Understand Fast Native English Speakers with this Advanced Listening Lesson

- Hello, lovely students,

and welcome back to English with Lucy.

Today, we're going to do something a little bit different.

We're going to work on your listening skills.

Now this is not going to be a lesson

where I explain many things to you.

Instead, I'm going to ask you to do an activity.

By the way, in today's lesson,

you will need a pen and paper,

or a device like a smartphone or a computer to make notes,

but you will need something to write down some answers.

It's going to help you identify

the areas of listening that you need to work on,

and it's going to help you

improve your English listening skills.

Now, I don't normally do this,

but today I'm going to invite you inside one of my courses,

inside my English listening challenge.

I'm going to allow you to do some of the activities

in that challenge, so that you can also benefit from them.

My listening challenge is a 30 day course

designed specifically for students

who struggle to understand native speakers.

I know that a lot of students

want to listen to native speakers in podcasts,

in movies, in TV shows, in real life in conversations,

but there's a big barrier.

There is something preventing them from doing it.

Unfortunately, the English that you learn at school,

the listening exercises that you take at school,

aren't always going to help you understand English

in real life.

I have designed this English listening challenge

to transform your listening skills in 30 days.

You don't have to take it in 30 days,

you have lifetime access.

You can take it at your own pace,

but if you really want to make quick progress,

then I recommend you do.

My students have had amazing results from this course.

And what they love is that it features

really interesting interviews about British culture.

Every day, we take a clip from an interview.

We do lots of exercises,

and we analyse the language, the pronunciation,

the vocabulary, why they're saying one thing,

and not another.

Best of all, the interviews are with people you might know.

Charlie from Real English With Real Teachers,

Jess from Love and London, and Joel and Lia.

We are offering a special price

on the listening course at the moment.

All you have to do is click on the link

in the description box.

You can view the course, you can view the special price,

and you can decide if you want to sign up.

Hurry though, it is a time limited offer.

I would love to help you out

with your listening over 30 days.

Okay, whenever I practise listening with my students,

I always make them start with a transcription task.

Transcription tasks are incredibly effective ways

of putting your listening skills to the test.

So I am going to play you three clips

from an interview with Charlie

from Real English With Real Teachers.

He lives in Australia,

and we are discussing cultural differences.

So I'm going to give you three clips,

and we're going to play each clip three times.

I want you to write down what you hear.

If you have to pause,

and go back and play a few more times, don't worry.

This is quite a challenging exercise.

Are you ready?

Here's clip one.

Wow, I really didn't expect that.

It's quite fast.

Let's play it again, see if you can write anything down.

Even if you write one word, you're doing really well.

Wow, I really didn't expect that.

Did you get anything?

Let's do it one more time.

Wow, I really didn't expect that.

I'm talking very quickly there.

I'm talking at the pace I speak when I'm with my friends.

Okay, let's move on to clip number two.

I'll give the answers at the end.

- [Charlie] I guess it's because of the climate,

and the power of the sun.

- How did you get that?

That's Charlie.

I think he is speaking slightly slower than I was.

Let's go again.

- [Charlie] I guess it's because of the climate,

and the power of the sun.

- One more time.

- [Charlie] I guess it's because of the climate,

and the power of the sun.

- You can go back and listen again if you need to.

Let's move on to the last one.

You ready?

- [Charlie] The biggest thing in Australia for us

was the fact that they get up very early,

and go to bed very early.

- Ooh, this is a long one.

I'm going to give you some more time.

Just write down as many words as you can.

Okay, let's play again.

- [Charlie] The biggest thing in Australia for us

was the fact that they get up very early,

and go to bed very early.

- This is a really advanced one to write down.

That much is a lot.

The clips are getting longer and longer.

- [Charlie] The biggest thing in Australia for us

was the fact that they get up very early,

and go to bed very early.

- Pause if you need some more time to think,

go back if you need to play again,

but now I'm going to discuss the answers.

Clip number one, it was me.

And I said, wow, I really didn't expect that.

But I said it really quickly.

Wow, I really didn't expect that.

In the listening challenge,

we do go through connected speech,

and how to understand natives

when they're joining words together.

