How to Understand Native English Speakers: Advanced Listening Skills

- If you want to understand native English speakers,

more than anything else,

you need this one thing.

Let me show you.

(bright music)

Hello, it's Keith from Keith Speaking Academy

and the YouTube channel, English Speaking Success

where you become a confident speaker of English.

Now you can get advanced listening skills by studying

and practicing several key phonological areas, right?

Things that actually I've shown you

in recent videos like contractions.

I am Keith, I'm Keith.

Linking like go away becomes go away.

Weak forms like it's for you, it's for you.

Like sentence stress, I live in a lovely house.

I live in a lovely house, right?

Also in a recent video,

I talked about changing your expectation

from expecting to understand everything

to not expecting to understand every word, right?

Just get the stressed words, get the gist.

Remember the gist, the overall meaning,.

But to be honest,

that's not quite the whole story.

In addition to that,

what most teachers probably don't tell you

is that there is one more thing that you need to change

and that is a change in mindset.

Don't focus only on individual words.

Also focus on chunks.

Let me say that again.

Don't only focus on individual words,

but also focus on chunks.

Not chunks of bread,

chunks of language, right?

What are chunks, well, let me explain what I mean

and I will show you some of the key chunks

you should focus on when listening

to native English speakers

to help you understand more and more.

Okay, let's do it.

Keith, What is a chunk?

Great question, a chunk is a group of words

that are commonly used together like a cup of tea.

A cup of tea.

Now when you're writing or reading,

yes, you have to learn four words, right?

A cup of tea.

But when you are listening and speaking,

you should learn one sound.

A cup of tea.

A cup of tea.

Chunks are best learned as a single unit, right?

They have one single sound.

A cup of tea.

Imagine, I mean, imagine that's a family name.

Hello, my name is Keith A-Cup-of-Tea.

Keith O'Hare, Keith A-Cup-of-Tea.

I sound Irish, don't I?

Keith A-Cup-of-Tea, hello.

Keith A-Cup-of-Tea, it's one sound.

The interesting thing is chunks can include grammar,

collocations, and even idioms.

Let's have a look at some examples, right?

For example, how many words can you hear now?

A piece of cake.

How many words? Right, four words,

a piece of cake,

but listen to the difference.

A piece of cake.

A piece of cake.

One sound, a piece of cake, right?

A piece of cake means something is easy, right?

Listen to the sounds.

This problem's a piece of cake.

This homework's a piece of cake, get it?

Okay, good, so let's look now

at some common grammatical chunks, right?

That you should really know

and be able to hear focusing on the one sound.

Okay, so we've seen two idiomatic chunks, idiom chunks.

Let's look at some grammar, grammatical chunks.

Now these are simple

and I guarantee that you know the grammar,

but you may not be used to the sound.

So I will say each one twice

and then give you some examples,

and you listen to the sound.

Forget the words, even just close your eyes.

If you want to practice speaking,

you can repeat, right?

But the focus here is listening to the sound.

All right, ready, here we've got the first one.

Do you like, do you like.

From do you like, do you like.

It's a bit like Jurassic Park.

Do you like, do you like coffee?

Do you like cats?

Do you like Picasso?

Okay, number two, would you like to.

Would you like to,

and it's, would you like to.

Would you like to go?

Would you like to help me?

Would you like to come?

Okay, remember focus on the sound.

Number three, there are lots of.

There are lots of.

There are lots of.

There are lots of people here.

There are lots of cars on the road, okay?

Number four, I'm gonna, I'm gonna.

I am going to.

I'm gonna go home.

I'm gonna have a cup of tea.

I'm gonna have a cup of tea, got it?

Good, good student, well done.

Next one, number five.

I used to, I used to,

I used to, right?

Talking about past habits.

I used to smoke.

I used to like it.

Number six, she's been, she's been.

She has been, she's been.

She's been on holiday.

She's been away, she's been ill.

Okay, number seven, have you ever.

Have you ever, have you ever.

Have you ever, have you ever.

Have you ever seen her before?

Have you ever met her before.

Okay, you hear the sound?

Once you start hearing the sound,

your whole listening is gonna change.

One more for the road.

I would've, I would've, okay?

I would have, I would've, I would've.

I would've helped, but I was busy.

I would've gone, but I had no money.

Okay, so these are just eight grammatical chunks

that you should be,

start getting used to hearing the sound, okay?

You can go back and watch the video again.

Now your next question probably is Keith,

where can I find a list of all of these chunks?

It's not a good question, right?

You can't, and I think actually it's the wrong question.

That's the wrong way to learn, it's like vocabulary.

Getting a list of a thousand words for IELTS

is not the way to learn English.

It's boring, it doesn't work, okay?

The way to learn is in context, step-by-step, right?

When you're listening to English,

listen for these chunks that you've heard.

Listen to the the natural pausing

of when a native English speaker

or a proficient speaker speaks

and you'll start to hear the pause and the chunk,

the pause and the chunk, okay?

This is not mathematical, there's no list.

It's more of a feeling.

It's not rule-based like grammar.

It's more of a feeling,

the feeling for the language.

Do you know that feeling, right?

When you are speaking a foreign language

and it sounds right?

You don't know why,

but it just sounds correct.

That feeling for the language

is very much what chunks is about, okay?

Oh, I'd like a cup of tea.

I'd like a cup of tea.

Okay, let's move on.

Right, okay, now I'm gonna give you

two tips to practice your listening skills, okay?

Number one, the first one is practice listening

without images, video, or text.

Now of course, it's great sometimes to study with video,

with pictures and text.

That multimedia helps you learn more deeply,

but sometimes practice listening

without video, text, image, only the audio,

because then you're directly creating

meaning from the sound.

You're not using the video

and the pictures to help you construct the meaning.

You're only using the sound to make the meaning.

Great way to do it,

listen to the radio on your phone, right?

The news on your audio, audio podcasts

or apps like the BBC Sounds app.

Just listen to the sounds sometimes, right?

Tip number two is to relax

and trust your feeling of English.

If you've been learning English

for more than one or two months,

you already have a feeling for English.

It might be stronger, it might be weaker,

but you have a feeling for English.

Trust that feeling, right, it's really powerful.

If you relax, trust your feeling

and kind of follow the flow as you are listening,

you will understand more, right?

When you get nervous,

do you know when you go to a party

and there's a lot of English people,

and you're suddenly meeting people you've never met.

You're super nervous, and the first thing they say,

you're like I don't understand 'cause you're nervous.

The more you relax,

the more you trust yourself and your feeling of English,

the more you will understand, okay?

So trust yourself, right?

Trust your feeling of English.

Great, the truth is, right?

Focusing on chunks and the sound, the one sound,

helps you understand English,

especially native English speakers, more easily

and it can actually help you speak more fluently as well.

And in fact, this is what I do in my fluent grammar course.

We look at different grammatical chunks and the sounds

and work on the pronunciation.

Learning grammar through speaking, not just reading.

So it's great for your grammar

and your pronunciation and intonation.

Anyway if you're interested,

there's a link below.

You can go and check it out,

the Fluent Grammar course.

I understand a lot of people cannot join a course online

and so for you,

I have the following tip.

Go and download the free PDF for this video.

Have a look at the eight grammatical chunks again

and then there's a link in the PDF to an audio,

and there's a short story using those chunks.

Just listen to the story, don't read it.

Just listen and focus on those sounds

and see how much you can understand.

Okay, great, listen, have a great day.

Keep studying, keep going,

and I will see you in the next video.

Take care, my friend, bye bye.

(bright music)