Why native English speakers are hard to understand

why are native English speakers often so hard to understand hi I'm Kenan English pronunciation specialist and your clear English coach and in this lesson I'm going to share three specific reasons why native speakers are often hard to understand when you know these three things it's the first step in exponentially improving your listening comprehension so let's dive in three reasons native speakers are hard to understand we we reduce we connect and we contract first we reduce in spoken English we have content words and we have function words content words are the words that bring meaning to a sentence think nouns verbs adjectives and adverbs whereas function words are the words that make a sentence grammatically correct they're little words that hold the sentence together these are your articles your prepositions your pronouns and these little function words often reduce this means that they're said very quickly and their pronunciation changes so for example two becomes T the becomes the a becomes a for becomes F and his and her a lot of times lose their H sound and become is and er learning more about how these little words really sound in conversational speech can significantly improve your listening comprehension you'll definitely want to check out this lesson I created about 25 super common words that reduce reason number two that native speakers are often hard to understand is that we connect we connect sounds between words when you're looking at written English you see a nice white space between each word but in speech that white space doesn't exist instead the ending sound of one word flows into the beginning sound of the next word so talk about becomes talk about great idea becomes great idea go over becomes go over when sounds flow together and combine in these ways words often don't sound as we expect they would when we see them written on a page taking some deliberate time to learn and practice how sounds flow together in English again can significantly improve your listening comprehension I have a lesson you'll find super helpful here called how to sound more fluent and natural with linking and the third reason why native speakers are often hard to understand is we contract this means that we take little function words we remove certain sounds and we squish them all together for example I will becomes Isle she is becomes she's did not becomes didn't should not have becomes shouldn't have and this playlist right here will give you practice with hearing and speaking the most common contractions in spoken English definitely you want to check this out these three things reducing connecting and Contracting make spoken English sound very different than written English looks so a sentence like you could not have known about his fear of small spaces becomes you couldn't have known about his fear of small spaces it would have been wonderful to know that in advance becomes it would have been wonderful to know that in advance the great thing is when you become aware of things like reductions and connections and contractions and you understand how spoken English differs from written English you can train your ears to listen in a whole new way and with intentional practice you can exponentially improve your listening comprehension and one more lesson you'll definitely want to check out is this one where I talk about how to improve your English listening in three simple steps all right my friend I hope you found this helpful and I have links to the lessons I've mentioned in the notes below as always thanks so much for tuning in and I'll see you next time

Channel: Clear English Corner with Keenyn Rhodes

Views: 11,928

Keywords: clear english corner, american english pronunciation, help improving english accent, english accent training, keenyn rhodes, why native english speakers are hard to understand, why can't I understand native english speakers, how to understand native english speakers, why you don't understand native english speakers, english listening skills, struggling to understand native english speakers, how to improve my english listening skills, why don't I understand english

Id: gajXa6xG1-s

Length: 4min 59sec (299 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 11 2023