Understanding accents in English with ELLLO

Hi guys,

this is Christina and you’re watching Speak Better, Feel Great TV.

The place to boost your English and boost your career.

A lot of you have told me that improving your listening comprehension is a big objective for you.

You might have a good speaking level,

but when Bob the big American starts talking,

you have a hard time understanding.

Improving your listening comprehension skills takes regular work.

That’s why today,

I’ll show you a fantastic site where you can practice understanding real speech

and lots of accents.

Ya ready?

Today, we’re gonna look at a site that I often recommend to clients:

elllo.org

with 3 Ls.

It stands for

English Language Listening Library Online.

And it’s literally like an audio library.

Let’s have a look at how it can help you improve your listening skills,

even if you don’t have a lot of free time to do so.

First, we’ll go to the site

elllo.org.

Then,

choose your level.

You may need to try different levels to find the level that works for you.

The site suggests for example that

you should understand 90% when reading

and 50% when listening.

So if you listen and don’t understand everything, don’t panic.

You’re here to improve.

I like elllo.org because you can find audio extracts by accent,

and the accents are indicated by the flags.

For example, here,

you’ll here 2 Americans speaking

Dan

and Todd.

But here,

you’ll hear an English man

and a Scottish woman

Paul and Amy speaking.

These dialogues are scripted, so it’s exactly the type of speech you’ll hear in the real world.

Let’s look at this one, Where to Work in Asia.

You click on the title, and here you have a video,

but also just the audio conversation

here.

This video in this example simply a photo slideshow, but some videos actually show the speakers talking.

Before listening to the audio, exercises here

you can do the short vocabulary exercises by clicking “Vocabulary”.

This will give you new vocabulary words

before you listen.

You can also do a short vocabulary quiz,

and a short comprehension quiz.

You can do these before you listen

to help you anticipate what you’ll hear in the audio extract.

After you’ve done all of that,

listen to the audio.

Listen a few times if necessary and don’t worry if you don’t understand everything at first.

let's listen just to a short extract.

So that's a short extract.

Finally,

elllo.org always gives you

the audio script,

but only look at it after you listen.

To increase your comprehension, you can work on very short extracts

In the example that we listened to

we heard

“So, I’m here with Dan”

at the beginning.

“So, I’m here with Dan”

And you can listen to these short extracts

many times if necessary

and try to transcribe just the short extract.

without looking at the script.

Let's do an example of this exercise

So here, I've hidden the audio script. I can't see it,

and I'm gonna listen to just a short extract

from this audio maybe starting at

10 seconds.

And maybe I'll just listen to

2 or 3 seconds,

and then I'll try to transcribe it.

Hmm, let's see...

Hmm, let's listen again.

So, I'll go back to about 10 seconds.

About ten.

And then he keeps going

but I just want to transcribe a very short extract.

So then, I can come down here

I can look at my script

and here's the extract that I transcribed.

So Dan, what are your favorite cities...

And that's what we listened to.

So that's an example of a very short exercise that you can do

to help you to understand

authentic spoken English

and also to hear the difference between what you see

and what you hear.

If you do this type of exercise often,

you'll increase your audio comprehension very quickly

because you're working with real authentic English

the way that it really sounds,

not classroom English.

Here’s the recap:

elllo.org

with 3 Ls

is a great site for working on your comprehension skills a little every day.

The extracts are short,

so you can do one a day every morning or every evening.

That’s important,

because to really improve, you have to work on comprehension regularly

and often.

Here’s your Speak Better, Feel Great challenge for this week:

It’s simple.

Work with an extract on elllo.org this week.

Then come back and tell us about what you did in the comments below.

Remember,

the best way to boost your English and boost your career

is to work regularly on your English communication skills.

Sign up for the Speak Better, Feel Great Blog

and you’ll get one tip a week delivered directly to your inbox.

Even if you don’t have a lot of time in your busy schedule,

I’ll make sure that you improve the way you work in English a little each week.

Go ahead and sign up at christinarebuffet.com.

I’m Christina, from Speak Better, Feel Great TV.

See ya next time!