hi everybody and welcome back to love English I think most of you know by now
that my name is Sabrah today I have a lesson which I really believe is going
to help you it's all about methods and ways to help you understand fast native
speakers
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try that guys click the link in the description box and tell us what your
experience is of italki so I've got five strategies or ways to help you
understand fast native speakers better now I know that sometimes trying to
understand a native speaker can sound a bit like this and head back I'm going
around that the person keeps talking and talking and can't quite follow
what they're gonna say and they're gonna go run all around houses and you're like
what are they saying so after a while you feel like this ohhh no have you ever felt like
this? I know I have as a second language learner so if you have comment below and
tell me right are we ready to learn let's get started okay tip number one
listen for stressed words or key words in the sentence
now native speakers do this as well when we're listening
we don't listen necessarily to every word we pick out the important words
which we know are going to help us understand what the meaning is and get
the message so they're the action words or the nouns the things which really
stand out is carrying the meaning so basically if you can follow and listen
for these words you're going to be able to understand or get the basics of what
the person is saying now I understand you're probably thinking but how do you
know what those words are? What they are is when you hear the voice usually it
will go up more or down okay so usually it will be emphasized
let's have a look at an example sentence do you fancy a cup of tea do you fancy a
cup of tea can you hear that tea which is obviously carrying a lot of meaning
because that is what the person is offering is much more high-pitched fancy
which you might not know what the meaning is it's a slightly more complex
verb you don't need to know all you need to know is do you a cup of tea and even
if you didn't know fancy you could understand I think that offering me a
cup of tea of course body language and context can help
a lot with trying to deduce meaning as well let's have a look at another
example I'm gonna say it quickly to get you used to understanding things quickly
and picking out these important words let's listen to this sentence twice
Leila doesn't feel like going to the gym tonight because she's really tired one
more time Layla doesn't feel like going to the gym
tonight because she's really tired what words did you notice were more
emphasized? Of course Layla really tired and gym so from that
sentence you would know Layla gym really tired maybe she doesn't want to go even
if you missed those words so by picking out these stressed words this can really
help you I did this all the time when I was living in Italy in Spain I just
listened for the key words and I tried to make sense of what the message was
from that especially when you're at the lower levels of your learning okay
moving on to number two we all know that native speakers push their words
together and use this thing called connected speech I'm not going to just
talk about connected speech in this video because really I need to make a
separate video just on connected speech but I'm going to give you some of the
typical words which are pushed together so that you can recognize them and you
can listen for them and you will know what they mean
Layla has done a great video on wanna gonna hafta hasta which are very
typical ones and you can see that up here okay let's have a look at some of
these typically we don't say lot of we say lotsa there's lots
people coming to the party lotsa so that's one that you can listen out for
lotsa any phrase which involves of usually gets pushed on to the other word
and becomes an 've sound or an 'u' sound for example could have would have should
have should've would've could've
another one we haven't talked about yet is sort of which becomes sorter we can
say this is the sort of thing I'm looking for
this is the sorta sorta from sort of or kinder is another one kind of becomes
kinda I kind of like this dress I'm kind of really enjoying this lesson
hope you are well okay guys so they were the typical ones nice listen out for those and
then they won't confuse you and they won't make you feel like you've lost the
conversation okay tip number three tip number three is my favorite tip because
I've used it myself before and it helped me so much and it is to follow what we
call signposting language signposting language is all the little connecting
words which tell us the tone of the conversation or if the person's going to
say more or if the person's going to conclude or if the person disagrees with
something and it can really help us to understand again the basics of the
conversation. I'm gonna move over to this side mix things up a little bit okay so
let's look at some examples English can be a tricky language to learn however it
is worthwhile whereas some languages are hardly spoken at all and in some cases
it may not be as worthwhile to learn them we have lots of signposting
language we have however we have whereas we've got contrast however is always
telling you I'm saying something different then we have in some cases so
it's telling you only sometimes so all of this signposting language helps you
to follow the general direction of the conversation it's just like if someone
saying and also but you can follow a little bit more where they're going so
listen out for those words well if you're getting really lost in a
conversation just think right I'm gonna listen for the connecting words then at
least I know where more or less the conversation is going okay tip number
four is a strategy really for trying to check if you've understood or not but
it's a way not to show or not to ask directly please can you repeat that or
I'm sorry I didn't understand which can be a little bit embarrassing especially
if you're with lots of people and the conversations really flowing between
them and you don't want to be like sorry can I just break this up because I just
really didn't understand let's face it that can be embarrassing and most people
don't want to do that so this is how you can do it but without showing that you
didn't understand so what you can do is to repeat some of what they've said back
to them and check so for example imagine somebody who said oh the party tonight
is going to start around 10 o'clock but bring your own alcohol because we're not
going it's not going to be provided so if you're like okay what did they say..
something about 10 o'clock alcohol you can say back to them some
thing like okay so 10 o'clock and we're bringing our own alcohol to double
checked and then if they say no you know no no we're not bringing our own alcohol
you'll know okay I didn't understand if they say yeah you'll know that you did
understand so I used to do this as a method to find out if I had understood
I'd repeat a little bit of it back add something to it if I wanted to like
oh I'm gonna wear this dress to the party ten o'clock did you say and
everyone's bringing their alcohol, I'd add something to it just so I didn't show
you that I didn't understand so rephrasing a little bit of the
sentence and repeating it back to see if you understood try it guys it's a really
good method and I think it will help you okay my last tip is more simple it's not
watch YouTube watch TV obviously all those things are always going to be
improving your listening and how you understand native speakers I think you
need to do something a little bit more specific than that and I would really
recommend watching TED Talks TED Talks first of all you can watch the subtitles
in your own language if it's too difficult to follow a fast native speaker
just with English subtitles you can put it on your own language that way you're
still getting used to the pace of English words you're still getting used
to how they sound squashed together and things like that but TED talks have got
a variety of accents so you can listen to a speaker from Ireland, America
Indonesia Australia all speaking in English so it's really going to help you
to get used to different accents and how they sound fast so I highly recommend
watching TED Talks I always recommend it to my students and although its fast they
find it a little bit challenging after a while they usually really feel
that their listening is improving because of watching TED Talks ok
everybody I think I have talked enough today I really hope you found this video
useful please comment below and tell me if you've ever used these techniques and
if you find them useful and any other methods you know that you use to help
you understand fast native speakers guys also don't forget to try learning with
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comments bye-bye is English to past for you, yes it is