rodilý mluvčí Archives - Learn English the Smart Way

You are Czech or Slovak, right? Learning English? Hmmm, I thought so 🙂

I’m Richard, a native British English speaker.

Improving your English is not just about learning grammar, studying books and taking exams. Firstly I believe it should be fun and have a purpose. That’s why I offer help for English learners starting with conversations about motivation, reasons for learning English and goals. I’m not so much of an English teacher in the classic sense but more someone who coaches you to help yourself, listens to what you want and instructs and teaches where needed. See my previous posts here.

A scientific approach is my method and I like to use techniques that give you space and freedom to think for yourself; the only real way to learn anything properly.

“It’s not just what you know, but how you practice what you know that determines how well the learning serves you later.”
― Peter C. Brown, Make It Stick

Today’s article is for intermediate and more advanced English learners. Those of you who would like some tips on improving your understanding when native speakers speak quickly. Let’s get started…

How do I better understand fast English speakers?

Well, that depends on whether you are listening to real people in the physical world or if you mean watching tv/listening to the radio etc. Also, if it’s real people, are you listening to engage in conversation with them or just to listen to what they say? Sometimes you have no option!

Quick tips for improving the speed of your listening comprehension

So, when you are listening to podcasts and cds or watching dvds or on demand video etc. you obviously have the option to be able to pause and rewind to playback sections until you understand. If you use something like Audible for listening to audiobooks you have the option to slow down the speed. This is the key to learning to understand faster speech. How do you that? Read on..

Step 1 –

Start by listening through to a short section, maybe only a sentence or two. Try, and I know it’s hard, to NOT translate into your native language as you’re listening. Just listen for words you understand.

Step 2 –

Then listen again and try to pick out words that you may recognize but don’t know the meaning of. Write them down, find out their meanings and listen again. This is where zou may encounter a few of the dreaded phrasal verbs. Fear not, I will have an article for you soon on the most used phrasal verbs and the best way to memorize them.

Step 3 –

So now you should be starting to understand a little better but there are still parts that you can’t work out. Firstly, don’t stress about this because as a native English speaker I often find situations, usually in music, where I realize that, after 30 years of listening and singing along to a song, I was singing the wrong words! The reason for this is that English is a language that has such smooth connected speech that it’s difficult to pick out one word from another. This is why it is not recommended to learn vocabulary in single isolated words. Although sometimes it’s fine to learn a new word in isolation, it’s much better if you can learn new vocabulary in collocations (words that often go to together such as ‘Football match ‘ or ‘Best regards’. When you learn the word ‘best’ you hear it as b-e-s-t however in connected speech, in a collocation like ‘best regards’, the last letter T is usually dropped and what you hear is ‘besregards’. “Give my besregards to Jim”

Step 4 –

After you’ve had another listen and tried to work out some more of the connected speech you can then go ahead and look at the subtitles if available. Then as you continue your practice, begin to speed up the audio.

But what about listening to real people in the real world?

in the case of listening to real people whom you are actively engaging in conversation with, you have to ask them to slow down and repeat.

“Can you repeat that please?”

”Would you mind speaking a little slower please, it will give me a better chance of understanding you.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that, please could you say it again for me?”

if you’re talking to native English speakers and they don’t understand you they may use…

”say it again” but often. At least where I’m from in the north of England, it will sound like “sayagen”

The traditional and more polite version is “pardon?”

So, that’s a long answer but I hope it helps. I have a lot more help for learners of English here: Almost Everything You Need to Learn English.

Video is without doubt the best way to learn. I’m not just saying that because I have a free English video course for you but because I know from first hand experience that I personally retain more information from watching a well made piece of video, than I do from any other way of learning. Why is that? I’ll tell you later, first of all I want to share with you another of your common mistakes and explain how you can correct it.

We are going with Petr.

