speech with equal attention all the time, catching and keeping in mind all the details (especially if you try not to think about anything).

What will be our actions? We’ll break a long speech into small chunks; but how?

Ask questions. When you ask a question, it revives your attention, makes you focus, which is what we need!

In addition, questions naturally help you divide speech into meaningful fragments, making it easier for you to perceive long-term oral statements.

And one more thing: by asking questions, you immediately clarify unclear points, which helps you to correctly understand the further train of thought of the speaker.

This advice will bring immediate results: in doing so, you will understand 60-80% more than you previously did. But there is a small caveat: you still need to rehearse the questions that you will ask in advance.

Secret # 3: Watch Movies

For years, teachers have advised students to watch subtitled English films to develop their listening skills. However, in real life, subtitles do not appear synchronously with the speech of your interlocutor, accompanying his statements, so from the very beginning you need to give up the hope of «spying» an incomprehensible word in the subtitles, otherwise watching a movie will turn into reading from the screen.

Practice has shown that with this method of studying oral speech, students in two months begin to “hear” and understand 20-30% more words than before.

Another useful point: when watching a movie, also break it into fragments corresponding to several sentences (from 2 to 5), which you will play at least 3 times until you can hear and understand everything (at the first stages, it is recommended to listen to a fragment up to 10 times, gradually reducing the number of plays to 3).

Important: while working on the fragments, write down every word you hear on paper. Not selectively, not just what you think is most important — write down exactly what you hear. And only after listening to a passage several times, having written down each word by ear, you can turn on subtitles for self-examination.

In addition, some words may be unfamiliar to you, and subtitles will help you “become familiar” with them. Each unfamiliar word needs to be written out, its meaning and pronunciation must be learned.

And after all these procedures, you can watch the entire movie, with subtitles turned on. You will be surprised: suddenly you realize that you can make out every word! You can even “watch” a movie with your eyes closed: the visual channel of perception will “rest”, while your hearing will sharpen and it will be easier for you to concentrate on what you hear.

Source: https://skyeng.ru/articles/slushat-i-slyshat-4-sekreta-uspeshnogo-ponimaniya-ustnoj-rechi

How to learn to understand English by ear? Captain Obvious shares his secrets

Hello my beloved subscribers!

In today’s article we will talk about how to learn to understand English by ear. I think that no other aspect causes more difficulties and fears in my students. “What if I don’t understand what a native speaker is telling me?” They ask. In a panic, rushing to memorize all unfamiliar words or pretending to be deaf and dumb when meeting a foreigner, of course, is not an option! So is it possible to somehow learn the perception of oral speech in a foreign language? Or is it either given or not given?

Exactly! This is an innate skill, but the best thing is that absolutely everyone has it! Have you noticed how small children, completely without the help of unique techniques, learn to perceive their own speech by ear? They do not even need to be taught, it is enough that they live in a linguistic environment and can freely listen to the speech of adults. And that’s it! For adults, this process is almost as fast. You just need to help him a little.

Is it possible to learn to understand English spoken language

Let’s first figure out what it means to «understand speech by ear»? Now I will tell you one thing for which Captain Obvious would probably take me as an assistant: to understand speech by ear means to understand the meaning of what is being said… You don’t need to know the meaning of every word. But you must correctly capture the basic information contained in the statement. How can this be achieved?

Perhaps my advice will seem obvious to someone, but I am sure that some will definitely discover something useful!

