hi guys it's keith from ielts speaking success and today i'm going to show you how to understand native english speakers and how to really improve your listening skills what's more i'll show you the biggest mistake students make when trying to understand native speakers and also when doing the ielts listening test let's do it [Music] hello my name is keith and i run the website ielts speaking success and also the youtube channel and the facebook group if you haven't joined the facebook group go downstairs down below follow the link and come and join us so how
are your listening skills do you sometimes find it hard to follow native speakers to understand films or videos on youtube my name is walter hartwell white i live at 308 negra arroyo lane albuquerque new mexico 87104 or even oh my to understand the ielts speaking examiner what about this phrase can you understand this shall we go and have a good day so i want you to write that down on a piece of paper or in the comment box have a go should we go and have a good day by the end of this video you
will understand that and also you will know the five things that you need to know to take your listening skills right up to the next level what's more hey we're gonna be practicing so that you will even see a change in your listening skills by the end of the video how good is that let's begin so what is the biggest mistake students make with listening right it's they focus on words individual words and try and translate them that's not good right because this is the secret words change in context when you put two words together
the sound changes and so if you're listening for individual sounds you're not listening for the right thing right take the word or take this phrase right good day good day it sounds like one sound right good day but it's two words good day but we don't say good day good day good good day no we say good day good day we drop the d so we drop sounds we drop vowels and consonants when words come together right um for example excuse me we don't say that we say excuse me excuse me the eck disappears we
drop it excuse me should we go should we go shui is actually shall we the owl we drop should we go should we go we even drop words right it's fine that's fine it's fine so we drop we drop vowels consonants and words how on earth are you going to understand well knowing that those sounds disappear when you put words together then it's gonna help you let's look at another thing that happens when you put words together we link sounds right have a have a goes together have a right have a good day have a
good day you see sometimes when we link words we actually add another sound that you don't write okay go and is going we add a how mad is that go and go when go and and the d drops so just to confuse you we add a were and we drop the duh go and go and see go and see go and have a good day go and have a good day get it put that all together right should we go and have a good day should we go and have a good day that was the
phrase at the beginning so we've got all these things we add sounds we link things we drop things boom not only that right we also stress certain words we reduce some words we add intonation we add rhythm all of these things and tone not forgetting so it makes it more difficult um so knowing all of this can help us listen and understand better i'm going to show you all of these in a bit more detail we're going to practice them so you can develop your listening skills just a small note i'm not encouraging you to
speak like this yet this is a higher level of speaking and if you can fantastic but our focus today is on listening and being able to recognize and notice these sounds so as you start listening more and more you become aware of them and you understand the sounds rather than focusing on those individual words and translating right so let's get going so i'm going to look at five things okay word stress chunks weak forms contractions and connected speech which cover all of the aspects we've talked about let's begin with word stress actually grammatically this is
sentence stress it's the words that we stress in a sentence okay so for example can you spot and tell me which words i am stressing in this sentence i'd like to get a ticket to london i'd like to get a ticket to london like ticket london i'd like to get a ticket to london what about this one can you pay by cash pay cash can you pay by cash okay so when you're listening to stuff focus first of all on the stressed words because because those are the ones that carry the main meaning they're the
most important words typically the noun the verbs the adjectives the adverbs the bigger words right pay cash you can understand can you pay by cash okay two more examples again pick out the words i stress you should have asked i would have been happy to do it asked happy do you should have asked i would have been happy to do it or that's fine i didn't want to trouble you fine trouble you it's fine i didn't want to trouble you okay so picking out those stressed words great so here's a quick tip for you you
should be doing two kinds of listening right intensive and extensive intensive is very short audio clips or video clips maybe up to a minute where you're analyzing specific things extensive can be 20 minutes 30 minutes an hour watching a film listening to a podcast where you're just exposing yourself and following the general idea okay you need to be doing both kinds when you're doing intensive listening one exercise is to focus on the words that are stressed so listen to the sentences if you have the tape script transcript you can underline the stressed words or make
a note here or on paper as you listen and focus on the stressed words because they carry the meaning so when you're doing ielts listening listening for gist for the main idea the stressed words are the main ones right can you pay by cash pay cash that's all you need to know you don't need to be focusing on every word okey dokey moving on secondly chunks chunks are really important right you remember at the beginning of the video i said good day good day good day have a good day right have a good day is
a chunk it's a piece of language where we take the sound of that language and we focus on the sound have a good day right i don't know how many words that is have a good day it's actually four but what's in my head is the sound have a good day and you'll notice most grammatical forms are really chunks right i'd like to i'd like to i'd like to get a ticket to london i'd like to you can actually practice with me i'd like to i'd like to and really right close your i was going
to say your ears close your eyes and really listen to the sound i'd like to i'd like to that's what you need to get the same with i should have i should have i should have called before coming right i would have the same i would have so listen to those sounds can you can you can you help can you come can you give me can you can you right get the sound okay others very common i want to i didn't want to i didn't want to notice here i didn't the tur oh i dropped
it drop the i didn't want to want to want to i drop the t oh you've got the d here the t here i didn't want to i didn't want to try i didn't want to i didn't want to go i didn't want to come so start training your ear to pick out these sounds or these chunks right the secret is chunks most idiomatic expressions are chunks right it's a piece of cake i don't know how many words that is it is a piece of cake but it's just one sound it's a piece of cake
