Maybe, you have been trying for months or years to understand most native English speakers.

But you are still struggling to understand what they are saying.

The problem may be that you do not recognize common differences between written English

and spoken English. I'm not talking about different words but different ways of communicating

those words.

Here are 7 listening skills that you need to develop if you are going to understand

most native English speakers.

First, recognize dropped consonants.

A dropped consonant is a letter that appears in a word but is not pronounced. English speakers

often drop consonants at the beginning of the word, at the end of the word, or in the

middle of the word.

A game of HORSE is one kind of basketball game, but listen to President Barack Obama

drop the consonant off the word "of."

I'll play a game of HORSE

I'll play a game of HORSE

Mr. Obama changed "A game of HORSE" to "A game o' HORSE"

Second, recognize reduced forms.

A reduced form is a different form of an expression after it has been reduced (that is, made smaller

or spoken more quickly).

The Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, changes "it's going to grow" to "it's

gonna grow."

It's only gonna grow in the United States.

It's only gonna grow in the United States.

Reduced forms occur more frequently when people speak quickly.

Third, don't get distracted by fillers.

A filler is a word, an expression, or even just a sound that we make when we are trying

to decide what to say next.

It might be a sound like "uh" or "um." Try not to get distracted by these. A filler might

be a word like "just" before a verb. It might be the expression, "you know."

Listen to Mr. Obama use "uh," "just," and "you know" as fillers.

During, say, the health care debate, when things are just, you know, going crazy over

on Capitol Hill

Did you hear the fillers?

Don't focus on fillers and what they mean. They include very little meaning or no meaning.

Fourth, recognize words without stress.

Stressed vowels are generally louder and longer. The English language stresses content words

like nouns, main verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. The English language does not stress pronouns,

helping verbs, determiners, conjunctions, and prepositions. So these words may be more

difficult to hear and to understand.

So listen to this sentence: We'll bring you guys into the kitchen in the White House.

We'll bring you guys into the kitchen in the White House.

When Michelle Obama or I speak this sentence, we stress the main verb bring, the nouns guys

and kitchen, and the compound noun White House. We do not stress the contracted pronoun we'll,

the pronoun you, the prepositions into and in, and the determiner the. These words may

be more difficult to hear because they receive less stress.

Fifth, focus on words with stress.

Although you need to recognize words without stress, the words that have the most meaning

are the words with stress: nouns, main verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Listen again to this

sentence: We'll bring you guys into the kitchen in the White House.

We'll bring you guys into the kitchen in the White House.

So even if you do not understand all the unaccented words, you can still understand a lot if you

understand the accented words: bring, guys, kitchen, and White House. These are the most

important words in the sentence.

Sixth, understand fast English speaking.

When I speak in these videos, I speak more slowly than I usually do so that you will

understand what I am saying. But you do need to develop the ability to understand those

who speak more quickly.

Seventh, ignore extra noise.

In the video clip that I am about to show you, you may need to especially concentrate

because the speaker speaks quickly, and the extra noise around the speaker might be distracting.

It is a thrill to be here for Nickelodeon's Worldwide Day of Play. The First Lady was

here earlier helping coach the young people that were doing this obstacle course to get

them moving and active. They're running through tires; they're racing around. And as you know,

there's slime always associated with Nickelodeon. And so a lot of the kids are getting slimed

as well. But it's fun, it's all about physical activity, getting moving and living a healthy

lifestyle.

Understanding spoken English has a lot of differences from understanding written English.

But if you follow these 7 tips, you will have a great start to improving your understanding

of native English speakers.