- Hello everyone and welcome back to English With Lucy.

Long time no see, right?

I know, I had a little break.

I've moved house, I'm in a new house now.

And this room will soon be my new studio,

it's got a lovely window over there

so there's lots of light, so I'm in the middle

of setting that up for you guys.

Today I'm going to talk about improving your understanding,

so being able to understand what native speakers say

when they're talking and when they're talking quickly.

Now I have done a video that is quite similar to this,

it's along the same lines, it talks about the same subject

about listening and improving your listening skills.

If I remember correctly I think there were 12 ways

that you could improve your listening skills

in that last video, if you wanna see that,

you can click right here, and I'll put a link

in the description, but today we're only going to focus

on four tips.

I'm going to be focusing less on the academic side

of listening and more on the real life side of listening

and the listening skills and the listening comprehension

skills because it's about understanding

that you will use on a daily basis.

So let's get started.

So tip number one, order your resources.

Now the biggest tip that any English teacher will give you

if you're trying to improve your listening is

listen to movies, listen to audio books,

listen to more exams and things like that,

listen to the news, listen to the radio.

Excellent tip, it's a tip I give myself,

but I want to make sure that my students

listen to the right things in the right order.

I wouldn't recommend a sarcastic British comedy

that uses the complexities of British English

to the fullest extent, see they'd use things like that,

and I almost don't know what I'm saying,

so you maybe won't either.

You want to start with easier things

and work your way up to more difficult things.

There is no point starting at the top

unless you're a genius.

So I'm gonna give you this sort of order of resources

that you should go for and you can kind of see

where you're at, see what you understand,

and then, you know, maybe move up to the next one.

So what kind of thing should you listen to

if you don't know any English,

if you're a complete beginner.

Mr. Bean.

Joke, that is a joke, in Mr. Bean he says

very little in English, but it is a fantastic TV show

so watch that for fun first and then you can start

your English listening practise.

So beginners and even early intermediate

because remember that listen is often found to be

the hardest skill of all four skills

that they tend to test in exams,

listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

I always see with my students they get the highest scores

in reading and writing and it's listening and speaking

where they start to suffer and listening

tends to be the worst.

Oh my god.

- Hello and welcome to English With Lucy.

- Oh shut up.

Oh my god.

Sorry about that, I got disturbed.

Where was I?

- Hello, welcome to English With Lucy.

- Stop it.

This is why I don't upload more regularly.

Bye Will.

So what I was trying to say was

don't be afraid if you can actually understand

way less than you would expect a person of your level

to understand, so even if you're at like an intermediate

level you might need to listen

to lower levels to start with.

So what I always recommend is test out

listening to children's TV programmes

simply because children's TV programmes

are normally designed to help a child learn more

and understand more and also improve their vocabulary,

especially TV programmes for younger children.

If you want I have a great recommendation

for a British TV show that's designed for kids,

it's very educational, it's packed full of vocabulary,

and it is Peppa Pig.

Incredibly famous TV show that I imagine

will be in your country as well.

See if you can switch it into its native language

which is British English and it's actually

really, really funny because it think it's designed

for parents to watch it with the child,

so not only area you learning loads

it is just a really good programme.

If you find yourself understanding 80% of Peppa Pig

or whatever you choose to watch that's designed for children

then you can move up to slapstick comedy,

comedy that is silly, it's not got in depth humour

and it doesn't play around with the language,

it's just basic comedy.

Normally and I really don't want to offend anyone here,

but normally American comedy shows are more on this level

than the English ones.

The British English sense of humour tends to be darker,

more subtle, we tend to say things with a straight face,

but as a huge generalisation American comedy TV shows

seem to be more in your face, the jokes are more obvious,

and you can follow the plot more easily.

A couple of recommendations for you are, of course, Friends,

Friends can be enjoyed in any language

and chances are you've seen Friends in your language

so you'll understand more or less what's going on

in English as well.

If you do want a British TV series

one that I really like, it's an old one now,

is The Vicar of Dibley, again, I'll put this

in the description box.

It's very, very British, I would say

it's slightly more difficult than friends

because they do use the language and play with language

a little bit, but it's a gorgeous British accent,

they've got a wide variety of accents really.

It's about a female vicar, Dawn French,

one of my favourite female comedians,

who becomes the vicar for a very small village

that's very set in their ways, they're not very modern,

they like to do things in a traditional way,

and it is hilarious.

There aren't that many episodes,

but it's something I've always watched

with my parents at Christmas.

Next, I would move up to films and TV shows

that tend to have less talking, i.e. action films,

detective films, films and TV shows

where there's time for you to think about what's going on

and it's very visual.

And then obviously for the most advanced

you would want to look at Sci-Fi

because they give in depth explanations,

dark comedies, drama, and also period drama,

that's quite difficult 'cause they tend to use

old fashioned language, obviously.

The next tip is one that is so, so important,

it's practise, but it's not just practise,

it's practise with consistency.

An hour long conversation with a native, fantastic,

that is great practise.

An hour long conversation with a native every single week

with feedback, now that is how you're going

to improve your understanding.

And not only that, making sure that you work

on every single other skill as well,

obviously we need more, obviously it's always good

to really focus on what you're lacking

which is your listening skill,

but improve your pronunciation,

improve your reading so that you understand more words,

writing is also incredibly important,

speaking and listening goes hand in hand.

This tips comes thanks to the sponsors of today's video,

it is Lingoda, Lingoda is an online language learning

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You pay on a monthly basis, there are various

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'cause I love to hear about your success stories.

Moving on to my next point which is more focused

on real life conversations and how to understand

native speakers when they're talking to you

and when they're talking quickly.

My tip for you is dominate the conversation

which I know can be quite hard

especially if you're naturally quite an introvert.

I have my days, some days I'm an introvert

and some days I'm an extrovert,

but I'm not talking about going into a conversation

and taking over and dominating everything,

I'm saying take the lead with the conversation

and direct it because if you're speaking

with a native speaker or somebody who has a much higher

level than you, you are the one who is doing

most of the work and they can kind of relax.

It's very easy for them to not understand

if they're just native or to forget if they did learn once,

but now they're at a kind of level

where they don't have to think about anything,

it's all natural, it's very easy for them

to not understand how tough it is for a non-native speaker,

for a learner of English.

So I want to make it very clear to you,

I as a teacher and I as a friend and as a native speaker

of English have never once felt annoyed or frustrated

with somebody asking me to repeat something.

if I know that they have been listening

and trying to understand me.

If you know, it's my boyfriend who obviously

has zoned out who wasn't listening to what I was saying

and then says what, sorry, can you say that again?

Yes, that is annoying.

But if someone's obviously not understood me

I don't mind, in fact I'm glad that they want to understand

what I'm saying and that they care enough

about what I'm saying that they're asking me to repeat it.

So there are two things that I want you to start

getting confident at saying.

The first one is asking for repetition,

and the second one is asking for somebody to slow down.

So asking for repetition, oh sorry, I didn't catch that.

I didn't quite understand it, I got the majority,

but not all of it, I didn't quite catch that.

Sorry, could you repeat that?

Note that I'm often starting with sorry

because it's a good interjection

to get somebody to stop talking.

What was that, could you say that again?

Notice that I'm showing you my ear

and I'm kind of doing a circle motion,

could you repeat that?

I'm making it very clear that I'm having

trouble understanding.

About slowing down, you're either asking for them