Automatism. The more you listen to the speech of native speakers, the sooner you will stop noticing the fact that the text of the message is actually in a foreign language! (Captain Obvious is with you again). As with any skill, you need to devote a certain amount of time to this business on a regular basis.
Habit. We are all lazy creatures by nature. The desire to learn English after a long day at work or school does not come to us often. And I don’t want to listen to boring educational audio recordings and banal dialogues. Well, you don’t need to! You can turn on English radio on the way to work, watch at least one episode of your beloved the series in the original sing along to your favorite songs in the shower during your lunch break, and on weekends host a movie lover’s paradise with classics in English Surround yourself with English from all sides, and the result will not be long in coming.
Regularity. “Okay, today I will watch 10 videos in English, but for the next two weeks I will not do anything,” you tell yourself. And it’s too bad, because listening skills, unfortunately, do not have a cumulative effect. It is better to do a little bit every day, whichever is really interesting to you, than remembering your exercises every six months.
Gradualness. The choice of material depends only on you. Of course, it’s good if you watch or listen to some programs or audio courses about what you are really interested in. But if you are still a beginner, do not take too complex materials. For example, if you started learning English three weeks ago, do not take on BBS documentaries about physics or audio books… Take something more appropriate for your level. At first, these will be very short videos, a lot of which can be found on the Internet, but gradually their duration will become longer. By following this principle, you will not get tired or disappointed in yourself. In addition, training videos that are appropriate for your level contain exactly the vocabulary and grammar that you are learning, which will help you assimilate the material.

How to choose material according to your level

Below I suggest you three videos for beginner, intermediate and advanced levels… To determine which level is yours, watch the video, do exercises on it, and then watch transcript — text transcript of the video. If you understand 70-80 percent, or even more, then this is your level. But at the same time, it is good if you come across some new words and phrases. This means that the learning process does not stop.

If the advanced video seemed too easy, congratulations! This means that you are already an advanced connoisseur of English and it is high time to move on to feature films and non-adapted television programs. Most likely, understanding speech by ear is no longer difficult for you.

If you are just a beginner and do not understand a lot the first time, it does not matter! Listen to the video two and three times. Everyone has their own pace, and there is nothing wrong with that.

- For entry level I suggest you watch this video, it has subtitles that help a lot. For example, you can immediately notice new words that you have not met before and see their translation. However, when you reach an intermediate level, I would advise you to turn off subtitles and just watch videos with an average speech rate and neutral vocabulary (it is clear that exotic accents or slang are still quite difficult to distinguish). After all, there won’t be any subtitles in real life!
- For intermediate level I offer the following lively and fun video from the BBC website. Here you can find many videos for intermediate and advanced levels with assignments and transcripts for self-examination. They are not very long, which means they do not get boring.
- If you are so motivated and unbending that you have achieved the cherished Advanced level, then my advice is unlikely to radically change your life. However, I am bringing another video here so that you understand what we are generally striving for. At an advanced level of language proficiency, it is assumed that you understand 90-100% of what is being said and on almost any topic. So here’s a video with listening: This lesson is structured around several topics. And I recommend that you listen to at least part of the lesson without the video series. This is the only way to assess your ability and willingness to qualify for the advanced level. If it’s still difficult for you without text, then listen and read the tips — this will be your training for an advanced level.

Additional life hacks

Finally, I want to bring a couple more useful resources… You can combine all of the above or choose what you like best. In any case, I have no doubt about the usefulness of all these resources.

So, you probably noticed that all of the previous videos were in British English. Usually, schools and universities around the world are trying to instill exactly the British pronunciation as purer and more correct. Should I agree with this? Probably not.

After all, American English, for example, is no worse. Moreover, if you are learning a language in order to enter an American university or communicate with American colleagues in order to join the environment, you will need American English.

For US citizens, the British accent, in addition to being performed by a non-native speaker, is simply amusing.

You may have already heard about Dr. Pimsler’s miracle course (perhaps we already met him on my blog — I talked about him in great detail and posted the lessons here), which does not imply cramming textbooks and grammar rules, but contains only audio materials. This method may seem very strange to us, the heirs of the Soviet education system, at first. Is it possible to master a language without rules and endless writing exercises?

The fact is that sometimes you need to learn to communicate in the language very quickly, for example, before a business trip abroad. But most people don’t have a lot of free time to devote to English. This is where Dr. Pimsler comes in.

His audio-lingual course is designed to quickly and confidently learn to speak at a household level. Its peculiarity is that you must not only listen to the audio, but also repeat the phrases behind the speaker in a dialogue form. The course is bilingual, so everything will be clear even for beginners. It consists of 90 lessons, each 30 minutes long, since the creators of the course felt that it would be difficult for a person to focus their attention longer.