it's a piece of cake it's a piece of cake it doesn't matter right notice again it doesn't the t drops it doesn't matter it doesn't matter so your grammatical structures and your idiomatic expressions are mostly chunks and this is what you need to be listening for excellent moving on by the way if you want to practice more and more chunks go and check out the fluency gym on the website the links below there's lots of chunks there lots of ielts questions and answers and they're done by chunks and you can just practice listening and speaking
how good is that now talking of the gym the fluency gym when you go to the gym you see some people who are really strong right now what's the opposite of strong the opposite of strong is weak it's the same with language and words so many words in english have a weak form and a strong form right particularly the small little words in english okay have a look at these words how do you pronounce them well i don't know what you said but i'm guessing you said four to do are you now that's true 10
of the time right that's the strong form and we use that when we stress the word right it's for no for example who is this for right who is this for who do i give it to you stress the word and it's the strong form but did you know ninety percent of the time we don't stress the word and we don't use the strong form we use the weak form exactly so actually how do you pronounce these words how strange is that but that's how we really pronounce them and that's what you're listening to when
you listen to native speakers right they don't say it's for you i say it's for you it's for you or even that it it's for you you it's for you the you is stressed right it's for you hmm for example let's take do right i do like pizza i'm stressing it right i do like pizza um do you like pizza yeah do you like pizza you see that's the unstressed form in our phrases we're using at the beginning i'd like to get a ticket to london a ticket to london it's not too it's ta right
you could say too if it was i want a ticket to london not from london because you're stressing too but normally a ticket to london a ticket for two a table for two go to the restaurant a table for two a table for two i've changed from two to four right a ticket to london um good so you may be thinking or asking uh keith what are these small words that have a weak form and a strong form well there's a lot but the main ones are auxiliaries right like these be do have can which
will be pronounced the b is was or was pronouns you he and she would be prepositions right two out of four become [Music] conjunctions and but uh than and but then by and large it's the schwa sound that we're using in the weak form not always but usually so that's it the weak forms really really important let's move on next i'm going to mention contractions right contract is to reduce contractions aware for example instead of saying i will we say i'll i am i'm in spoken english we normally use contractions in written english especially academic
english we don't but when you're speaking and listening to speak people in conversations on films you will be listening for these contractions so you'll have i'll i'd instead of i would um should have i should have instead of i should have i would have instead of i would have i'd have right i would have or i'd of i'd have told you for example in our examples we had i'd like i'd i'd like to get a ticket to london or i should have i should have called before coming uh we also had um you should have
asked i would have been happy to do it you should have asked i would have been i would have been happy to do it um or it's fine it's fine drop your teeth drop you it it's fine let's move on and now number five connected speech and this is the biggie this is the big one that makes listening really difficult but once you get this your listening skills are just gonna rock it so here's the rule okay when a word ends with a consonant sound and the next word begins with a vowel sound we usually
connect the two words okay we can connect the sounds or we can add a sound to make the connection let's have a look at the first chunk we mentioned before i'd like to get a ticket to london right there's two connections here i'd like to get her get a we just link getter geta ticket 2 ticket we also link but because the t and the t are the same we just have one ticket ticket ticket got it i'd like to get a ticket to london more examples in the phrase i should have called you before
coming called you called you the you is ya right ko it's sometimes a duh sometimes a i should have called you called you i should have called you before coming close your eyes i should have called you before coming can you hear the cha great more examples i should have asked i should have asked vast v i should have asked notice we often drop the k right as well in asked right we often drop the k you should have asked and another one i would have been happy to do it here we add a sound
do because it's a were we put the word do it like a wit wit do it do it happy to do it get it i would have been happy to do it or in as well i didn't want to trouble you so here we connect the didn't and the want but we dropped the t i didn't want to want to want to want to i didn't want to trouble you i didn't want to trouble you again close your eyes and see if you can hear the sounds want to i didn't want to trouble you if
you can hear it you're starting to get the gist to get the hang of it excellent so those are some examples with the connected speech so as you're listening intensively or extensively try and notice the connected words try and listen to them stop if you want and try repeating it because that can also help you and if you've got the transcript you can just make the connection you can write and make the connection it's just building up the habit and starting to notice this right let me go through those four sentences we began with and
see if you can start hearing the different things i'd like to get a ticket to london can you pay by cash you should have asked i would have been happy to do it that's fine i didn't want to trouble you excellent hopefully you're starting to notice what would be great would be to go back and listen again make a note of all of these features they're in there they're in english every day and all of this will help you understand native speakers much much better and it's the key to your success in the ielts listening
right so as i began should we go and have a good day shall we go let's go and have a good day just before you go though i hope all of this helps if you want more practice or you want more details about listening skills follow the link below to the website there's a whole article with more information go and check out the fluency gym great for your listening and your pronunciation if you like this video go and check out my online course it's on udemy ielts speaking get ielts speaking success get a band 7
plus it will really help you level up and get ready for your speaking test coming up soon it's been a pleasure being with you as always today um do take care stay safe and i look forward to seeing you next week with a new video new ideas take care now [Music]
