Advanced Listening Skills: Linking

If you're struggling

to understand native English speakers,

then you need to master this one essential skill.

(upbeat music)

Hello, it's Keith from English Speaking Success

and the website The Keith Speaking Academy,

here to help you develop your speaking skills

in a fun and professional way

so you can become a confident speaker of English.

An important part of speaking English

is also understanding and listening.

So, listening skills.

Let's see how much you can understand.

Listen to this.

Either put it on, take it off, or go away.

But I agree, it's not a nice suit.

What did I say?

Now, I agree, it's difficult because there's no context,

but by the end of this video,

you will understand this sentence perfectly.

Now, first of all, let me give you a simpler test.

How do you pronounce this?

Now, you may say, you may have said,

"Take it off," and that's fine.

"Take it off," that's correct.

It's also good.

The thing is, a lot of native English speakers will say,

"Take it-off."

Or if you're American, "Take id-off."

Now, you don't have to pronounce it like that,

but what's happening is something we call "linking".

Take it off, take-i-toff.

Ta-kit-off.

We're linking the consonant

with the vowel of the next word.

So, "take it" becomes "tay-kit".

"It off" becomes "toff".

"Tay-ki-toff."

The important thing is not that you can pronounce that.

You don't have to link,

and native speakers don't always link,

but you should be able to understand it when you hear it.

Tay-ki-toff. Tay-ki-doff.

Tay-ki-toff.

So in this video,

I'm gonna show you three common linking sounds,

and if you can start listening out for,

listening out for, and hearing these sounds,

then your listening skills

will start to improve dramatically.

And remember as well, by the end of this video,

you've going to understand that first sentence perfectly.

Oh, also at the end,

I'll give you a bonus tip,

some ideas or tips on how to continue practice,

practice developing your listening skills.

Okay, sound good?

Ready? Let's do it.

Okay, linking.

So the three types of linking

we're gonna look at are constant plus vowel,

vowel plus, plus vowel

consonant plus consonant.

It's important, we're looking at consonant sounds

and vowel sounds.

Not the letter, but the sounds, okay?

Let's begin with the first one linking consonant

and vowel sounds.

So this is where a word ends in a consonant sound,

and the next word begins with a vowel sound.

And probably the easiest place to start

is with phrasal verbs.

Now, this is where a verb is joined with a preposition,

and the meaning changes a little bit, like put out.

So here, I think it's really, really easy

because if you think about it, most prepositions begin

with a vowel sound, right?

In, on, out, off, away,

about, over, around, under.

So, most phrasal verbs will have a linking,

put out, put out,

or in American English, put out, put out.

Put out.

Okay?

Now you don't have to say that,

but you want to get used to hearing that sound.

This would be take off, take off, okay?

So listen to these common phrasal verbs.

Hand in, get on, put out, take off.

For example, hand in your homework, get on the bus,

put out the rubbish, take off your shoes, right?

What's more with phrasal verbs, if we substitute the noun

for a pronoun, so we change homework for it,

hand in your homework, hand it in,

the it always goes between the verb and the preposition.

So it's hand it in, and listen to the linking.

Hand it in, hand it in, hand it in.

Can you hear that?

Hand it in.

So you're gonna get, hand it in, put it out, take it off.

So you need to get used to these sounds.

Do you remember the sentence at the beginning of the video?

Either put it on or take it off.

Either put it on or take it off.

Maybe I'm talking about a suit, or a jacket, or a hat.

Either put it on or take it off, right?

So get used to that sound.

It's a bit like the sound of a train, right?

Put it on, put it off, put it out, take it on, take it off,

take it out.

I can hear a song coming up.

Before I start singing,

let's move on to number two.

Right, number two, vowel with a vowel sound.

So when a word ends in a vowel sound,

and the next word begins with a vowel sound,

there'll be probably either a wuh

or a yuh linking sound.

So, words ending in an O or a U sound,

look at the shape here.

O or U, there's a wuh.

You can see the shape, right?

There's a wuh.

There's gonna be a wuh connecting them.

For example, go away, go away.

You're gonna hear go away.

Go out.

Go wonder.

No idea.

Blue eyes, you all, you all know.

Sometimes, it's subtle, it's a bit softer,

but it's normally there, right?

And once you start hearing this, go out, go wonder.

Go wonder, OMG, right?

You can actually start hearing a different sound.

That's with the O and the U.

If a word ends in A, E, or I sound,

you can see the shape, right?

It's more like a smile.

A, E, I, flowing into another vowel sound,

it's gonna be a yuh.

Say it, say it, say it.

He ate, he ate, he ate, he ate.

I agree. I agree.