Of course, such a course will not give a deep knowledge of the language. However, if you are not a linguist or a teacher, most likely, the knowledge gained will be quite enough to freely interact with native speakers. Pimsler’s course is primarily aimed at communication. Another plus of his course is the beautiful American pronunciation, which you will master by listening carefully to the native speaker.

But if you choose to follow this program, you will have to learn self-discipline. You need to carefully follow all the instructions for the audio recording. Otherwise, you are unlikely to get the result.

Another American resource that I really like is the site. Here you can find videos on grammar, vocabulary, preparation for international English exams and much more. In addition, all lessons are divided into levels, so it’s easy to find the one that’s right for you. All the teachers of the site are native speakers and very charismatic personalities, so you will definitely not get bored in the learning process.

I hope my tips on how to learn to understand English by ear have been helpful to you! Remember that there are no unconquered peaks, and English is no exception.

Source: https://lizasenglish.ru/anglijskij-na-sluh/ponimat-anglijskii-na-sluh.html

How to learn to comprehend English by ear

Have you ever interacted with native English speakers at least once in your life? If so, do you remember what it was like the first time? Did you answer the Briton “I don’t understand”, who came up to ask where Red Square is located, or, on the contrary, flashed your knowledge? If your option is the first, then this article is for you.

So why didn’t you understand what the Briton wanted from you? Most likely, you heard an incredible stream of fast, incomprehensible speech, in which familiar words occasionally flashed. Let’s see why this is happening.

In most Russian schools, English is taught from the second grade, and it seemed that it seemed that every child should speak, let alone understand real speech. As discussed earlier in the article, in educational institutions, learning takes place by cramming grammar and little attention is paid to other language skills. In English lessons, we hear a semblance of real English speech. It is measured, with pauses at the end of the sentence. This is not what real English speech sounds like.

In addition, one should not forget about different types of information perception. Some people find it much more difficult to grasp any meaning in fast English speech. People are divided according to 4 types of information perception.

Visuals are people who have the dominant ability to process visual information. It is worth noting that it is the visuals that are most difficult to listen to.

Audials are people whose dominant ability is to process auditory information. Well, everything is clear here: listening is not torture for them, but a very effective means of learning a language.

Kinesthetes are people whose dominant ability is to process sensory information: taste, smell, touch, and so on. These people may also have difficulty listening.

Digitals are people who process information by logically constructing an internal dialogue.

Although listening is easiest for audiences, this does not mean that everyone else can abandon the dream of finally watching their favorite TV show in the original into a distant box. This means that you need to learn the language in accordance with your type of information perception. An article will be written about this shortly.

The reason for not understanding a foreign speech can be even more banal: a small vocabulary. You may be an auditor, only your vocabulary is 15 words. In this case, you may also experience difficulties in listening to English.

And now, we will figure out how to learn to perceive English by ear?

English is not just a large collection of words in some dictionary. The sound of individual English words is different from the sound of the same words together. Some sounds are pronounced very quickly, and some disappear altogether!

All of this must sound very depressing. You are learning a language, spending your time and money to learn to speak, but you still don’t understand anything!

Fortunately, the structure of fluent English is not chaotic, and once you understand how it works, you can learn to recognize words in regular English.

There are 4 secrets on how to improve your English listening comprehension:

Secret 1: all words are interconnected

In written speech, all words are written separately, this helps to understand what is written. You can easily indicate the beginning and end of a sentence by putting a period at the end of the sentence. And with the help of a question mark and an exclamation mark, you can set intonation and so on. But these rules only work in writing. This is why students who read a lot in English cannot understand what people are saying to them. They can read encyclopedias, but they cannot answer the question about the weather.

This is because they mistakenly think that spoken English is the same as written. They hope to hear a pause after each word. However, speaking is very different from writing.

In English colloquial speech, all words merge.

The consonants at the end of a word are combined with the vowels of the next word. Vowels are connected and sound like consonants.

Build a home is pronounced builda home.

Later on is pronounced lateron.

Two apricots are pronounced tu: wapricots.

The end is pronounced as thi: jend.

