Hi guys. Welcome back to English with Max.
Do you find it difficult to understand native English speakers? Do you
understand your English teacher, but then find it difficult to understand movies
and TV series? Well, don't worry, you are not alone. This is actually really common,
and in this video I'm going to tell you the main reasons why. We'll look at
understanding people in real life, and in movies and TV shows. Hopefully if you
understand the reasons why, you will worry about it a bit less, because you'll
see that it's very normal, and it might also help you realise which areas in
English you maybe need to focus on more. Know hope! As always, remember that you can
follow me on social media. Don't forget to subscribe (it's completely free, so why
not?), and if you want to watch this video with subtitles, you just need to turn on
the captions. First let's look at understanding native English speakers in
real life. One reason why it might be difficult to understand people is that
native English speakers don't tend to learn other languages. Often if people
aren't used to learning languages, they don't necessarily understand the
difficulties that a non-native speaker might have. In addition, they might assume
that you understand everything and therefore they probably won't make an
effort to speak more slowly. If you've watched my videos before, you will know
that I do speak some foreign languages. But I'm not saying this to sound
superior. The only reason I learnt foreign languages was because it's my
passion - it's something that interests me. Honestly, if it didn't interest me,
I probably would have just studied French for one year in high
school, because when I was at school that was the minimum requirement. I think it's
a shame that it's not compulsory to study a foreign language for several
years in English-speaking countries, but English is the international language
and that's just the way it is. Another reason why you might not understand
native speakers in real life is that we often speak badly. For example, we often
make grammatical mistakes and some of us mumble. Mumbling is when
you don't open your mouth very wide and you therefore don't speak
very clearly. I'm an English teacher, so I probably make fewer mistakes than the
average person (I hope), but it does happen to me sometimes as well. Particularly
when I'm speaking quickly or I'm just not paying attention. And I definitely
mumble sometimes. It's a bad habit. Now I have two things that just apply to
movies and TV shows. The first thing is that characters in movies and TV series
often don't speak like people in real life. Have you ever thought: Why do
fictional characters often sound so smart? Well, it's because they have
scriptwriters, so very often they use vocabulary or constructions that we
don't necessarily use every day. Of course that's not always the case - it
depends on the movie or the show - but often the English isn't as simple as in
real life. Secondly there is often other noise that can make the dialogue
difficult to understand. For example, background music, sound effects or just
other background noise. If you're a native speaker, or you have a very
advanced level, that's not normally a big problem because it's not so
important for you to understand every single word. If you are very used to
listening to a language, your mind will subconsciously fill in the
gaps, so to speak, if you don't understand every word. But if you
don't have a lot of experience listening to a language, obviously it will be a bit
harder. Now let's look at some things that apply to both real life, and movies
and series. Firstly, there are lots of different accents in the world. Obviously
if you're not used to hearing a certain accent, you might find it difficult to
understand. But if it makes you feel any better, that often happens to native
speakers as well. The second thing is slang. Slang is something that you don't
often learn in English lessons and it also changes from place to place. (Yay!) The third thing is contractions. We use lots of contractions in English.
There are the standard contractions like "don't" and "I'm", and there are also spoken
informal contractions, like "gonna", "wanna", "coulda", etc. If you are not used to
contractions, you will definitely find it hard to understand native speakers.
I've actually already made some videos on contractions. The links will be in the
description. The fourth thing is reductions. This is something that I
could probably make several videos about. Reductions are sounds that change or
disappear when we speak at a normal or high speed. For example, this sentence
pronounced slowly is: Do you want a cup of tea? But we don't normally say that.
We would say: Do you want a cup'v tea?
Do ya want a cuppa tea? D'you wanna cuppa tea?
Or even: Dge wanna cuppa tea? And the final thing is connected speech. This is something else that I could probably
make several videos about, and it's similar to the concept of reductions.
Connected speech is when one word follows into the next word. For example,
we don't usually say: "This afternoon." We normally say: Thissafternoon.
Thissafternoon. Thanks very much for watching, guys. If you liked the video, please hit
the thumbs up. Let me know in the comments if you find it difficult to
understand native speakers and why, and also tell me if you can think of any
other reasons that I haven't mentioned in this video.
See you next time.
