What REALLY causes problems in understanding spoken English
Hint: It's not accents and rate of speech
If you struggle to understand spoken English, you may have tried to practice listening by:
watching movies & series with your native language subtitles
watching movies & series with English subtitles
watching videos over and over again to try to catch what’s being said
listening to music that you don’t like, just because you can hear the words more clearly
listening to podcasts where the hosts make jokes that you don’t even understand
listening to and reading audiobooks that just put you to sleep
listening and answering comprehension questions that you’re just guessing at based on the few words you DID understand
Sound familiar?
The truth is that these activities don’t address the underlying problem of listening in English - the fact that you can’t identify the words and phrases that you are hearing.
For many learners, it’s not a problem with comprehension, it’s a problem with decoding.
And getting better at decoding requires a different approach than one for improving comprehension.
There are three main factors that affect your ability to decode. Your ability to understand spoken English may involve all or maybe just one or two.
Understanding vocabulary
Understanding rhythm
Understanding connected speech
In the upcoming weeks, I’m going to talk about each problem in more detail, show you how to recognize it, and give you some tips about how to work on it.
Let’s start a new way of listening together!