Secret 2: The letter h is not pronounced

Of course, it is not always not pronounced. In the words his, her, him, after words ending in a consonant. When h disappears, the words sound together. For example:

Left him alone is pronounced leftimalone (letter h not pronounced: leftim).

Washed his hands are pronounced as washtiz hands (the letter h is not pronounced: washtiz).

Tell her is pronounced teller (the letter h is not pronounced).

Secret 3: the letters d and t are pronounced like dzh and tch

If a word ends with t or d and the next word begins with j, as in you or your, then t + j will be pronounced tch and d + J will be pronounced dzh:

Could you pronounce kudzha.

D> What else strongly confuses beginners? Abbreviations. They are in every language, and are part of every spoken language. Not knowing the most popular acronyms greatly complicates the listening experience of English.

For example, «wanna» is nothing but want to, «gonna» is going to, and «gotta» is go to. I will also write an article on spoken English.

Understanding the structure of fluent colloquial speech in this matter is not enough. It takes practice, practice and more practice. How to practice to finally understand English by ear?

Train Your Ears — Spend time (a lot of time) listening to the rapid speech of native speakers.

Do not take on too much in the first days of practice — start listening to English materials for 2 minutes a day, gradually increasing the time.

Increase your vocabulary. Moreover, learn the correct pronunciation of words.

Don’t forget about grammar. Oddly enough, but a complete lack of understanding of English grammar greatly complicates the process of listening to speech.

Remember to practice your own pronunciation. The reasoning behind this advice is simple: if you don’t learn how to pronounce the words, then it will be difficult to catch them in someone else’s speech.

Take advantage of technical advances. Thank God, this is not the twentieth century. There are many useful programs, applications, and resources for improving your listening comprehension.

Listen only to what you like.

Subscribe to English-language blogs on Instagram. This vibrant social network can be a great way to improve your listening skills. Short videos in the target language are great for beginners.

Try to understand what people are talking about first by ear — start listening with audio podcasts or audiobooks. Why? Listening to audio podcasts or books is much more difficult than, for example, watching videos. Learn to hear speech without seeing the picture, this will be 80% of success.

And most importantly, speak English. Try repeating after the announcers, or start talking to someone on Skype. At first, you will have to ask the interlocutor to speak more slowly, ask again or clarify what he meant, but over time, listening will not seem like an impenetrable forest.

I hope this article was useful and helped answer the question: how to learn to comprehend English by ear?

So, let’s figure out what to do in order to achieve the goal relatively easily.

How to learn to understand English? Top 10 audio lessons and tests

When I first started learning a language, I mistakenly believed that correct speech was all that mattered.

I have mastered a lot of words and grammatical constructions. I could easily introduce myself and communicate using common expressions.

But listening to audio tapes and podcasts made me realize how much I was missing.

When the fast speech started, I realized that I could not have a full conversation until I improved my listening comprehension skills — this is necessary in order to understand exactly what they are saying to me!

As an ESL student, you must focus on English listening training if you want to achieve true fluency.

That is why we have collected for you The 10 Best Audio Resources on the Internetthat will help improve your English listening skills.

Below you will find information on resources that contain both short clips of comprehension exercises and long, deep listening material.

They also have tests to prepare you for the IELTS and TOEFL exams.

HOW DO I LEARN TO UNDERSTAND ENGLISH SPEECH?

Here are four key tips to maximize your learning outcomes and improve your listening skills in no time.

Determine the purpose of listening: sometimes we listen just to understand the other person when speaking.

Sometimes we listen to get information or to take an exam. Each of these goals requires separate effort and preparation.

You can find resources that are appropriate for your chosen goal and train in the appropriate direction.

The resources below cover a wide range of listening learning goals, including test preparation.

Try to understand the meaning, not the words: By listening, you can get a lot of additional information.

Along with words, pay attention to pronunciation, speaker’s accent, and tone. Even the pauses between phrases matter.

All of this will help you understand how English is used naturally and improve your own spoken language.

If you are using a video resource to listen to English speech, pay attention to the speaker’s body language and facial expressions.

Identify your mistakes and shortcomings: some of us have problems with accents; others find it difficult to keep track of fast speech.

