How to Understand Real American English

- Hi! I'm Christina

from Speak English with Christina

and I'm so excited that you are here

with me today to learn about my new course,

Understand Real American English, Season One.

Before we start, I want to ask you a question.

What do you do to train your ear to understand

native speakers, especially Americans?

Maybe you watch American series with subtitles?

You listen to podcasts in English?

Or maybe you meet with a conversation partner?

And all of these activities are great.

They're things that I like to do as well

when I'm learning a foreign language.

But that's just enjoying English.

They're fun, they're easy

and you enjoy doing it,

you keep contact with the language

but it's not really working on your English.

You know, you probably watch

a lot of TV and movies in English,

but those dialogs are scripted.

And in English class, in the past perhaps,

you probably listened to scripted,

slow, articulate conversations

that are nothing like the conversations

you here in the real world.

And maybe you even live and work

with Americans so you feel like

because you're in this immersion situation

that your listening should become easier

much more quickly but it's not.

And I asked some students, some members

of the Speak English community

to describe the way that Americans speak

in their opinion and this is what they said.

"They speak fast and not correctly.

"There're 'codes' specifically for spoken English,

"like 'I gonna' and these are not natural for me,

"and I don't catch them immediately."

Another student said, "They, Americans, speak

"in a lazy way, so fast I can barely understand.

"I pay so much attention trying to figure out

"what they say, translating in my mind

"and organizing ideas, but the conversation

"continues and I'm lost."

And one more student said that it's

"as if a sentence was not made up

"of a sequence of words but of one continuous sound.

"And if you ask them, Americans, to talk slowly,

"after three seconds they start fast again."

And maybe you feel this way too,

you've had this same experience as these students.

And it's sure that in an ideal world,

we would have subtitles for real life conversations,

a little like comic strips.

You know, when I came to France as a student,

when I started talking to real French people,

having real conversations, I so wished

that there were these little speech bubbles

to have the subtitles so that

it would be easy to understand.

But when I was listening it felt like this.

I could catch some words but understanding

the entire message, it was like,

it was a little, a little fuzzy, a little blurry.

So, what do you need to easily understand

conversations in real English?

It's very simple actually.

You need real unscripted conversations

between Americans, and then someone

to explain the secrets to you, to make it

clear, easy, and to accelerate your improvement.

And also the transcripts of the real conversations,

to identify these 'strange sounds'

and progressively train your ear.

So, let me introduce my new course

Understand Real American English,

which is gonna give you all of that.

Now, what's in the course exactly?

You have 10 videos of real-life

conversations with Americans.

These are not scripted,

they're not classroom conversations.

They're real-life everyday topics

in real spoken English.

And this helps to train your ear

to understand the real, fast discussions

because you also get 10 explanation lessons,

to help you understand the big difference

between what you read and what you hear.

And this helps you also to learn

to instantly recognize these common chunks,

these expressions that we use all the time

and which are really the key

to increasing your listening fluency.

But also you get 20 comprehension activities,

to test your comprehension of course,

but also so that you're active in your learning.

It's not passive like watching television

or listening to podcast.

And this is going to, again, progressively

train your ear to instantly understand

the things that you hear

a little like in your native language.

And it's of course for your level.

If you're pre-intermediate, you're gonna focus

on improving your listening comprehension

of real-life English.

If you're intermediate, you're going

to move closer to understanding

your real-life conversations.

And for advanced levels all of the above,

but also you can start integrating

real-life expressions into your English

and even improve your pronunciation

because there're some activities

on pronunciation too.

Now, the course, the official price is 139 euros,

but we have a very special offer going on

at the moment where it's not 139

but it's only 87 euros.

From March 21st to April 4th,

we are having a special earlybird price,

the 40% discount, so you can get

the entire course for just 87 euros.

And with this you get some extra bonuses, let's say.

You will get early access to the material

as I create it and that means that you get

to participate and help me to create the course

that is going to be perfect for helping you.

It's going to address your real problems

and teach you the things that you need to know.

Hmm, maybe you're asking, "Wait,

"so why are you selling this course

"before it's ready?"

Because the course will be ready in June 2018

but we're opening the registrations now.

And we'll open the course only if we have

a minimum of 100 students who join this week

because I want to be sure that you want this course.

So, we're going to open registrations

at a discounted price and if we get 100 students,

then we'll create the course.

If we don't, then I'll refund your money

the next day and, you know, I'll find out

something that you really want

and then I'll create that.

But this is really the unique opportunity

to work with me to help create

the next Speak English with Christina course.

And, like I said, it's your chance

to influence the content to make sure

that this course is exactly what you need.

Maybe you're asking, "When can I buy the course?"

Like I said, registrations are open

from Wednesday March 21st

to Wednesday April 4th, 2018.

And, like I said, we'll create the course

only if we have a minimum of 100 students

who join over these two weeks.

And, if you register and in the end

we don't get 100 students,

I will refund your money on April 5th.

So the day after registrations close

we count the students on the list

and we decide if you guys wanted this course

or if you were telling me, "No, Christina,

"this is not the course for me."

But so many of you have told me

that listening to real conversations

is a big difficulty for you

and I'm sure that this course

is gonna help you enormously.

And it's really gonna help you to bridge

the gap between, you know, school or audio

that is created for learning English

and real world conversations.

So when will the course be accessible?

It's a good question.

And you'll get to the course

at the end of June 2018.

That's when the course will be

completed and totally ready.

But between now and June, you also have

the opportunity to test the videos

and the exercises, as I create them,

and give me your feedback

if you want to share that with me.

And, if you join now for only 87 euros,

you still get all of the updates

and all of the new content

that I add later for free.

So, if you've wanted to join my courses

in the past but the budget

was a little difficult for you,

this is a great opportunity

to get the course now and then also

enjoy the entire full course

with all of the upgrades for this low price.

So, like I said, earlybird registrations

are March 21st through April 4th

and instead of 139 euros, which is

the official price that we'll be releasing

the course in June, you can get

this very special unique offer for just 87 euros.

So I'm really looking forward to seeing you

in the Understand Real American English course

'cause I'm so excited to be creating this for you.

Alright, I'll see you in the course!