So, you’ve spent hour after hour learning English in the classroom, and you’re starting to feel really good about your abilities.
But, then, you watch a show in English or visit an English-speaking country, and find that you can understand virtually nothing.
This is a common and frustrating experience for any language learner, and it can really crush your confidence. It’s important that you keep your motivation and confidence up when you’re learning a language.
So, if your not struggling to improve your English in general, we need to get to the bottom of your inability to understand spoken English. This could be English that is spoken by native speakers on the street, in movies, or in songs.
Here are the 12 main reasons, you can’t understand spoken English.
most OF YOUR SPOKEN ENGLISH IS FROM THE classroom
Understanding a language is simply based off of the exposure that you’ve had to the language. In a classroom setting, the instructor normally speaks a very slow and deliberate form of the language.
This is actually quite good for the student and is considered best practice. The best way to improve is to gradually make the language more complex, faster, and more like the language that people speak on the street and in their houses.
The sooner you are exposed to hundreds of hours of fast and “real” language, the faster you’ll understand the spoken version of the language.
you don’t listen to “real” language
Little children never hear this “fake” version of the language, but they do experience year after year and thousands of hours of listening to “real” people speak. They hear dialects and different people of different ages.
As you probably know, people from different regions and countries speak quite differently. Also, older people have different ways of expressing themselves from very young speakers. The same goes for people speaking English.
So, when you here a song, the TV, or a conversation in English, you’re being hit with all of this at once. You may have even noticed that you can understand some things better than others. It’s probably someone speaking slowly or more carefully because they’re naturally more careful speakers.
To get better, the best method is to listen to a lot of the same types of conversations and words at a native speaker’s pace and abilities.
So, for example, you could watch the same movie 10 times in a row rather than watching 10 different movies.
Also, watching a movie that you love in your own language will help you follow the movie in English because you’ll already know the plot and scenes of the movie.
you have very little comprehension
The reason listening to the same song or watching the same movie over and over is better is because you get better comprehension. The mind is able to create those connections in the mind when it has something that it comprehends, rather than an input of gibberish.
The key is that you must listen to language that you comprehend more and more. That’s why listening to brand new information is more difficult to understand. It’s all new.
Babies don’t understand the language immediately, but eventually, they’ve heard the same words spoken thousands of times.
Even native speakers of English have trouble understanding some dialects of the language until they’ve had hours of exposure to that particular dialect. Make sure you start getting comprehension as fast as possible.
words and phrases that are almost never written
In both written and spoken English, there are words that are primarily used in those parts of the language. With reading, you can go slowly and concentrate on a new word.
With spoken English, you must understand and even anticipate the next word. Many speakers can begin to finish other speakers sentences because the know logically what words will follow.
You encounter a very different version of English in the spoken version than in the written version. Children often learn the spoken version, but adult English learners don’t get the spoken version until later in most cases. An example of a phrase that is used extremely often is “to be like,” which means “to say.”
An example is “He was like, ‘Kiss me! And I was like, ‘Never!’
Add to this the fact that other common phrases are actually ungrammatical, but people say them all the time, and in fact, they have become the standard way of speaking. If you say it correctly, you actually sound pretentious and at times foreign.
However, you would never write these phrases and words at all. In English, you write grammatically correct, unless it’s texting, which is more like speaking than writing.
An example is “Tell me where you’re from.” No one would say, “Tell me from where you come.”
Filler words
When you speak in English, and in probably every other language, you speak with filler words. These are words that we use when we are thinking of what to say and out of habit.
There are dozens of words that we use in order to do this. Every native speaker does this, but you might not ever hear these words outside of a native speaker’s fast speech.
Examples of this are “um,” “you know,” and “so.”
Here are some sentences demonstrating this.
1) I was thinking, um, why should I help him.
2) I was running up the street, you know, to find him.
3) I thought, “So, how should I do this.”
In order to get better at this, you need to hear these filler words over and over, so that you start to hear them every time a speaker uses them. This will also help your speaking sound more native as well.
sounds BLENDED together AND CHANGED
One of the biggest obstacles to understanding spoken English is the way we modify the language when we speak.
