8 ways to improve English listening skills and understand native speakers

Hello everyone, and welcome back to English with Lucy today I am going to

teach you eight ways in which you can improve your listening skills, your

English listening skills. Now number one is take advantage of YouTube's subtitle

system but make sure you understand and use it properly so in order to improve

your daily English, the English that you'll use every day. I want you to find

vloggers and kind of daily youtubers that document their everyday life who

actually add their own subtitles or vloggers that don't rely on the

auto-generated subtitles. Nowadays YouTube has some very very good subtitle

software but it's never perfect when I post a video YouTube analyzes what I say

and it posts what it thinks I've said as auto-generated subtitles. However, for

every single video I do pay for someone else to actually write the subtitles and

there are a couple of reasons why I do this. Number one, I want correct spelling

and grammar YouTube software doesn't add in the correct punctuation and kind of

commas and quotation marks and things like that and that's important for you

to learn. It's important for you to see where a sentence starts and ends and

where there might be pauses. Also sometimes the software just completely

misses out words, it misspells things, it misunderstands what I've said. Sometimes

it puts very rude things in place of what I've actually said so I choose to

buy my own subtitles and a lot of creators do this and a lot of vloggers

do this and it's very very useful. Kn fact on my own vlogging channel where

I've been documenting my life, my personal life on the farm in rural

England, I do write the subtitles for you so you know that what I'm saying on

screen is what is also written on screen. How can you tell if the subtitles are

trustworthy or not? Well one indicator is the term

'auto-generated' which will come up if YouTube's AI system has developed the

software if you follow some vloggers that speak a native level of English

watch their videos with subtitles every week or every day you will pick up on so

much vocabulary vocabulary that we use as natives in our daily lives

number two is listen to a variety of accents and dialects now I don't just

say accents I say dialects because different parts of my country England

have different dialects so northern slang is very different to southern

slang in fact British English is so unbelievably diverse so for example

something as simple for me as a can of coke well up north they might say a tin

of coke when that would sound ridiculous for me so to ensure that you understand

everything that you listen to or almost everything that you listen to because

let's face it everything would be quite the challenge because even I don't

understand everything that I hear you do need to listen to a variety of accents

and dialects the different sounds that they produce the different common

phrases that they use and the different slang words as well are really really

important and I have something in the pipeline that will massively help you

with this I'm going to talk about it more towards the end of this video

number three is of course speak with natives listen

to natives and speak to them but more than that it's ask for repetition and

ask for explanation so you want to speak with natives ask them to repeat things

and ask them to explain and justify things a lot of students ask me how they

can find well priced native teachers or native level teachers just because

someone isn't native doesn't mean that they're not an excellent teacher and

this segment is sponsored by a come and that I do genuinely highly recommend

and it's a talkie I talkie is a huge online database of both native and

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practice conversation and listening to someone talk and asking for them to

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set yourself a goal and start earning those prizes right let's move on to way

number 4 now this is a really simple way of making native speech easier to

understand it's so simple I can't believe that

people still aren't taking advantage of it do you know about YouTube's slowdown

function now when I look at videos that are explaining something technical like

how to use my new washing machine or why Mike Hoover isn't sucking sometimes I

find the person takes ages to get to the point or to explain something so I speed

them up I click on the little cog and then I click on playback speed and I put

them at one point two five times speed or one point five if I'm feeling really

energetic however the slowdown function would be

really really useful for language learners you can slow down speech to

three-quarters of the natural pace 0.75 speed if you're watching a video and

you're interested in what that person is saying but they are just speaking too

quickly try that 0.75 speed now 0.5 tends to be too slow the person sounds

drunk or deranged 0.75 for a very fast talker can actually be really really

helpful even for me as a native speaker there are some people that just go a

little more and I find it hard to follow so if there's a vlogger or a narrator or

a presenter that you have shunned in the past because they speak too quickly try

watching them on YouTube try slowing them down and let me know what you think

what would be even better is if they had their subtitles added as well so you can

watch them in slow speed without subtitles and then watch them again with

subtitles but more about that later on now number five this is a really common

listening tip but I'm going to talk about it because I've got something

extra to add it is watch English movies and TV shows now we all know this this

is one of the first tips that teachers will give you but it can be really

really hard and really daunting to try and work out which TV show and which

film is going to be at your level it's so annoying to finally find something

that you want to watch after reading loads of

and then you just can't understand it it's also really annoying when your

computer or your network won't allow you to access certain films and TV shows

because of where you live because your country is not allowed to view that

specific website I have got a video coming next week on my recommendations

for British TV shows and I start with beginner level and move to pre

intermediate intermediate and advanced I cover all the bases and they're all

shows that will help you develop a British English accent and help you

understand it as well I'll also talk about the variety of

British English accents as well now when this video is live I will link it in the