Okay, the next one.

- [Charlie] I guess it's because of the climate,

and the power of the sun.

- I guess it's because of the climate,

and the power of the sun.

Did you get any of that?

Let's move on to the final one.

- [Charlie] The biggest thing in Australia for us

was the fact that they get up very early,

and go to bed very early.

- The biggest thing in Australia for us

was that they get up very early, and go to bed very early.

A very long sentence, but the vocabulary isn't too advanced.

Notice how he joins together for us, for us, not for us.

Okay, the next part is the comprehension part

of the listening test.

I am going to give you 10 questions on screen.

And at that same time, I will play the full clip twice.

If you need to listen again,

just go back and re-listen, listen to it again.

After we've finished,

I'll talk through the answers with you.

What was the first difference that you noticed

culturally when you moved to Sydney?

- [Charlie] I think the biggest thing in Australia for us

was the fact that they get up very early,

and go to bed very early.

They're a completely different shift to, I think, the UK,

where we tend to stay up quite late.

What time do you go to bed?

- [Lucy] See, I go to bed quite early actually.

We always have,

because my husband, Will, used to be a farmer.

And so he would go to bed early

to be able to get up and work early,

because he just needed to work in daylight hours.

Why do you think that is in Australia?

Don't they like to go out and party?

- [Charlie] Yeah, I know what you mean.

I thought they were a bit of a party,

they had a bit of a party scene,

but no, they, I guess it's because of the climate,

and the power of the sun.

It sounds a bit strange,

but the sun is so bright at like five or 6:00 AM,

that it just feels right to try and get up then.

But it did come as a shock for us,

because we wanted our coffee at like 2:00 PM,

but where my sister lives,

which is north of Sydney in the Gold Coast,

all of the coffee shops were shutting at around 1:30.

We were like, what?

- [Lucy] Wow, I really didn't expect that.

I thought it would be the other way around.

Okay, now I'm going to play it again,

and you can answer the second set of questions.

What was the first difference that you noticed

culturally when you moved to Sydney?

- [Charlie] I think the biggest thing in Australia for us

was the fact that they get up very early,

and go to bed very early.

They're a completely different shift to, I think, the UK,

where we tend to stay up quite late.

What time do you go to bed?

- [Lucy] See, I go to bed quite early actually.

We always have,

because my husband, Will, used to be a farmer.

And so he would go to bed early

to be able to get up and work early,

because he just needed to work in daylight hours.

Why do you think that is in Australia?

Don't they like to go out and party?

- [Charlie] Yeah, I know what you mean.

I thought they were a bit of a party,

they had a bit of a party scene,

but no, they, I guess it's because of the climate,

and the power of the sun.

It sounds a bit strange,

but the sun is so bright at like five or 6:00 AM,

that it just feels right to try and get up then,

but it did come as a shock for us,

because we wanted our coffee at like 2:00 PM,

but where my sister lives,

which is north of Sydney in the Gold Coast,

all of the coffee shops were shutting at around 1:30.

We were like, what?

- Wow, I really didn't expect that.

I thought it would be the other way around.

Okay, here are the answers, how did you do?

I'm going to provide you with the full transcript

of this clip soon.

So you might understand a little bit more

about why those answers were true or false,

but for now, let's move on to the next exercise,

which is a gap fill exercise,

really testing your understanding.

On screen, I am going to show you the full transcript,

but with some gaps, 10 gaps in total.

I am going to play the clip once,

and you can fill in the gaps.

Again, if you need to listen again, please do listen again,

and then I'll talk through the answers with you.

Ready?

Let's go.

What was the first difference that you noticed culturally

when you moved to Sydney?

- [Charlie] I think the biggest thing in Australia for us

was the fact that they get up very early,

and go to bed very early.

They're a completely different shift to, I think, the UK,

where we tend to stay up quite late.

What time do you go to bed?

- [Lucy] See, I go to bed quite early actually.

We always have,

because my husband, Will, used to be a farmer.

And so he would go to bed early

to be able to get up and work early,

because he just needed to work in daylight hours.

Why do you think that is in Australia?

Don't they like to go out and party?

