Hello everyone, and welcome back to English with Lucy today I am going to
teach you eight ways in which you can improve your listening skills, your
English listening skills. Now number one is take advantage of YouTube's subtitle
system but make sure you understand and use it properly so in order to improve
your daily English, the English that you'll use every day. I want you to find
vloggers and kind of daily youtubers that document their everyday life who
actually add their own subtitles or vloggers that don't rely on the
auto-generated subtitles. Nowadays YouTube has some very very good subtitle
software but it's never perfect when I post a video YouTube analyzes what I say
and it posts what it thinks I've said as auto-generated subtitles. However, for
every single video I do pay for someone else to actually write the subtitles and
there are a couple of reasons why I do this. Number one, I want correct spelling
and grammar YouTube software doesn't add in the correct punctuation and kind of
commas and quotation marks and things like that and that's important for you
to learn. It's important for you to see where a sentence starts and ends and
where there might be pauses. Also sometimes the software just completely
misses out words, it misspells things, it misunderstands what I've said. Sometimes
it puts very rude things in place of what I've actually said so I choose to
buy my own subtitles and a lot of creators do this and a lot of vloggers
do this and it's very very useful. Kn fact on my own vlogging channel where
I've been documenting my life, my personal life on the farm in rural
England, I do write the subtitles for you so you know that what I'm saying on
screen is what is also written on screen. How can you tell if the subtitles are
trustworthy or not? Well one indicator is the term
'auto-generated' which will come up if YouTube's AI system has developed the
software if you follow some vloggers that speak a native level of English
watch their videos with subtitles every week or every day you will pick up on so
much vocabulary vocabulary that we use as natives in our daily lives
number two is listen to a variety of accents and dialects now I don't just
say accents I say dialects because different parts of my country England
have different dialects so northern slang is very different to southern
slang in fact British English is so unbelievably diverse so for example
something as simple for me as a can of coke well up north they might say a tin
of coke when that would sound ridiculous for me so to ensure that you understand
everything that you listen to or almost everything that you listen to because
let's face it everything would be quite the challenge because even I don't
understand everything that I hear you do need to listen to a variety of accents
and dialects the different sounds that they produce the different common
phrases that they use and the different slang words as well are really really
important and I have something in the pipeline that will massively help you
with this I'm going to talk about it more towards the end of this video
number three is of course speak with natives listen
to natives and speak to them but more than that it's ask for repetition and
ask for explanation so you want to speak with natives ask them to repeat things
and ask them to explain and justify things a lot of students ask me how they
can find well priced native teachers or native level teachers just because
someone isn't native doesn't mean that they're not an excellent teacher and
this segment is sponsored by a come and that I do genuinely highly recommend
and it's a talkie I talkie is a huge online database of both native and
non-native teachers who will give one-to-one video lessons with you 24
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the rate that's best for you and it's also really good if you just want to
practice conversation and listening to someone talk and asking for them to
correct your responses because not only do they have qualified teachers they
also have community teachers who are there to practice conversation with you
now they've given me an offer to pass on to you you can get $10 worth of I
talking credits in your student wallet 48 hours after making your first
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lesson for free or more than that actually I've seen lessons for much less
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extra spare time for an extra motivational push you can also sign up
to their language challenge this is where you take itoki classes and win
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until the 24th of May what do you have to do is set yourself a language goal
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set yourself a goal and start earning those prizes right let's move on to way
number 4 now this is a really simple way of making native speech easier to
understand it's so simple I can't believe that
people still aren't taking advantage of it do you know about YouTube's slowdown
function now when I look at videos that are explaining something technical like
how to use my new washing machine or why Mike Hoover isn't sucking sometimes I
find the person takes ages to get to the point or to explain something so I speed
them up I click on the little cog and then I click on playback speed and I put
them at one point two five times speed or one point five if I'm feeling really
energetic however the slowdown function would be
really really useful for language learners you can slow down speech to
three-quarters of the natural pace 0.75 speed if you're watching a video and
you're interested in what that person is saying but they are just speaking too
quickly try that 0.75 speed now 0.5 tends to be too slow the person sounds
drunk or deranged 0.75 for a very fast talker can actually be really really
helpful even for me as a native speaker there are some people that just go a
little more and I find it hard to follow so if there's a vlogger or a narrator or
a presenter that you have shunned in the past because they speak too quickly try
watching them on YouTube try slowing them down and let me know what you think
what would be even better is if they had their subtitles added as well so you can
watch them in slow speed without subtitles and then watch them again with
subtitles but more about that later on now number five this is a really common
listening tip but I'm going to talk about it because I've got something
extra to add it is watch English movies and TV shows now we all know this this
is one of the first tips that teachers will give you but it can be really
really hard and really daunting to try and work out which TV show and which
film is going to be at your level it's so annoying to finally find something
