How to understand native English speakers

Hello and welcome everyone.  This is Minoo at Anglo-Link. Today's video is all about listening comprehension.  I have some interesting tips for you.  This is particularly for those of you who still find it a little hard to understand native speakers or watching television in English or listen to the radio in English. I'll be telling you about some specific aspects of the English sound system and some speech patterns that native speakers usethat can make listening in English a little bit of a challenge by the end of this video,you will have a really good understanding of where the difficulties that you might be facing come from and what you can do to overcome them and really improve your listening comprehension. So, when you're ready, lets begin!Right!Today I'd like to share3 keys with you that will really improve your listening comprehension of native speakers. Let's look at what these 3 keys are. the first thing is to understand is what makes native speakers hard to understand. The second key is improving your own pronunciation. And the third key to improving your listening comprehension is learning primarily with your ears rather than your eyes. Okay, lets start with understanding what makes native speakers hard to understand. They're two main reasons for this. The first oneis the great number of vowels and diphthongs in English. And some of these are very similar to each other. They're many words where the consonants are exactly the same. And by changing the vowel sound the meaning changes. And when these vowel sounds are very similar and especially if one or the other doesn't exist in your own language. This can make it quite a challenge to understand a native speaker. Lets look at some examples. These are called minimal pairs by the way. Same consonants,different vowels. Minimal Pairs. Boat and Bought.  Mad -Mud. Hurt Heart Men Main Than Then.  Bit - Bet.  Live Leave So, notice the only difference is the vowel or the diphthong and they can be very very similar.  So, in connected speech they're not easy to tell apart. This is the first reason why listening to English native speakers can be challenging. Now, lets look at the second reason. The second reason is the way that native speakers shorten and link sounds. Let's give you a quick example.  Look at this sentence:How is it going?You would hear from a native speaker:'how'z it going?'There are three specific speech patterns that all native speakers use. And I'm going to take you through them one by one. Speech pattern number one is contractions. Contracted verbs and negatives. You're pretty familiar with these. I'm He's They'll We've Won't Can't etc. . . What is important to remember is that native speakers always use these patterns when they speak. Except when they want to stress a point. That is why there's a difference in tone and meaning between O. K.  I'll do it. 'and'I will do it. ''Nothing can stop me. 'When we use the contraction there's no stress on the contracted form.  There is no particular emotion. The other example,when you've used the full form,'I will do it'. you want to show determination. So, as using contractions is the norm rather than the exception in spoken English. I would recommend that you try and use them as much as possible yourself. Firstly, you will sound more natural and secondly you'll be able to hear them more easily when native speakers use them. Just be careful not to use contractions in formal writing.  When you're writing a letter, or a report,or an article. Always keep it to the full form. Keep the contractions for speaking. Moving onto speech pattern number two. Speech pattern number two is called week forms. Grammatical words, such as modal verbs,possessive adjectives,prepositions,etc. . . are seldom fully pronounced in a sentence. The vowel in them is reduced to a shorter vowel or disappears completely. Let's look at some examples:Here we have the modal verb 'can'. In the sentence,it can sound like 'kn'. The vowel disappears. 'I kn ski. 'Let's look at another example:Possessive adjective:'my',very clear,in isolation, 'my'. But in the sentence it sounds' Here's me book. 'You can hardly hear it. And another example:Preposition: for. In the sentence the vowel is reduced to 'fa'. 'It's fa you'. Now, you don't need to use these week forms at all when you speak. As your message will bee ven clear without using them. However,you do need to be aware of the man  anticipate them when listening to a native speaker. Let's look at speech pattern three. Which is phonetic links. Generally any word that starts with a vowel is linked to the previous word. And this makes ithard to heareach word distinctively. Let's look at some examples:'He work sas an engineer. ' You've gott hree words that begin with vowel.  'as', 'an'and 'engineer'. In connected speech they all run into each other. 'He works sazanen gineer'. Second example:Here you have four words that begin with vowel. is,interested, in, itand they all run into each other. 'she(y)isinterestedinit. 'And there's a semi vowel(y)that linksthe vowelat the end of 'she'to the vowel at the beginning of 'is'.  She(y)is. And our third example:Two words: one ending with a 't',the next one starting with a 't',they run into each other, and then to words starting with a vowel. 'an amazing'. Once againall this sectionruns into each other. 'They wentto(w)anamazing place. 'And once again you have the semi vowel (w)that connects the vowels'to' and 'an'to each other. Once againyou don't necessarily need to use these links when you speakas your message will be perfectly clear without them. However,you do need to be aware of them and anticipate them when you listento native speakers. Now often,you get at least two of these speech patterns,sometimes even all three,in a row in a sentence. and that is when you can feel really challenged. Let's look at an example:'He won't accept it from me. 'You have the contraction 'won't', you have two words beginning with a vowel; 'accept' and 'it',and you have the preposition 'from'. So, in connected speech you will hear:'He won't accept it from me. 