hey love Englishers welcome back to our English Learning Channel
I'm Sabra I hope you're all well it's nice to see you all again so quick
weather update British people love to talk about the weather and in our last
video it was snowing Leila did a video on snow idioms so if you haven't seen
that video go and watch that at the end of this one now today the snow is going
away it's thawing so no more snow which is a shame as it was very very pretty
and nice to see it but it was a bit of a shock because in my previous video on
thinking in English I said the spring was coming I was very wrong suddenly the
snow came down I hope it's nice weather where you are
so let's get on with today's lesson today's lesson is going to be super
useful for you guys because I know this is a problem that so many of you have is
that you can't understand native speakers now today we're going to look
at five ways that will help you to understand native speakers but first
we'll look at why you can't so some of the reasons why you might be having
problems understanding native speakers and then we'll look at techniques and
tips to help you to understand them it might be a bit of a long video is I have
a lot to say about this so I've got my cup of tea it might be a good idea for
you to do the same right are you ready to go let's get started
number one the reason why you can't understand some native speakers is
because they don't speak classroom English now your teacher perhaps your
english-speaking friends they will all understand that you might not be able to
understand faster natural English so sometimes without even realizing it they
slow down for you then when you meet somebody that you don't know or you're
talking to someone on a bus you don't understand the native speaker at all and
you're thinking why is this I thought I was getting good at English I thought I
was understanding but now I'm speaking to these people and I didn't understand
a word and this is very very frustrating I know but it is because we naturally
slow down for you especially your teachers as teachers we're trained to
slow down to help you get the sounds of the language and to understand to build
your confidence but sometimes this actually is a problem because then when
you try and talk to a native speaker you can't understand them you need to start
to be able to understand more natural English the English that is out in the
streets that is on the television so what you can do guys is step by step you
need to start everyday listening to that more natural English now when I say this
I don't mean necessarily do English listening practices for English students
although they're very good again they'll probably be a little bit slower and if
you feel you'd like to learn more natural English the best ways
is to watch TV programs download podcasts that aren't necessarily for English students
but try to listen as much as possible to natural English if you can make friends
with native speakers then that is great so so useful it's one of the fastest
ways to learn particularly if you can find a native speaking boyfriend or
girlfriend but it can be extremely useful and you'll learn very very
quickly but if you do make some friends that aren't native speakers ask them say
please don't slow down for me don't worry I'm trying to get the natural
speed of English maybe I won't understand everything you say but don't
slow down for me too much I'm okay tell them that so they know that you're
trying to follow more natural English at the beginning it may be frustrating
because you won't be able to understand everything but slowly step by step
you're going to start to train your ears sip of tea
I needed this okay so number two now this one we're going to spend a little
bit of time on because it's one of the keys to helping you to understand native
speakers and this is that we use connected speech we push our words
together we speak a much lazier and relaxed English when we're talking with
friends in informal situations generally when we're speaking in the language
unless we're perhaps at an interview or something where we want to be very clear
let's take a quick look at some sentences to show you examples of
connected speech let's have a look at the first example do you like chocolate
this is how I would say it in the classroom but naturally I would say do
you like chocolate do you like chocolate and push these two words together so you
becomes ya becomes a schwa the schwa is the most common sound in English it
is when the mouth is relaxed it's a teacher water so here we've got do
ya so when I'm speaking to my friend I might say do ya like choclate and I push it
so much together that the beginning of you becomes almost 'j' do you like
chocolate like chocolate do you like chocolate so here these two words become
almost unrecognizable from do you like
chocolate we're pushing our words together and speaking a much lazier and
quicker form of English let's have a look at this sentence in the past did
you like chocolate here I'm pronouncing all the words correctly and it's easy to
understand did you like chocolate however if I
speak to my friend I might say did you like chocolate
did you like chocolate did you did ja so you again has become ja ja
didja so again very difficult to understand but you need to recognize how
words sound once they're pushed together in connected speech and it's really
going to help you and listen for the schwa the 'uh' sound uh schwa-- the more
you listen to natural English the more you have native speaking friends or
listen to the TV as much English as you can you'll start to hear this you'll
start to recognize these forms and it will get easier for you I promise
time for another sip of tea I think right guys next one number three accents
I hear you all being like oh I don't understand the Scottish accent I don't
understand the Irish accent the Liverpool accent the Australian accent I
understand and to be honest I feel sorry for you guys I know that English is a
language which is spoken all over the world so the accents there's such a
variety of accents so first thing to say guys is that I am a native speaker I was
born in the UK I was born in Liverpool the city where of course the football
team are from but also the Beatles one of the most famous pop bands ever so I'm