This tendency is something that is never duplicated in written form, because we change the language so much when we speak. This is the case in every other language as well.
We are all very efficient at getting our words out, and blending sounds together is faster. There are many, many ways that we do this.
The best way to understand these blends is to hear them over and over and begin to comprehend them. Then, you need to emulate them in your speech.
This is one area of the language that we have really focused on in our River Path Learning English course because we’ve seen the frustration and experienced this frustration with other language as well.
In the RPL English course, you’ll find the top 10 most widely used blends of the spoken language introduced over each book section.
You’ll hear this dozens to hundreds of times to really embed these structures into your mind.
Below are some examples.
Tell ‘er (tell her).
I’m onna go to the store (I’m going to go to the store)
speed
The primary reason that these blends happen is because of the speed of the language. Unlike with the written language, you have no time to stop and analyze.
The conversation moves as fast as our mouths will allow us to express our thoughts. The speed is something that you gain when you hear and speak the language for thousands of hours.
The more you hear and comprehend, the more you’ll eventually begin to understand the fast aspect of the language.
no pauses AND UNFINISHED SENTENCES
Many times with the spoken language, there are very few pauses, and sentences and words blend across punctuation.
With writing, you can see the difference between the language very easily because the punctuation clearly tells you were one sentence starts and another ends. This is quite often not the case with the spoken language.
Similarly, many times, people start one sentence and then change it when the original sentence isn’t even done. It’s easy for a native speaker to understand that this person has switched to a different sentence.
By the way, native speakers still misunderstand what other native speakers are saying to them at times. They can, however, ask the speaker to clarify if they need him or her to do so. For learners of English, all of this is harder to understand.
slang
Slang is incredibly common in spoken English and particularly with young people. In fact, many adults don’t know all of the new slang that their children are using, because their children don’t use it with them but rather with only other kids.
Adults still use slang a lot as well, but many times this is slang that was used during their youth. Both adults and kids know swearwords and their euphemisms, and this is probably the most common form of slang there is.
Knowing all slang words will be a life-long undertaking as it is for native speakers.
you don’t get the difference in certain sounds
A feature of English is that it has many words that sound or look exactly alike or that vary by one sound. If you’re not hearing the differences in sounds, you may be misinterpreting the meaning of the speech.
It’s important to make sure that you have these sounds down so that you can not get lost in the conversation.
Examples of this are “hair” and “hear” or “here.” If you don’t hear the differences between “hair” and “hear/here,” you could be in for some trouble.
Similarly, if you don’t understand the use of “hear” and “here,” you may misinterpret the sentence completely.
different rhythm and stress from your language
Another possible reason, spoken English may be difficult for you is the rhythms and emphases of the language.
You may misinterpret a question or miss the emphasis someone is putting on a word. You might understand all of the meanings of the words but miss the intent of the speaker.
You can improve your abilities by listening to lots of the language and paying particular emphasis to these two features.
emphasis on expression and emotion/playfulness
Now, you have an understanding of why you’re struggling to understand the spoken version of English. All of the reasons above are hugely important at times, and we’ve thought of all of them when designing the RPL English course.
We want to help you master the spoken version of the language. It’s so important because of all of the aspects of English, it is most frustrating not being able to understand what someone has said to you.
You could say something to them that makes no sense in the context of the original question. When you understand the spoken version of English perfectly, this also helps you improve your speaking dramatically.
In fact, remember that within the English language, people are so often pushing the limits of the language and its ability to match the expression of an individual.
There is so much playfulness and emotion in the language, coupled with so many aspects of the culture that understanding an individual is always a unique experience.
He or she may say something new or innovative because that’s how they speak. We push the creativity of the language each day.
You may do this in your own language as well. By mastering most aspects of spoken English, you’ll be able to express yourself and your personality in your own language as well as English.
If you’re ready to take the next step, let’s get started with your RPL English course. Let’s master English together!