'At this point you are probably asking yourself; well what's the best way tofamiliarize myself with the speech patterns?I think the best wayis transcribing audio files. If you already have a CD of dialogues,with transcripts,then listen to the dialoguesand write them outand then compare what you have written with the transcript. If you do not have such CD's,I recommend Anglo-Files104 and 108from Anglo-Link's selection of audio files that you can access on our website. anglo-link. com These are selections of daily dialoguesand business dialogues which you can listen to and transcribe, and thencheck what you've written against the transcripts on the site. This will really improve your listening comprehension of native speakers and at the same time will help you to activate loads of useful functional expressions. Now, if you have never studied the English sound system, if you've never studied pronunciation on its own,I strongly recommend our Anglo-File117. In this Anglo-File,you will have a complete list of all the vowels, of all the diphthongs,all the consonants in English that you can practice. It also has loads of minimal pair exercisesthat will help you todistinguishvowel sounds that are similar from each other. It also has a sectionon the speech patterns we've looked at.  You can listen to weak forms, contractionsand phonetic links, and transcribe them. This will be really really helpfull if you have not familiarised yourselfwith the English sound system yet. Now if you want,you can do a transcription exercise nowby clicking on this image. If you prefer to continue listening to the presentation,you will have the chance at the end of the presentationto do it then. Right. So, once you've familiarised yourself with the English sound systemand also know how native speakers shortenand link sounds. The next step is to improveyour own pronunciation. Clearly,if you're mispronouncing a word because you learnt it by reading,and guessed how it was pronounced,Then it is likely that you will not catch it when you hear it. There're two common traps,if you have guessedthe pronunciation of a wordby by reading it. The first common pronunciation trapis. . . believing that two words with the same spellingwill have the same sound. Let's give you an example:If you think that the combination letters'e' and 'a'always sound like:/i:/as in'jean'then you will miss pronouncethe following words:'Great', 'Hear''Learn''Instead'This is the best example of the same combination of letters'ea'having fivedifferent sounds. Another tricky letter is the letter 'u'. If you imagine that the letter 'u' always sounds like /u/as in 'put'. You will mispronouncethe two following words:'Judge'and 'Furious'because that the letter 'u' is sometimes /u/many times . . . and occasionally . . . Okay, let's look at the second comment pronunciation trap. Which is:word stress. In many languagesthe strength of your voice is spread equally among the syllables in a word. In English however,if you have more than one syllable in your word, you have to decidewhich syllable or syllablestake the stress of your voice.  And which ones arede-stressed. Let's look at an example:Here's a wordwith four syllables.  Now, let's decidewhich syllabletakes the stress. Is it the first one:'DEvelopment'. Is it the second one:'deVElopment'. The third one:'deveLOPment'. Or the last syllable:'developMENT'. In this caseit's the second syllable'deVElopment'. Now, you couldn't know that unless you have heard the wordmany many times. Let's look at the second example:Let's look at these two words. They seem very similar in their spelling.  So, you would expect them to have thesame rythms, the same music, the same word stress. However, in the first one,it's the second syllable that's stressed. And in the second oneit's the first syllable. And that changes the pronunciationcompletely. The first word is:'proPose'. And the second word is:'Purpose'. So, what is the conclusion of the examples we've looked at?At the pronunciation traps we've looked at?Well the conclusion is that you have to avoid guessing how a word is pronounced. Always check the pronunciation of the words that your learning. Either ask someoneor use a talking dictionary. Talking dictionaries are now widely available on the internetand you can listen to the word several times and with some of them you can evenrecord your own voice, and compare your pronunciation with a model, which is an excellent exercise. Again, you don't need to be a hundred percent correct in your own pronunciation to be understood. But if you have not heardthe correct pronunciation of a word enough times your risk not catching it when it is spoken by a native speaker,in a stream of other words,with phonetic links and weak forms surrounding it. So, do work on your own pronunciation.  It's an important key to improving your listening comprehension. And finally to the third key,improving you're listening comprehension. Learn primarily with your ear srather than your eyes. Now you have a better understanding of why native speakers are not always easy to understand. Especially if you have learn your English out of a book. It's for the simple reason that what you seeis not what they say. Therefore, the best way to learn new words and expressions is by firs the aring them then seeing them in writing. So, here are some final hint son how to use your earsinstead of your eyes. Listen to audio book srather than read the printed version of the book. Listen to the radioand watch programs and filmsin English as much as possible. Even if at first your understand very little,this is a great exercise to tune your ears into the sounds rhythm and music of the language. You will be surprised how quickly you will start to hear and understand more and more. If you're using a course-book,work more with the accompanying CDthan the book itself. And finally,if you're using a word you have learn by reading and have never heard it before,make sure you check the pronunciation. To give you more tools to improve your listening comprehension and pronunciation,we have recorded all the grammar exercises that you have access toon anglo-link. com These are available as audio files. And they ensure that you also learn the correct pronunciation and intonation of the important structures and the useful expressions that we have included in ourAnglo-Pedia. If you didn't do the transcription exercise ealier on, this is your chance to doit now. Well, I hope you've enjoyed thisvideo on how to improve your listening comprehensionand found all the tips useful. thank you for watching, I look forward to seeing you in our next video. Bye now!