- [Charlie] Yeah, I know what you mean.

I thought they were a bit of a party,

they had a bit of a party scene,

but no, they, I guess it's because of the climate,

and the power of the sun.

It sounds a bit strange,

but the sun is so bright at like five or 6:00 AM,

that it just feels right to try and get up then.

But it did come as a shock for us,

because we wanted our coffee at like 2:00 PM.

But where my sister lives,

which is north of Sydney in the Gold Coast,

all of the coffee shops were shutting at around 1:30.

We were like, what?

- Wow, I really didn't expect that.

I thought it would be the other way around.

So we have culturally, then we had a shift,

and a shift refers to a eight hour, roughly, period of work.

So you could do the day shift,

the morning shift, the night shift.

Charlie's saying that Australians

have their timings different.

They get up early, go to bed early.

It's like they're doing a different shift in the day.

Then we had farmer, the profession of working on a farm.

Then we have daylight hours,

the hours in the day when the sun is shining.

Number five, party scene.

That's another way of talking about the partying culture.

We have the climate, the general weather conditions.

Then we had feels right.

This is a common collocation, words that often go together.

If something feels right,

it's something that you think is correct,

or you think it's the right way to do something.

Then we have shock.

If something comes as a shock, it is a surprise to you.

It surprised me, it came as a shock to me

when he told me he wanted to break up with me.

Number nine, coffee shops, cafes,

and number 10, the other way around,

the opposite or the reverse.

Now in the listening challenge,

we go through the vocabulary,

and then you have a quiz on the new vocabulary.

In this lesson, I'm going to keep it simple,

and move on to our language focus section.

This is where I point out something unique,

or something interesting to my students

in this listening clip, and we discuss it.

In this clip, we're going to focus on pronunciation,

and we're going to talk about dropping the T,

not saying the T sound, or using the glottal stop.

The glottal stop features in Cockney accents,

where they say better instead of better,

but speakers of RP receive pronunciation.

My accent, we use it a lot too.

Even the queen uses it sometimes.

Listen to this clip.

- [Charlie] The fact that they get up very early,

and go to bed very early.

- It's quite quick, but he says the fact that they,

so he doesn't say the fact that they, the fact that they,

and this is because we often drop the T

when the following word starts with a consonant sound.

Sometimes we use it with vowel sounds,

but often with consonant sounds.

The fact that they is quite hard to say,

the fact that they, the fact that they.

Listen again to an example of me doing this.

Don't they like to go out and party?

Don't they?

I don't say don't they,

don't they like to go out and party?

Go out, I don't say go out, go out.

The glottal stop is more prominent

when you hear it in the middle of words

replacing the T sound, better.

Our vocal folds close,

it's almost like we're making a cough sound,

but with voice, like uh, uh, better.

It's like we're stopping the flow of air.

If you're looking for another listening task,

you can play the audio again,

and see if you can identify more examples

of dropping the T, the glottal stop.

Now in the listening challenge,

our daily lessons always end,

always conclude with an extra reading opportunity

for those who want it, an interesting text

about British American or Australian culture.

But for now, I think that's enough.

I've worked you pretty hard.

Let me know how you found these listening exercises

in the comment section.

Imagine the results you'll get

from doing these every day for 30 days.

You will get quite dramatic results.

If you are interested in joining the listening challenge,

and you want to see that special price,

click on the link in the description box,

you'll see the price, you can view the course.

You can learn a little bit more about the course,

and see if it's the right fit for you.

Don't forget to connect with me on all of my social media.

I've got my Instagram, or I've got my got two Instagrams.

I've got my personal one @Lucy,

and my English learning one, EnglishwithLucy,

where I share lots of short videos on learning English.

And I've got my website, englishwithlucy.co.uk,

where I've got a fantastic interactive pronunciation tool.

You can click on the phonemes,

and hear me pronounce the phonemes,

and words that contain those phonemes.

It's really useful.

If you are looking to improve your listening skills

and your vocabulary skills even further,

then I also have my vlogging channel,

where I document my life here in the English countryside.

And all of the vlogs are fully subtitled

for English learners.

I will see you soon for another lesson.

(gentle music)