If you want to tell someone that you are going somewhere and you are not going alone, it is quite right (correct) to say that you are going with them. The mistake is made here when you refer to both yourself and the other person by saying; ‘we’ are going, and then also saying the name of the other person. For example;

You are going to the cinema with your friend Petr. Only the two of you are going. The first time you tell me about this trip to the cinema you should say:

“I am going to the cinema with Petr.”

Not ~~“we are going to the cinema with Petr”~~ or ~~“We’re going with Petr to the cinema.”~~

This is because if you use we are going with Petr, I assume you mean you and I and Petr (three of us). The we would refer to you and I.

If I know, for example, that you have a husband/wife/girlfriend/boyfriend and you say “We are going to the cinema tonight” then I assume you mean you and your partner, so, you don’t need to say who with. In this case just the first time you mention your trip to the cinema you would say just:

We’re going to the cinema tonight.

I would understand from that sentence that you mean you and your significant other (boyf/girlf/husband/wife etc).

If you want to say at the first mention who you are going with, refer to yourself (I) and then who with, so:

I’m going to the cinema tonight with Petr.

See if you can remember this and compare how well you retain the information (just from reading it) with how you are able to recall information from my free English video course. Read on to find out more about the benefits of using different learning styles.

Learning Styles

As I talked about in my previous blog, the traditional ways of learning all have their plus and minus points but the most important of those points is that they all have mainly only one learning style, with the exception of meeting somone face to face. The thing is, with video, not only do you have video and audio, but, it allows for still pictures, written words for you to read and it can be tactile (kinesthetic) if the video has physical action points for you to carry out.The fact that you can stop and repeat certain parts of the video also give it an advantage over meeting a person in real life. Can you imagine asking your English teacher to repeat the same thing as many times as you need to fully understand it?

When I am recommending or explaining new ideas to my clients, invariably (usually) they come from something I have remembered from a video I have seen. That might be TED talks, documenaries or online courses, ok there are many things I have recommended from books too but I find things much harder to remember if I have only read them. And there is some science behind that, here it is…

The Science Behind the Idea

On the site socialmediatoday.com Eric Schwartzman gives these reasons why learning online is king.

Here are 4 big advantages of online learning:

Automatic Retention – You don’t have to take notes. When all the material is recorded, and people are spared from having to retain everything themselves, they can focus on trying to actually understand the key concepts and on demoing tools and services without having to write it all down simultaneously.
The Knowledge You Want First – When information is presented from a lectern, it’s shared in a linear fashion. You have to sit through long, drawn-out explanations, some of which you know, and some of which you don’t. But since everyone knows different things, the linear approach serves the group, but not necessarily the individual. When on-demand content is broken down into bite-sized chunks, and tagged appropriately so it can be easily found, participants can laser in on what they want.
Learn at your Own Pace – Everybody picks things up at different speeds. Good instructors try and teach to the center of the classroom, which under serves fast and slow learners. When you can stop and rewind demos as many times as you like and learn at your own pace, everyone can learn and fast or slow as they like, and no one gets lost or bored.
Anytime, Anywhere – There is no longer a need to schedule time out of the office, wait until the right course is available, be forced to consume 6 hours of course material in a single day or board a plane. Online social media training allows you to time-shift and place-shift your professional development when you want, where you want.

My Opinion

While I agree with the majority of what Eric says, I would still argue that writing down and taking notes plays a valuable part in commiting information to memory (when used simultaneously with other learning styles). What makes note taking even better is when you add colour, pictures and different styles. Check out Mike Rohde and his sketchnotes for some amazing inspiration.

If you haven’t tried learning English from a video course before, I suggest you give it a go. You will find a multitude (tons of stuff) on You Tube to help you learn English and of course you can take my free English video course by clicking here. If you have tried video learning before and weren’t impressed, do still check out my course as I assure you, it will be like no other video course you’ve taken before (it’s not just a talking head course).

See you next week with a winter holiday special, yes, I’m going to learn how to snowboard! Leave a comment below and tell me if you’ve tried video before as a way to learn English.

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Help for English Learners