from that city but now I live in the south of England and I have a southern
British accent I have a very kind of standard British accent so hopefully my
accent should be fairly easy to understand it's a little bit easier than
the Liverpool accent which can be challenging so my advice here it would
be that you can't possibly learn all the accents and the different phonetic
features of every accent that English is spoken however you can
get used to a few and really start to understand those so some of you have
been asking in the comments if I can do a Liverpool accent because I'm from
Liverpool and my answer to you is of course a can let's have a quick look at
the difference between a southern accent so my accent now and the Liverpool
accent so in a southern accent if I was talking with my friends I'd probably say
something like hey how are you guys he doing ok what have you been up to like
that but if I was speaking with a Liverpool accent I'd say you alright
guys what have you been up to? what have you been up to and I would change totally so words
like work in southern British accent work in a Liverpool accent work changes
to work so my main piece of advice with understanding accents is to
focus on the accents which you know you're going to hear the most frequently
and to really focus on trying to understand those don't try and
understand them all that it's gonna be too confusing your brain is gonna become
and your ears are gonna become some kind of melted down mush with trying to
do that so I don't recommend that so just try and focus on the ones that
you're going to listen to look at the phonetic features of those accents like
I was just showing you with the Liverpool accent they all have distinct
phonetic features watch videos on those and listen to them and hopefully that
will help you to understand accents better have you been paying attention
to the lesson? right number four slang we do talk with lots of slang and the
difficult thing about this is that slang is different in all the different places
where English is spoken so slang words can be very confusing because you can
understand a whole sentence and then one word perhaps it's the subject might be
slang and this will stop you from understanding the sentence but don't
worry about this because you can't possibly learn all the slang for all the
different regions where English is spoken in all the different locations
around the world unless you have some kind of amazing memory which you might
do but it is quite challenging so I really
recommend that you you think about the area where you're going to be dealing
with the most business or where you need to understand people the most and learn
those slang words if you're just trying to improve your English in general I'd
probably focus on perhaps learning British slang and American slang I think
they're the most common on television in the written form so in newspapers
magazines and things like that so another thing I would recommend about
understanding slang is that if you hear slang words commonly said so if you
start to hear the same word coming up all the time that means that it's a high
frequency word and generally as an English student you need to focus on
learning high frequency words because they're used a lot so they're very
useful let's look at this example with the word money there are lots of slang
words for the word money but the most common is cash that's the one you really
need to learn now there were lots of others like dosh dough spondoolies lots
and lots and lots but to be honest the one that I would use the most is cash I
might say dosh sometimes but you can't learn them all so just focus on the ones
that you hear the most frequently and that are the most common that is what is
really going to help you last one number five phrasal verbs now English is absolutely
full of phrasal verbs there are thousands of them and they can be
difficult because they're confusing we're the only language in the world
which puts a verb and a preposition together and it makes a new meaning with
those two things together now I understand why you guys find these
difficult because some of them don't make any sense like for example run out
means that something has finished but if you heard somebody saying oh the milk
has run out you'd be like what what are you talking about milk doesn't have
legs so it could be quite confusing for you so in English conversation on the
whole if it's informal we would choose a phrasal verb rather than another kind of
more formal verb phrasal verbs are usually a more relaxed form of another
verb let me give you an example this the verb fall out the phrasal verb
to fall out means to have a disagreement so to fall out means to disagree to not
be speaking to somebody but the actual verb is to have a disagreement so we
would often in normal spoken English choose to say I fell out with my friend
rather then I had a disagreement with my friend sounds much too formal to use
that way so phrasal verbs are very much a part of everyday British speech and
understanding them is going to help you guys so much so this is probably one of
my biggest tips from the video is to learn phrasal verbs right guys they were
my five reasons that you're finding it difficult to understand native speakers
and techniques and ways to help you understand them because of that I hope
you found this video useful please do comment below and tell me which accents
you find difficult which accents you would like to hear more perhaps even
which accents you like you can also comment below and tell me what problems
you've had with understanding and native speakers and how you are trying to solve
that problem so perhaps tips and techniques for other students on this
channel that you think will help them don't forget to subscribe to love
English click that red button so you don't miss another lesson thank you so
much for watching guys we will see you again on love English don't forget you
can find us on Facebook snapchat Instagram and Twitter for lots more love
English fun do join us on those guys my cup of tea is pretty cold now so I'm
gonna go and make a fresh one enjoy your day guys bye bye
did you enjoy the lesson
thanks for watching everybody bye-bye