that you want to watch after reading loads of
and then you just can't understand it it's also really annoying when your
computer or your network won't allow you to access certain films and TV shows
because of where you live because your country is not allowed to view that
specific website I have got a video coming next week on my recommendations
for British TV shows and I start with beginner level and move to pre
intermediate intermediate and advanced I cover all the bases and they're all
shows that will help you develop a British English accent and help you
understand it as well I'll also talk about the variety of
British English accents as well now when this video is live I will link it in the
description box so check that out because I want to help you find
something that you can actually watch and understand and then you can move up
through the levels number six is learn responses that will buy you more time
because when we are listening to what someone is saying in a language that is
not our first language we do need that little bit of extra time to process what
they're trying to say I have a couple of tricks and phrases that will buy you
more time things that you can say without seeming like a strange person
going because that is what a lot of English learners do it's a natural thing
to want to fill the gap by just making one noise like
and you also don't want to just fill it with silence because that can be awkward
that person might think that you've not heard them when really you've just not
understood them what you want to do is fill the conversation with fillers or
interjections and I've made various videos on this topic I did a great one
with Harry from real English with real teachers on interjections things like
ooh
I will link that down below and also last week I did post a video on
different ways to say I know and I understand because those are very
commonly used in conversation whilst you're processing what someone has said
or you're just showing that you've understood and acknowledged what they've
said again I will link that I think both of those videos would be really really
useful they will give you phrases that you can use to buy more time whilst
you're processing speech number seven is listen whilst you read listen whilst you
read now I talked about this a lot in my videos because it really really works
I'm always talking about listening to audiobooks as you read the actual book
and I'm not just saying this for fun this is genuinely such a good method it
trains your brain to connect written words with spoken words it helps improve
your pronunciation it helps improve your listening it helps improve your spelling
as well the way a word is spelt in English doesn't necessarily give you any
indication as to how it's pronounced in English and the way a word is pronounced
in English doesn't really help you work out how that word is spelt this is why
English seems like such a hard language to understand when you're listening to
it and such a hard language to pronounce because you look at word and you just
have no idea how it should be pronounced if you take a book that you have already
read in English or a book that you would like to read in English and read that
book as you are listening to that same audiobook version your problems will be
solved now it's important to find a narrator you like and this is why I
always recommend audible audible is an amazing platform of audiobooks they have
the most incredible selection and you can also listen to quite lengthy samples
so you can work out if you like the narrator's accent if you like the speed
at which they speak you can also slow them down and you can speed them up if
you feel like you need to and the best part is you can get one free audio book
that's a 30-day free trial or an audible and you just have to click on the link
in the description box to sign up and there I've put some recommendations for
great books as well audiobooks to listen to and they're written book counterparts
it's a great method that's why I talk about it all the time now the last tip
number 8 is to create your own transcription exercises you know those
annoying horrible listening tests where you have to fill in a gap right what you
hear unfortunately they work however we want
to do something that's relevant for us don't we so if you find something that
is particularly interesting to you have you are interested in photography and
it's about cameras maybe you're interested in wildlife or skateboarding
I have no idea but everybody has their thing don't they I personally love
cooking and gardening well if you find something that's very very interesting
to you create your own listing exercise because it won't be so boring and
painful this exercise is all about listening blindly meaning that you are
not looking at any visuals so you don't see their mouth moving you don't see
their emotion nothing and you definitely definitely don't look at any subtitles
take one sentence or if you're feeling more advanced you can take a couple of
sentences and listen to it once then you can listen to it for a second time and
then you have to write down exactly what you've heard or what you think you've
heard after that you can listen to it one more time and you can look at the
transcription or the subtitles make sure they are accurate and there you have it
you've created your own transcription exercise using something that is
relevant and interesting to you the reason why these sorts of exercises are
included in so many different examinations
by so many different prestigious examination boards across the globe it's
because they really really work so if you can get into the habit of every time
you're listening to something interesting and you know there are
reliable transcriptions or subtitles available to you if you do this and make
it a habit you really really will learn so much and you'll get so used to
analyzing things from a listening perspective right that's it for today's
lesson I hope you enjoyed it and I definitely hope you take some of my
advice please feel free to add any more advice so we can all learn from each
other in the comments section and don't forget to check out I talk e you can
click on the link down below and get your ten dollars worth of I talk e
credits and you can start the language challenge don't forget to connect with
me on all of my social media I've got my Facebook I've got my Instagram and I've
got my Twitter and I've got my personal channel with fully subtitled vlogs of my
life here on a farm I do lots of cooking I do lots of walking I do lots of
chatting and just organizing my home it's meant to be relaxing for you and
I've had quite positive feedback so far so I hope you enjoy it as well I will
see you soon for another lesson