Four reasons why you may struggle understanding English native speakers and what you can do to improve.

As an advanced English learner you may find it extremely challenging to understand native speakers and this could become a significant barrier to communication. You may have a good command of the language, and feel you’ve been making great progress in speaking. However, sometimes when you hear someone speak, you may often find that you don’t understand a word!

This is a painful reality for everyone, but it is important not to lose heart. You might not be as helpless as you think, as a lot will depend on why you can’t comprehend native speakers. In this article, we’ll look at the multiple reasons you might not understand and give you some ideas on how to improve your listening skills.

There are more than 160 distinct English accents in use across the globe today and there are almost 40 different accents in the UK only. If you are a “traditional” learner of English as a Foreign Language, you are likely to have practiced listening to only one or two “standard” British or American English accents at school. This type of practice might have been delivered to you during conversation classes with a teacher or by listening to a series of “artificially” created recordings that come with students’ books. In a nutshell, you may not have been exposed enough to a wider and more authentic range of accents. 

Tip: Try to find the time to get exposed to a variety of both native and non-native accents in your everyday life: listen to podcasts, interviews, talk shows for example with Australian, South African, Indian, Irish, Cockney, both East Coast and West-Coast American…and others. This can certainly help you comprehend people with a variety of accents.

Native speakers do eat their words! How many times have you thought that native speakers seem to ‘swallow’ their words? In a way, this is true. To put it another way, in fluent spoken English the single words people say in a sentence get naturally mashed together. This is called connected speech. For this reason what you may hear is like a continuous sound with the pronunciation of one word flowing into the next, often modifying the sounds of the single words . This change takes place because of where the sounds are produced in the mouth. As it is too difficult to pronounce the different word sounds one after the other, they are modified. There are many types of connected speech (linking, elision, sound intrusion, assimilation…) For example Assimilation happens when sounds blend to make an entirely new sound. For example: “don’t you” getting blended into “don-chu”.

Tip: Listen to authentic spoken language as much as possible for example films and Tv series and if you can turn on the subtitles in English. This will allow you to gradually become more comfortable with such “alien noises”. Music and singing along with songs may also be used as they are hugely helpful for connected speech. Why not try some karaoke?

Lack of vocabulary One of the main reasons you might not understand native speakers is that you don’t know enough of the terms. While this may seem simple, it is vital to distinguish between not comprehending the spoken words and not knowing the words ore expressions used at all. It might be difficult to tell if you didn’t understand anything because it was delivered too quickly or because you just didn’t grasp the terms. Would you have understood if it had been spoken more slowly? Or if it were documented?

Tip: Turn on the subtitles (in English!) Films (as well as Tv shows) often use less formal, colloquial phrases that are popular among native speakers. Subtitles are an excellent tool for viewers to boost their vocabulary and familiarity with real spoken English. They also improve word recognition and can therefore help you with understanding connected speech too.

Real spoken English is different from textbook English there are several differences between written and spoken English. When learning English, they might be confusing When spoken, real English has greater rhythm, a variation in speaking pace, pauses, improvisation. In written English, the content is more defined and the form is more “organized”. Spoken English is face to face and is more in narrative form, event-based, action-based. Moreover, certain terminology is exclusively used in spoken English, such as slang terms and colloquialisms.

Tip Immersion in the real language that real people speak in real situations is highly recommended. If you don’t live abroad or don’t have many foreign friends try with immersing yourself in reality TV programs, live chat shows and interviews. You will not only learn a new collection of conversational words and idioms, but you will also experience them in context. Typically, this is difficult to acquire and needs time spent interacting with individuals who speak that language. This learning process can be accelerated by watching and listening to this kind of material.