english with Lucy today I want to talk

to you about how you can improve your

english listening skills so I've got

some tips that i'm going to give you if

you do follow all of my english

listening tips then you should be able

to start to understand native speakers

more easily and more effectively

we've got a lot to cover in the lesson

so let's get started there's a word that

i'm going to be using a lot in this

lesson and it is variety i want you to

use a wide range of resources and listen

to a wide range of accents as well. why?

well i know a lot of you come to me and

say Lucy I want to learn British English

and to do that I'm only going to listen

to British speakers but in my opinion

that's not the right thing to do you are

going to meet people from all over the

world with all different accents and

you're going to need to understand them

you don't want to just be able to

understand British people so if you're

not doing it already

I want you to listen to as many accents

as possible and when you're doing that I

want you to think about the different

sounds that each accent makes i made a

video with the lovely Anna from English

like a native about the differences

between our accents and lots of students

found that really really helpful because

there's not one definitive way of

speaking English there are lots of

variations regional variations

variations by country i mean english

spoken in New Zealand is very different

to english spoken in America for example

so you need to be able to recognize more

or less everything and diversify your

English focusing on that word variety

again I want to talk to you about

resources for my next point i want you

to ask yourself a question I want you to

answer it yourself honestly how much

time do you actually dedicate to

practicing and improving your listening

skills answer honestly most of the

students that I asked say around 1 to 2

hours and even then

they might be exaggerating a little bit

now you've recognized that you're

probably not practicing enough i want

you to start practicing honestly

practice makes perfect

you're not going to suddenly wake up and

be perfect at listening it takes time it

takes dedication and it's called a skill

for a reason is something that you have

to develop principally on your own and

also with help from others but what is

listening practice you might be asking

me well I've got lots of recommendations

for you

which brings me to my next point

resources and more importantly variety

of resources now the most obvious one is

watching TV programs or movies in

English this is great but I think you

can take it a step further

maybe you're watching programs with

english subtitles

that's good but you don't want to rely

on the subtitles i want you to learn

with your ears and not with your eyes

so what I recommend you do to take your

listening to the next level is watch

each program or movie twice probably

more achievable with programs short ones

i would recommend that you aim for

something that's less than 30 minutes so

you could try a comedy like friends

which is American English or maybe BBC

news and you can just watch the

headlines which would be British English

pronunciation so I want you to watch it

first with no subtitles see how much you

can understand and then I want you to

watch it again with subtitles and see

what you did pick up and what you didn't

pick up and then note it for next time

don't be afraid to replay things again

and again and again

learn the patterns of voice that we use

if you've got a listening exam or you're

going to have a telephone conversation

or some sort of interview over the phone

you're not going to be able to read the

person's lips which can be really useful

so you really ought to practice

listening blindly so one really really

good tip that often gets overlooked is

use audio books

reading is great for building your

vocabulary but it doesn't do much for

your listening skills because what a

book does not offer you is a

pronunciation guide

normally i'm sure some exist that do so

i would like you to start listening to

audiobooks pick a book that is

interesting and relevant to you judge it

by your level if you're quite a

low-level choose a children's book for

more intermediate maybe go something for

teenagers and if you're advanced

obviously go for something that's aimed

at adults or maybe has a lot of

technical language remember that if you

want to check your understanding

you can always buy the book as well

listen to a section and then read it

listen to another and then read it this

is a wonderful way of improving your

listening comprehension the best website

for audiobooks is audible and if you

click in the link in the description box

you can get a free audiobook and a

30-day trial there's absolutely no catch

so try it out and see if it works for

you

one resource that often gets overlooked

is youtubers i'm not talking about us

lovely bunch of online English teachers

that are all over YouTube at the moment

although i think we could help you a

little bit with your listening

you have an amazing resource full of

free videos and listening tools find

something that you're interested in

maybe you're interested in Gossip

celebrities science current affairs

search for it in English and start

listening to it my next point is multi

task unlike reading or watching TV

listening is something that you can do

whilst you do something else

so once you've found your ideal resource

start to build a sort of pack of

resources on your smart phone or your

computer that you can take with you so

if you have a long car journey on the

way to work on public transport whilst

you're doing something else like cooking

something you don't have to concentrate

on listen to

something in English and that links back

to my question how much time do you

actually dedicate practicing your

English so say you spend half an hour

traveling to work each day and half an

hour traveling back home each day and

you listen to something in English for

the entirety of those journeys each week

you will be doing five hours of

listening practice that's amazing

if you do that you will definitely

improve in no time

the really great thing is that you're

doing something productive and maybe

learning about another topic through

english that you would normally do so

it's really a win-win situation

my next tip is do not translate do not

translate when you're speaking to

someone in person i want you to listen

for context something i always say to my

students is fluency over accuracy now I

speak Spanish fluently but i do not

speak it a hundred percent accurately

have no problems with listening

I have no problems understanding and i

have no problems with communicating but

if you were to film me speaking Spanish

and analyze all of the errors that i

make you find quite a few it's really

important to understand that you don't

need it to be perfect you don't need to

understand every single word you need to

understand context and general meaning

if you spend too much time analyzing

each word the conversation or monologue

will have moved on by the time you

finally understood the word that you are

focusing on so you actually then have to

catch up and you lose understanding so

instead of listening word-by-word listen

to phrases as a whole

my next tip is learn speech patterns

okay i want you to research into how

natives speak the way in which we write

something is certainly not the way in

which we say it

english is not a phonetic language and

we don't always follow our own

pronunciation rules so what research can

you do well you can look at homophones

for example these are words which have the

exact same pronunciation but different

spellings and different meanings

I've actually got a video coming out

on homophones very soon which i will

put in the description box an example of

a homeophone would be bear and bare the

same but different spelling and meaning

you can also look at minimal pairs

minimal pairs are words that have the

exact same pronunciation apart from a

single vowel sound an example of a

minimal pair would be ship and sheep

ship sheep so that and the same but the

vowel sound is different it's also

important that you understand weak forms

so we have strong forms of words and we

also have weak forms for example the

word at on its own i say at but

sometimes if i'm using it in a sentence

or in conversation and i'm speaking very

quickly i will say that with the schwa

sound I won't say at three o'clock i

will say at three o'clock it's important

that you recognize that the schwa sound

can represent many vowels you also need to

look at reductions i've got a video all

about the reductions wanna and gonna which

is also in the description box that will

really help you out especially if you

want to use those i know a lot of you do

it's a really quick way of making

yourself sound more native and also

contractions I am I'm i will i'll she

would she'd important that you learn

those i'm also making a video on

contractions so when that's uploaded i

will also put that in the description

box so that's it for my lesson on how to

improve your listening skills your

homework is to comment below and tell me

and everyone else how you are going to

improve your listening skills now you've

watched this video I want to see you be

motivated and i want to see you make a

change i believe in you and you need to

believe in yourselves too don't forget

that I now upload on Mondays

wednesdays and saturdays and i

also have a free live pronunciation and

vocabulary lesson every sunday at four

thirty gmt which is london time on my

english with Lucy facebook page

don't forget to connect with me on all