Understand FAST Conversations in English Advanced Listening Method
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hello everyone and welcome back to
english with lucy today i have an
advanced listening lesson for you but
don’t worry you don’t have to be at an
advanced listening level to participate
and understand this lesson is more about
showing you how to reach an advanced
level i’m going to teach you how to
start understanding fast English
conversations and fast native English
speakers in this lesson I’ve got three
listening activities for you to do so
please have a pen and paper ready let’s
start with exercise number one this
exercise is all about showing you the
importance of vocabulary many listening
exams will have a gap-fill exercise
where you’re given a passage of text and
you have to listen to an audio and fill
in the gaps the same goes for natural
fast English conversation you may
understand the majority of the words but
you may miss some key words that are
essential to understanding the
conversation how can you understand a
passage of text or a fast English
conversation if you don’t know the
vocabulary yes sometimes you can
understand the context and many exams
will rely on this for the easier
questions but to get full marks you need
to have a broad and expansive vocabulary
on your screen there will appear a
gap-fill exercise I am going to read
this text and I would like you to see
how many of the words you can fill in I
will read this once but please replay it
if you feel like you need to listen
again before you attempt any of the
exercises in this lesson please turn off
the subtitles because they could ruin
your chances of giving a genuine attempt
are you ready let’s begin over the past
two decades the average annual death
rate of climbers on Mount Everest has
remained at about six but this spring at
least ten people have already been
reported dead or miss
on the world’s highest peak this is also
the season that saw a record 381
climbing permits issued by the Nepalese
government in reality this means about
600 people were preparing to embark on
the climb with permit holders
accompanied by support staff up the
mountain make sure you play that again
if you need help here are the answers
now none of this is truly specialized
vocabulary so it’s likely that if you
have a broad vocabulary you’d be able to
do this exercise listening and
vocabulary go hand-in-hand and if you’re
struggling with your listening really
consider improving your vocabulary or at
least trying to improve your vocabulary
one of the best ways of doing this is
picking up vocabulary on your own in
your daily life and combining that with
a structured curriculum you get the best
of both worlds you learn words that you
have to learn because they’re on the
curriculum and you also learn words that
you need to learn because you come
across them all the time I truly believe
that’s the perfect combination I highly
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I promise so to summarize this first
exercise it was more about showing you
the importance of vocabulary there are
lots of tips and tricks that I can give
you to help you improve your exam
prospects but realistically if you don’t
know the words how are you going to
understand the words I’ve got lots more
videos on expanding your vocabulary
which you can use if you want to improve
your listening I know it sounds like
they don’t go together but they really
really do now let’s move on to exercise
number two this is an exercise that you
can practice at home as much as you want
it’s a speed alteration exercise this
exercise is so so effective if you
practice it frequently if you commit to
doing this exercise every day for a
month or for two months I guarantee you
your listening will improve so much the
best thing about this exercise is it’s
one that you can create for yourself at
home with very little effort if you have
a youtube account which I presume you do
because you’re watching this video
unless it’s been illegally downloaded
which makes me very very angry well you
have all the tools and resources to
create your own speed alteration
exercise for this one
you really do need a pen and paper let
me show you how it works I’m going to
give you a short audio I’m going to play
it at a slightly slower speed than
normal I want you to write down
everything you hear it might be a full
sentence it might just be words I’m then
going to play again at normal speed and
I’m going to play it one more time at
fast speed during each of the three
times that I play the audio I want you
to be writing down what you hear or
editing what you’ve written down again
remember to turn off subtitles or you
will completely ruin the exercise for
yourself are you ready let’s begin the
British supermarket chain
Waitrose is starting a trial and
reducing packaging by removing plastic
from flowers and plants and offering
more loose fruit and vegetables
customers will be able to use their own
containers to buy and refill produce
such as pasta rice and cereals okay now
I’m going to play it at normal speed are
you ready let’s begin the British
supermarket chain Waitrose is starting a
trial aimed at reducing packaging by
removing plastic from flowers and plants
and offering more loose fruit and
vegetables customers will be able to use
their own containers to buy and refill
produce such as pasta rice and cereals
and I’m going to play it once more at
fast speed are you ready let’s begin the
British supermarket chain Waitrose is
starting a trial aimed at reducing
packaging by removing plastic from
flowers and plants and offering more
loose fruit and vegetables customers
will be able to use their own containers
to buy and refill produce such as pasta
rice and cereals here is what I said and
once again at normal speed
the British supermarket chain Waitrose
is starting a trial aimed at reducing