Knowing your weaknesses will help you avoid mistakes and focus on areas that need improvement.

Our list of resources below starts with two free English listening tests to help you do just that.

Make the most of each resource: it is not enough just to listen to an audio file and answer a few short questions.

Instead, you should try all the exercises, and repeat them after a couple of days or weeks to see what results you have achieved.

Here are 10 awesome audio materials to help you achieveчb success

There are tons of audio and video content online that you can use to practice your English listening skills.

But choosing the resources that are right for you can be challenging. Therefore, we offer you a detailed guide.

Online tests to determine your level

Your listening comprehension largely depends on your language skills.

If you are not strong in grammar and have a poor vocabulary, you will not understand even half of the words or you will not be able to follow the speaker’s speech.

Fortunately, you can determine your non-hearing ability (and your English proficiency in general) with simple tests available online for free.

ExamEnglishListeningTest

This is a short, 20-minute test with 15 questions.

Once you complete it, you will be given a grade from A2 (upper-beginner) to C2 (most advanced).

Based on the grade you receive, you will be able to choose whether you want to practice English at basic, intermediate or advanced levels.

This is a self-adjusting test, meaning the questions may become easier or harder based on your answers.

BistroEnglish.com

I prepared and recorded these short audio lessons for beginners from scratch with native speakers. I wanted to make them as simple and interesting as possible: o)

The idea is this: a Russian-speaking teacher explains everything simply and clearly in order to «put everything on the shelves.» And then there is a training to understand the native speaker by ear.

Thus, the student immediately learns how to speak, build sentences, and understand native and non-native speakers. Plus, for clarity, under each lesson there are new words and phrases (those that we analyzed in the lesson).

I think I was able to create something light and effective, and your comments below the activity tell me that you love this activity! :O)

Oxford Online English Listening Level Test

It is always best to take more than one test to accurately determine your level of language proficiency. This is another short test with only 24 questions.

You will listen to six short audio clips and answer a series of questions about each one.

Learn English with Complex Courses in a fun and effective way!

/ For beginners. For the Intermediate Level. For work. /

Short audio exercises to improve your English listening comprehension

Once you determine your level, you can start practicing your English listening comprehension!

These resources feature short audio recordings with lots of exercises to help you improve your skills.

TalkEnglishListeningLessons

TalkEnglish has a variety of short exercises sorted by skill level (basic, intermediate or advanced). Some of them do not exceed 16 seconds.

The learning algorithm is simple: listen carefully to the audio file, and then review and answer the questions. After that, you can also watch the dialogue in writing.

Even the busiest students will be able to fit three to five of these lessons into their daily schedule.

CambridgeEnglishListeningActivities

Here you can sort your listening exercises by skill level and length.

For example, if you are sitting in a queue, then you can select a 10-minute audio file, and if you are tired after a working day, then a short one-minute file would be the best solution.

This will help you stay on track.

These exercises will help you practice listening to information, distinguishing consonants, and understanding implied information in a specific context.

EllloAudioLessons

This website contains useful and interesting library-grade material. It is ideal for those who love a playful and fun approach to learning English.

In addition to the audio lessons with quizzes, there are also games that practice listening skills. Some even have video and multimedia content.

This resource also boasts 1400+ free audio lessons, so you will definitely have enough material for a long time.

Zapp!EnglishListeningLessons

If you prefer simple and short audio lessons (15 to 20 minutes) that mainly contain conversations about everyday life, then this site is a great option for you.

-files of this resource are well suited for building vocabulary.

In addition, each lesson is accompanied by an e-book, written transcript and the ability to download audio files for later playback.

Resources for Advanced English Listening Practice

Is it easy for you to listen to an entire audiobook?

Can you memorize important pieces of information, follow storylines, and understand even lengthy dialogues?

Then the following excellent resources will provide you with a good long-term workout.

Considering the volume of audio materials collected there, you will have a lot of opportunities to raise your skills to the next level!

Agenda:WebListeningExercises

This is an amazing site that offers a great selection of comprehension exercises, podcasts, and even audiobooks for all skill levels.