description box so check that out because I want to help you find

something that you can actually watch and understand and then you can move up

through the levels number six is learn responses that will buy you more time

because when we are listening to what someone is saying in a language that is

not our first language we do need that little bit of extra time to process what

they're trying to say I have a couple of tricks and phrases that will buy you

more time things that you can say without seeming like a strange person

going because that is what a lot of English learners do it's a natural thing

to want to fill the gap by just making one noise like

and you also don't want to just fill it with silence because that can be awkward

that person might think that you've not heard them when really you've just not

understood them what you want to do is fill the conversation with fillers or

interjections and I've made various videos on this topic I did a great one

with Harry from real English with real teachers on interjections things like

ooh

I will link that down below and also last week I did post a video on

different ways to say I know and I understand because those are very

commonly used in conversation whilst you're processing what someone has said

or you're just showing that you've understood and acknowledged what they've

said again I will link that I think both of those videos would be really really

useful they will give you phrases that you can use to buy more time whilst

you're processing speech number seven is listen whilst you read listen whilst you

read now I talked about this a lot in my videos because it really really works

I'm always talking about listening to audiobooks as you read the actual book

and I'm not just saying this for fun this is genuinely such a good method it

trains your brain to connect written words with spoken words it helps improve

your pronunciation it helps improve your listening it helps improve your spelling

as well the way a word is spelt in English doesn't necessarily give you any

indication as to how it's pronounced in English and the way a word is pronounced

in English doesn't really help you work out how that word is spelt this is why

English seems like such a hard language to understand when you're listening to

it and such a hard language to pronounce because you look at word and you just

have no idea how it should be pronounced if you take a book that you have already

read in English or a book that you would like to read in English and read that

book as you are listening to that same audiobook version your problems will be

solved now it's important to find a narrator you like and this is why I

always recommend audible audible is an amazing platform of audiobooks they have

the most incredible selection and you can also listen to quite lengthy samples

so you can work out if you like the narrator's accent if you like the speed

at which they speak you can also slow them down and you can speed them up if

you feel like you need to and the best part is you can get one free audio book

that's a 30-day free trial or an audible and you just have to click on the link

in the description box to sign up and there I've put some recommendations for

great books as well audiobooks to listen to and they're written book counterparts

it's a great method that's why I talk about it all the time now the last tip

number 8 is to create your own transcription exercises you know those

annoying horrible listening tests where you have to fill in a gap right what you

hear unfortunately they work however we want

to do something that's relevant for us don't we so if you find something that

is particularly interesting to you have you are interested in photography and

it's about cameras maybe you're interested in wildlife or skateboarding

I have no idea but everybody has their thing don't they I personally love

cooking and gardening well if you find something that's very very interesting

to you create your own listing exercise because it won't be so boring and

painful this exercise is all about listening blindly meaning that you are

not looking at any visuals so you don't see their mouth moving you don't see

their emotion nothing and you definitely definitely don't look at any subtitles

take one sentence or if you're feeling more advanced you can take a couple of

sentences and listen to it once then you can listen to it for a second time and

then you have to write down exactly what you've heard or what you think you've

heard after that you can listen to it one more time and you can look at the

transcription or the subtitles make sure they are accurate and there you have it

you've created your own transcription exercise using something that is

relevant and interesting to you the reason why these sorts of exercises are

included in so many different examinations

by so many different prestigious examination boards across the globe it's

because they really really work so if you can get into the habit of every time

you're listening to something interesting and you know there are

reliable transcriptions or subtitles available to you if you do this and make

it a habit you really really will learn so much and you'll get so used to

analyzing things from a listening perspective right that's it for today's

lesson I hope you enjoyed it and I definitely hope you take some of my

advice please feel free to add any more advice so we can all learn from each

other in the comments section and don't forget to check out I talk e you can

click on the link down below and get your ten dollars worth of I talk e

credits and you can start the language challenge don't forget to connect with

me on all of my social media I've got my Facebook I've got my Instagram and I've

got my Twitter and I've got my personal channel with fully subtitled vlogs of my

life here on a farm I do lots of cooking I do lots of walking I do lots of

chatting and just organizing my home it's meant to be relaxing for you and

I've had quite positive feedback so far so I hope you enjoy it as well I will

see you soon for another lesson