packaging by removing plastic from
flowers and plants and offering more
loose fruit and vegetables customers
will be able to use their own containers
to buy and refill produce such as pasta
rice and cereals now this is a really
interesting exercise because it really
affects the brain in a funny way when
you turn something down to slow speed it
gives you more time to think about what
you’re hearing when you turn it back to
normal speed it sounds really really
fast but again it gives you another
chance when you put it on too fast speed
it sounds almost impossible to
understand but because you’ve already
heard it twice and at slower speeds you
can still pick things up and then when
you play it the final time to check your
answer at normal speed well it seems
much easier now I would like you to find
YouTube videos in
accent you desire maybe it’s a TED talk
maybe it’s your favorite youtuber maybe
at some of my videos I want you to
listen to them once in slow-speed once
at normal speed and once at fast speed
then go back to normal speed and see how
much more you understand if you want to
do the writing down exercise I encourage
you to take very short videos or
snippets maybe one minute of news videos
or commentary videos if you do maybe two
minutes a day you play it slow
normal fast then normal again if you do
that every day for 30 days I guarantee
you will start becoming much more used
to listening to fast English
conversations it’s a really great
technique but it does need a little bit
of dedication exercise number three is
connected speech I’m going to say this
sentence quite a few times I think I’m
going to say it four times
I recommend that on the first time you
just write down what you hear if it’s
letters maybe it’s just a load of
letters that you hear or random words
then over the next couple of times that
you hear it try and make it out into a
full sentence what you’re doing is
training your brain to adapt to
connected speech ready let’s begin
I’d been intending to visit it for a
long time I was so amazed by the
absolute beauty of it
I’d been intending to visit it for a
long time I was so amazed by the
absolute beauty of it
I’d been intending to visit it for a
long time I was so amazed by the
absolute beauty of it
I’d been intending to visit it for a
long time I was so amazed by the
absolute beauty of it so the full
sentence was I had been intending to
visit it for a long time I was so amazed
by the absolute beauty of it but I said
it in a very natural connected speech
fashion
instead of saying I had I said I’d
instead of saying being intending I said
been intending instead of saying to
visit it I said to visit it with the
schwa visit it instead of for a long
time I said for a long time for a long
time instead of I was so amazed I said I
was so amazed I was so amazed instead of
by the absolute by the absolute by the
absolute instead of beauty of it I said
beauty of it right let’s talk about why
well we don’t speak like robots we use
connected speech now I do have a whole
video on connected speech I’m going to
give a brief overview now but the
technique I’ve just shown you is a
really good thing to practice because it
gets you thinking about connected speech
if you have an English teacher you could
ask them to send you some sentences and
have you work out what they’re saying
it’s something you could request in a
private class there are four parts of
connected speech that I’m going to talk
about the first one is catenation this
is when a consonant sound at the end of
one word and note I say sound it’s not
just a letter it’s all about the
phonemes a consonant sound at the end of
one word is joined with a vowel sound at
the beginning of the following word an
apple an apple in the example sentence
been intending been intending that’s
catenation there’s also intrusion this
is when two words are said together an
extra sound might be placed between them
to make it easier to say I am I am you
are you are I explained this more in my
connected speech video which I’ve linked
down below but if our mouth is wide like
e then we normally do a yup sound and if
mouth is round like oh then we normally
do a whoop sound yeah what for example
the sentence we all play out we all play
out play again it’s this wide sound
route we all play out now take this
sentence go out to open go out to open
it’s the all round shape so we use a
were sound we also have the earth sound
for example there is there is better
alone better alone now in British
English we don’t tend to pronounce the
arse at the ends of words but those
secret ours are still there so they come
out when the following word begins with
a vowel sound again more detail in my
connected speech video in the example
sentence v absolute became the absolute
with a yes sound we also have a lesion
which is the omission of one or more
sounds it can be a vowel sound a
consonant sound a whole syllable a
common form that is clear to see is
contractions do not becomes don’t is not
becomes isn’t in the example sentence I
had became tired lastly we have
assimilation this is where two phonemes
come together and change into a new
phoneme which is easier to say for
example don’t you becomes don’t you
that’s because turn and yeah come
together to make a sound don’t you like
it
don’t you like it duh and yeah come
together to make a sound for example did
you like it
did you like it right that’s it for
today’s lesson I hope you enjoyed it I
hope you learned something and I really
hope you
doing the exercises especially exercise
number two please if you practice that
often you will notice a marked
difference don’t forget to check out
lingo de you can click on the link in
the description box and use my code
Lucie ten for a twenty five percent
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you soon for another lesson
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