Here you can also try to listen to English classics, fairy tales and fables.

Along with these rather long listening materials, Agenda Web offers many shorter exercises and interactive dictations.

Learning English Online Audiobooks and Speeches

If you are specifically looking for audiobooks that are read by native speakers, then this site might be a great choice for you.

All audiobooks are divided into chapters and accompanied by related exercises.

Here you can also listen to recordings of various performances. By practicing listening to English, you will, along the way, master the art of rhetoric and public speaking.

You can even listen to the story of the Fernandez family that created this particular language course.

Learn English By Listening Audio Stories

If you’re ready to listen to long stories, this website has some great options, such as The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Railway Children.

They are also accompanied by a written transcript, which will help you if you have difficulty understanding the text or if you want to clarify the pronunciation and spelling of unfamiliar words.

If you really want to improve your listening skills, you must be willing to practice as much as possible.

Determine your level, set aside sufficient time to practice English, and choose the resources you like.

Finally, remember to apply your skills in your daily life and learn from your mistakes.

Source: https://www.bistroenglish.com/blog/kak-nauchitsya-ponimat-anglijskuyu-rech-top-10-audio-zanyatij-i-testov/

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Learning a new language can be a tricky business; but you want to get it right. Right?

When you are learning English, a lot of effort is put into picking up vocabulary, spelling, reading and writing.

However, the area where your learning becomes most crucial is when it finally gets put into practice – not just in the classroom, but in real life. In the classroom, be it online or in a school, someone is at hand to listen, to support, to test you and shape your learning.

But how can you make sure you understand what’s going on once you go out into the world and begin to practice your English? Often as we begin to practice our new-found language skills, we realize that the way words sound in conversation can be very different from how we learned originally. Accents, speed, slang and idiomatic variances can mean we feel very lost – almost as if the other person isn’t speaking English at all.

Here is the EF English Live guide to helpful phrases and words to use when you’re not quite sure what someone is telling you…

Improve your English grammar, vocabulary and more with
EF English Live

Formal

These short phrases are polite ways to communicate that you didn’t hear or don’t understand something in the English language.

Sorry?
Excuse me?
Pardon?
I beg your pardon?
[this is particularly formal and now mostly used in England]

Longer formal sentences

These sentences will help you when you don’t understand something even though you have heard it.

Sorry, I’m afraid I don’t follow you.
Excuse me, could you repeat the question?
I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Could you say it again?
I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. Would you mind speaking more slowly?
I’m confused. Could you tell me again?
I’m sorry, I didn’t understand. Could you repeat a little louder, please?
I didn’t hear you. Please could you tell me again?

Informal

These are more common, casual, conversational ways to ask someone to repeat themselves, or communicate your lack of understanding. Some are more informal (i.e. rude!) than others.

Sorry? – most useful for when you simply didn’t hear
Sorry, what? – useful for not recognizing the sound you heard
A little more informal (can be rude)
‘Scuse me? – a more casual version of ‘excuse me’
Huh? – not quite a word but a sound; careful how you use it as it can sound rude; as a sound is more commonly associated with ‘I don’t get it’ or ‘I don’t understand’ rather than ‘I can’t hear you’
What? – sometimes this can seem aggressive, be careful!
Eh? – a sound usually used to communicate that it is difficult to hear/decipher someone
Hmm? – a sound used when you are a bit more absent-minded or maybe not listening so hard

Slang

Come again?
Say what? – this is particularly American English
Pass that by me again?
You what? – this is more common in the United Kingdom
I don’t get it… not a question but a statement, meaning simply ‘I don’t understand’

Idioms

Idioms are sayings particular to their language of origin. Here we take a look at three that you might use if you wanted to find a more creative way of saying something that sounds complicated, unclear or difficult to understand.

I can’t make head nor tail of what you’re saying.
This is all Greek to me.
Sorry this is as clear as mud to me.

Wil

Wil is a writer, teacher, learning technologist and keen language learner. He’s taught English in classrooms and online for nearly 10 years, trained teachers in using classroom and web technology, and written e-learning materials for several major websites. He speaks four languages and is currently looking for another one to start learning.

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