Hi guys. Welcome back to English with Max. Do you find it difficult to understand
native English speakers? Do you understand your English teacher, but then
find it difficult to understand movies and TV series? Well, don't worry, you are
not alone. This is actually really common, and in this video I'm going to tell you
the main reasons why. We'll look at understanding people in real life, and in
movies and TV shows. Hopefully if you understand the reasons why, you will
worry about it a bit less, because you'll see that it's very normal, and it might
also help you realise which areas in English you maybe need to focus on more.
Know hope!
As always, remember that you can follow me on social media. Don't forget
to subscribe (it's completely free, so why not?), and if you want to watch this video
with subtitles, you just need to turn on the captions. First let's look at
understanding native English speakers in real life. One reason why it might be
difficult to understand people is that native English speakers don't tend to
learn other languages. Often if people aren't used to learning languages, they
don't necessarily understand the difficulties that a non-native speaker
might have. In addition, they might assume that you understand everything and
therefore they probably won't make an effort to speak more slowly. If you've
watched my videos before, you will know that I do speak some foreign languages.
But I'm not saying this to sound superior. The only reason I learnt
foreign languages was because it's my passion - it's something that interests me.
Honestly, if it didn't interest me, I probably would have just
studied French for one year in high school, because when I was at school that
was the minimum requirement. I think it's a shame that it's not compulsory to
study a foreign language for several years in English-speaking countries,
but English is the international language and that's just the way it is.
Another reason why you might not understand native speakers in real life is that we
often speak badly. For example, we often make grammatical mistakes and some of us
mumble. Mumbling is when you don't open your mouth
very wide and you therefore don't speak very clearly. I'm an English teacher, so I
probably make fewer mistakes than the average person (I hope), but it does happen
to me sometimes as well. Particularly when I'm speaking quickly or I'm just
not paying attention. And I definitely mumble sometimes. It's a bad habit.
Now I have two things that just apply to movies and TV shows. The first thing is
that characters in movies and TV series often don't speak like people in real life.
Have you ever thought: Why do fictional characters often sound so smart?
Well, it's because they have scriptwriters, so very often they use
vocabulary or constructions that we don't necessarily use every day.
Of course that's not always the case - it depends on the movie or the show - but
often the English isn't as simple as in real life. Secondly there is often other
noise that can make the dialogue difficult to understand. For example,
background music, sound effects or just other background noise. If you're a
native speaker, or you have a very advanced level, that's not normally a
big problem because it's not so important for you to understand every
single word. If you are very used to listening to a language, your mind will
subconsciously fill in the gaps, so to speak, if you
don't understand every word. But if you don't have a lot of experience listening
to a language, obviously it will be a bit harder. Now let's look at some things
that apply to both real life, and movies and series. Firstly, there are lots of
different accents in the world. Obviously if you're not used to hearing a certain
accent, you might find it difficult to understand. But if it makes you feel any
better, that often happens to native speakers as well. The second thing is
slang. Slang is something that you don't often learn in English lessons and it
also changes from place to place. (Yay!)
The third thing is contractions.
We use lots of contractions in English. There are the standard contractions like
"don't" and "I'm", and there are also spoken informal contractions, like "gonna",
"wanna", "coulda", etc. If you are not used to contractions, you will definitely find it
hard to understand native speakers. I've actually already made some videos on
contractions. The links will be in the description. The fourth thing is
reductions. This is something that I could probably make several videos about.
Reductions are sounds that change or disappear when we speak at a normal or
high speed. For example, this sentence pronounced slowly is: Do you want a cup of tea?
But we don't normally say that. We would say:
Do you want a cup'v tea? Do ya want a cuppa tea?
D'you wanna cuppa tea? Or even: Dge wanna cuppa tea?
And the final thing is connected speech.
This is something else that I could probably make several videos about, and it's
similar to the concept of reductions. Connected speech is when one word
follows into the next word. For example, we don't usually say: "This afternoon."
We normally say: Thissafternoon. Thissafternoon.
Thanks very much for watching, guys.
If you liked the video, please hit the thumbs up. Let me know in the
comments if you find it difficult to understand native speakers and why,
and also tell me if you can think of any other reasons that I haven't mentioned
in this video. See you next time.