You agree? I agree.

You start hearing different sounds right?

Now remember at the beginning

of the video, we had go away,

I agree, two sounds.

That sentence was put it on, take it off or go away.

But I agree.

I think they're talking about a suit, put it on,

take it off, or go away, but I agree.

But I agree.

Okay, lots of linking, get used to these sounds.

- Let's move on to the last, number three.

Number three, constant plus the same constant.

- So here we're looking at words

where one word ends in a constant

and the next word begins with the same constant.

Have a look at these sets of words.

How would you say them?

Okay, some people may say bad day,

bad day, not quite right.

Most commonly we'd say bad day, bad day.

There's only one duh sound.

And in fact, the first word, there's a bit

of a what we call a glottal Stop.

Bad, bad you, you stop the air flowing.

Bad day, there's a bit of a pause. Can you hear that?

It was a bad day.

Similarly, for the next one, look quickly.

Look quickly.

There's only one kuh sound.

And notice it's not about spelling.

There's a K or a Q, it's a kuh sound.

It's the same constant sound.

Look quickly.

Likewise, the third one, eat tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes.

Eat tomatoes, eat tomatoes.

It's just one tuh sound.

And the last one, nice suit.

There's only one sss sound, nice suit.

So you can see they are, if you like, there's a linking

of the same sound.

So we could say it's not a nice suit,

it's not a nice suit, right?

But I agree, it's not a nice suit.

Now going back to our sentence at the very beginning

of this video, do you remember?

It was something like this.

Either put it on, take it off, or go away,

but it's not a nice suit.

Now you get the context, right?

Somebody saying, well, with the suit, right,

put it on or take it off, or even go away.

But I agree, it's not a nice suit.

That's it.

Now, you should be able to hear all of those linking sounds.

Either put it on, take it off or go away.

But I agree, it's not a nice suit.

Got it?

Lovely.

Now of course there are other aspects of linking.

There's a simulation, an illusion that we haven't looked at.

But these are three very common kinds of linking

and a great place to get started with.

You are getting started.

I'm getting finished, almost the end.

But first, let me give you some tips

on how to improve your listening.

Okay, two tips for practicing

and developing your listening skills.

Number one, do dictations.

So this is where you work

or listen to a very short clip, maybe 20 seconds,

30 seconds, you listen and write down what you hear.

Then you go back and check to the transcript.

So you, ideally, you want to get a short audio

where there's a transcript as well.

Good news is there's a very, very simple tool,

a chrome extension,

and there's a safari extension that you can use.

It's called Glasp.

It's free,

and basically whenever you watch a video, like on YouTube,

you'll get the transcript in the sidebar.

Ted Talks also have transcripts.

So just take a very short clip,

and as you listen, write down what you hear.

This will really help get your appreciation of,

or noticing of, the linking in particular.

Number two, listen to different kinds of text.

We tend to listen to the same thing, right?

We often listen to the same podcasts

or the same news program.

You need to be listening to different kinds,

and I would say three kinds:

prepared, scripted, and improvised.

Prepared is where, for example, people are giving speeches

or presentations, and that's great.

Listen to that.

Scripted is like the films,

the soaps, the dramas on TV, the Netflix series,

where it's scripted,

but you are listening to a different kind of English.

Finally improvised, but it's not planned.

Typically interviews on TV with people where they just go

with the flow, and that's where you'll really be exposed

to very, very natural spoken English.

And this linking, you'll be hearing a lot,

hopefully even more after today.

That's it.

So there you go.

You now know three key points for linking

to improve your listening skills.

But remember, the important thing is not knowing,

it's doing.

So what can you do?

Well, you can, for example, download this PDF and review it,

but most of all, go and practice, right?

Remember my three steps to learning English:

study, practice, review.

I did a whole video about it up here.

You can go and check it out.

You've done the study,

now go and practice.

Go and practice.

Go and practice listening to all of these different sounds.

That's it.

I hope you've enjoyed the video.

If you've liked it, leave me a like.

If you've liked it

and you want to work more actually on your pronunciation,

I have a very interesting course for you.

It's called Fluent Grammar for IELTS Speaking.

It's a grammar course like no other, dun, dun, dun.

Basically, it focuses on spoken grammar.

You see most people learn grammar

with a book, with the rules,

doing exercises, can be a bit boring.

This is a totally unique course from the beginning,

it gets you speaking the grammar

so that you are automating it

and you're using correct grammar

with the correct pronunciation.

It's quite interesting. Go and check it out.

There's a link down below. If it's for you, fantastic.

If not, I will see you in the next video.

Thank you so much for watching. Take care.

All the best, bye-Bye.

(uplifting music)