Hi this is Ceema and I’m back with a new lesson on understanding spoken English. Well,
a lot of you who are learning to speak English, you always have a problem with understanding
English that is spoken to you, right? Well you're not alone because when we learn or
study English, you know we learn to read English, we learn to write English but understanding
or listening to spoken English is something that is not really done in a very good way
which is why we always end up not speaking English very well, right? Well I know it can
be quite frustrating, quite embarrassing, when someone tells you something and you don't
understand, right? So we are going to first understand as to why understanding English
is so difficult.
Okay the first reason why understanding English is difficult is because pronounced English
is not equal to written English. Well what does that mean? What I'm trying to say is
that the way you pronounce some words is not the same when writing the words. So this is
very often in letters which are silent letters in a word. So you have a word for example
say laugh. Well the pronunciation is laugh, almost like a laf, l-a-f. But when you write
the word, obviously the GH is silent, right? So if you are not used to listening or you
know listening to too much English, then you'll have a problem because pronounced English
is not equal to written English, okay. Now the other reason why understanding is so,
so difficult is because the same letter can be pronounced differently in different words.
What do I mean by that? We have a letter, e, right? We all know the letter, e. In a
word like, egg, the e is pronounced as an eh. The eh sound and in a word like eat, well
it becomes a long ee sound. So well the same letter, e, but in one word it is an eh and
in the other word, it is an ee, that's quite confusing, right?
Okay the other reason why you are finding it so difficult to understand is because of
unclear pronunciation. Now a lot of students who I teach tell me that when they hear native
people or native speakers talking to them, they find the pronunciation quite unclear.
They don't understand it. Why? Because native speakers have a way of joining words together.
So the joining of words is done. So you have a sentence like, do you want to come? But
a native English speaker would say, do you wanna come? Do you wanna come? Do you want
to come? Is the actual way of saying it, if you are breaking every word and pronouncing
it separately. But when you are a native speaker, you tend to speak very fast and therefore
you have joined words together, you say do you wanna come? Are you gonna have lunch?
Are you going to have lunch? What are you doing? What are you doing? Whatcha you doing?
Okay so when you are a native speaker, you join words together making it very difficult
for beginners to understand what you are saying, right? And the last but very important reason
why you can't understand English is because you're not listening enough. There is not
enough listening of English going on in your studies, right when you are studying English.
Now when you were a baby for example, okay you first learned. You first heard words,
right? Your mother told you things, you listened to what your mother said and then you kind
of made out as to what the words were and then you started speaking, writing and reading,
right? So you first listened, you got the words, then you started speaking, then you
read and you wrote, right, so that's the order of learning things. You first listen, you
then speak, you then read and write. But the problem is when we are studying English, we
try to read and write first and that's just not the way you can do it, right? So when
your mother, as a child she tells you pick up the ball sweetheart, she's saying, pick
up the ball. Now as a baby you don't know the words pick as far as the spelling goes.
You don't know how ball is spelt either. But you hear your mother and then you kind of
say the same words over and over again because of what you've listened to, right? So therefore
it is very important just like babies that even we, when we are learning a new language,
we first listen to a lot of English before we even attempt to speak, read or write.
Okay now I’m going to tell you what you need to do, to start understanding English
in a much better way. This is gonna really help you.
Okay now the first very important rule or what you really need to do to improve your
understanding of spoken English is to practise listening daily. Now I know all of you are
very, very busy people and you really can't take out too much of time to do this probably.
But all you need is just fifteen minutes in a day. Just fifteen minutes, yeah and in fifteen
minutes, you can practise listening but you've gotta do that regularly, which mean you've
gotta do that daily. Now what would you listen to? Or where would you listen to? If you are
a busy person, you can you know buy one of our CDs, okay we've got, you know a daily
video vocabulary, which is there in the link, okay at the end of this video. You can listen
to that. You can also buy one of our CDs related to spoken English, which will also have dialogues.
So it is very important, very imperative that you practise listening to English daily. May
be while you are doing your household chores, while you are travelling by bus, train, metro.
When you are in the gym, you know just walking or jogging. Try listening to English as much
as possible for you to you know kind of get the base in understanding the spoken English,
yeah and now the second and most important part is, practising the right way. So yes
you do have to practise listening daily but what does it mean to practise the right way.
So if there is a right way to practise, then obviously there's a wrong way to practise.
Have you been practising the wrong way? Well what is the wrong way? The wrong way is basically
you know, I play a CD, I just listen to something, I try my hardest to listen to something and
understand it and I don't understand it, so I just give up. Well that's the wrong way
of doing it because you have given up and you have not set realistic expectations for
yourself, right? so there is a right way to understand English, okay, the right way is
before you even start listening or before you even practise listening, you know have
the right mindset, okay. So it's basically important to have the right mindset or have
a positive mindset. Now don't be too hard on yourself. Understand that it might take
you a while to understand or learn some words and it might take you a while to apply them
when you are forming a sentence, right? So set realistic expectations for yourself even
before you launch into the practise of listening the right way or you know learning to listen
the right way. Now when you have a topic, okay suppose you have a paragraph of a small
story about say, you know any topic for that matter, the first thing you will do is, listen
to the general topic. So when there is a story, okay the story contains a topic, it contains
details about a particular topic and it talks about everything in detail. The story in detail.
But you don't need to know the detail at the beginning, so the first time you listen, so
it's important to read three times may be. Okay when you are listening, listen three
times. The first time you listen, okay you are going to focus on the general topic. What
is the story all about? Just the general, the gist of the topic really. Okay, then you
will listen to specific details. Alright so you have a story about a crow who is really
thirsty and he is in search of water, he finds a jar, okay which has pebbles in it but that
jar is only half filled with water. Now the poor crow, well he does not have a beak long
enough to reach the water because it is half filled, right? So what he does is, he goes
and collects more pebbles and puts them in the jar. Have you heard that story? Until
the water comes up and he can drink. Now if you are reading that kind of story, initially
you are going to get the normal gist of the topic which is, a crow being thirsty and looking
for water, okay. What is the specific detail? Now the specific details relate to, what is
mentioned in the paragraph? Okay you can talk about you know what part of the country or
you know what is the weather like? Is it a sunny day? Is it a rainy day? Is it a cold
day? Details could also imply things like, you know is the crow, you know like just all
alone there? Are there people around? Little specific details about the story that's where
you'll give your focus to when you read or listen for the second time. And the last one
is, the third one is, now when you are reading for the third time, the same paragraph or
you are listening to it for the third time, you are going to pay attention to individual
words. Now this is the time wherein you are going to mark or you know keep a mental note
of individual words and see how they are formed in a sentence. Okay when you keep doing that,
every day, every single day for fifteen minutes at least, you will see that you will eventually,
you are going to be in a position to apply your words in a sentence and form grammatically
correct sentences because now you have heard enough and because you have heard enough you
can respond in spoken English because now you can understand spoken English.
Well that's it from me on this lesson on understanding spoken English. Well you take very good care
of yourself. I’ll be back with some more lessons, until then, this is me saying goodbye.