Understand FAST English: Advanced Listening Practice

have you ever watched an English movie or TV show and thought oh they're speaking so fast I can't understand this without subtitles is there some kind of trick to understanding fast English conversations well never fear today you are going to learn how to understand fast English conversations with my four step listening method hi I'm Vanessa from speak engl withth vanessa. comom and like always I have created a free pdf worksheet it includes all of the tips and tricks of the four-step listening method including a worksheet and a transcript from today's conversation lesson to get this

free worksheet all that you need to do is click on the link in the description enter your name and email address and voila this free worksheet will land immediately in your email inbox and you know what the best part is now after you have signed up you will receive my weekly free pdf worksheets that's right every week they will immediately come to your email inbox and you don't need to sign up anymore hooray so don't miss out click on the link in the description to sign up for today's free worksheet with all of the listening

tips and tricks to help you finally understand understand real English conversations this is my gift to you so what is the four-step listening method well let's start with step number one step number one is to listen to a short clip of a real English conversation we're going to listen to this together and I want you to test your listening skills at first there's going to be no transcript uh you could turn on subtitles on YouTube but don't do it that's cheating for right now I want you to only listen to this conversation we're going to

listen to it just once together all right are you ready let's listen to this Quick Clip you're going to hear David talking about his experience when he was much younger meeting a woman named Shantel let's listen actually when I was there I met a girl from Montreal Shantel her name was um I saw her on the beach and I said oh she's beauti beautiful I must meet her she spoke no English I spoke no French that didn't matter she had a friend that was with her they had come down from Montreal for a vacation a

couple weeks and she ended up uh living with me for for seven seven months all right how did you do that was pretty fast right well actually that was a completely normal speed for a real English conversation so let's move to step two step two is to slow it down you're going to listen to a slow version of this conversation this clip has been recorded by my husband Dan and I in order to slow it down a lot I have a feeling you're going to understand a lot more so after you understand a lot more

we're going to go back to the fast clip after this so first let's listen to the slow clip together actually when I was there I met a girl from Montreal Shantel her name was I saw her on the beach and I said oh she's beautiful I must meet her she spoke no English I spoke no French that didn't matter she had a friend that was with her they had come down from Montreal for a vacation a couple weeks and she ended up living with me for 7 months okay how did that go before we go

to the fast version again I want to let you know a little preview of what step three and four are because you need to be ready for step three you are going to be writing exactly what you hear in the conversation I want you to listen especially to that fast conversation clip and to write every word that you hear you can get your notebook you can write it on your phone whatever feels the most comfortable for you so because this is a video you can pause and repeat and go back as many times as you

need to to write it out but this is going to show what you actually understand how many of those individual words do you understand that means what kind of context can you understand and then when you speak what kind of vocabulary can you reproduce when you are writing that out this is testing all of those skills and growing them together so let's listen to this clip the fast clip one more time and if you have a piece of paper with you I want you to try to write out everything that you hear of course you're

welcome to go back and listen to the slow clip again as well while you're writing it out if you need to are you ready let's listen again and I'm going to give you a little quiz afterwards so listen carefully actually when I was there I met a girl from Montreal Shantel her name was um I saw her on the beach and I said oh she's beautiful I must meet her she spoke no English I spoke no French that didn't matter she had a friend that was with her they had come down from Montreal for a

vacation a couple weeks and she ended up uh living with me for for seven seven months all right I hope that this second time that you heard the fast clip it was a little bit easier than the first time I want to ask you a couple comprehension questions are you ready for this little quiz I'm not going to give you multiple choice answers I'm only going to give you the question this is super tricky because you don't have multiple opts options to choose from you just have to remember this is like school again right are

you ready my first question is this where is Shantel from where is Shantel from you have three seconds the answer is Shantel is from Montreal question number two where did David first see Shantel three seconds the answer is he first saw Chantel on the beach the next comprehension question is just a yes or no question and it is did David and Shantel speak the same language what do you think the answer is no David spoke English and Shantel spoke French but did it matter nope it didn't matter and the final comprehension question question is this

one how long did Shantel live with David the answer is she ended up living with David for seven months so now we're going to go on to step number four which is to compare what you wrote or what you understood to the official correct transcript of what David and I actually said so we're going to listen listen one more time to the fast clip and you're going to see the transcript here I want you to follow along and realize you can understand so much more than you could just a few minutes ago the first time

that you were introduced to this clip let's listen and let's also take a look at the transcript actually when I was there I met a girl from monreal Shantel her name was um I saw her on the beach and I said oh she's beautiful I must meet her she spoke no English I spoke no French that didn't matter she had a friend that was with her they had come down from Montreal for a vacation a couple weeks and she ended up uh living with me for for seven seven months okay so maybe you understood more

this last time than you did the first time but there is a secret to listening that I want you to know when you level up your Vo vocabulary the more words you know the easier listening will be because if people are speaking and you only understand 50% of the words because you actually don't even know those other words that they're saying it's going to be really hard no matter how good your listening skills are to actually understand them so what we're going to do is we are going to go over three important key phrases that

were used in that Quick Clip clip you're going to level up your vocabulary so that the next time you hear them in a fast conversation it will be no problem for you the first key phrase is to not matter notice the pronunciation here the t's matter are not pronounced like that they're pronounced in American English matter matter like a d to not matter in the conversation with David he said that he spoke English she spoke French and I said that didn't matter so they still had a very special connection even though they couldn't communicate with

language and I was saying well it didn't matter it was not important and that is the essence of this phrase it didn't matter it wasn't important so with learning English we could say it doesn't matter if you make a mistake just keep practicing the next key phrase from the conversation is the phrasal verb to come down in the conversation David said that Shantel and her friend they came down from Montreal well Montreal is in Canada in the north and David was living in Florida which is about as far south in the US as you can

go so he said they came down from Montreal the idea is that they were traveling south they were traveling toward the South so you might say I'm so excited because my cousins are coming down down from New York for the holidays well if you live south of New York this is a great phrasal verb to use and the third key phrase from this conversation is another phrasal verb to end up this is when something happens with a surprising conclusion I would say this was a very surprising conclusion from David and Shantel he said she ended

up living with me for 7 months so he talks about a chance encounter with with a beautiful woman on the beach and usually most people would think that maybe they had a conversation and that was it but he said she ended up living with me for 7even months what a surprise and it is a surprise right so this is the perfect use of this phrasal verb to end up let me give you another example you could say we got lost on our way to the park and ended up finding a cute little cafe okay if

you're lost you think this is a negative thing nothing good is going to happen because we're lost but then you discovered a cute little cafe what a surprising thing to happen and a great use of this phrasal verb so how did you do with the four-step listening method we listen to the fast clip then we listen to a slowed down clip of that real conversation we listen to the fast conversation again then hopefully you got a chance to write down everything you heard and and we compared it to the official conversation transcript plus you learned

some key vocabulary along the way well if you want to take it to the next level and officially level up your English listening skills so that fast English conversations are no problem for you I have a wonderful solution and it is the 150-day listening challenge each day over 150 days you'll spend just 15 minutes like today's lesson listening to a short real English conversation clip you'll hear over 50 native English speakers so that you can get used to different voices different accents different styles of speech just like in real life with the four-step listening method

it's simple just listen watch and improve in the next few months you will understand English movies TV shows podcasts and real English conversations with no problem usually the 150-day listening challenge is $500 that's $100 each month but right now for this limited time I'm offering a huge discount so that you can join at no risk it is $199 this is a steal you get lifetime access to the entire course so that you can go back and review at any time that you want we will start studying the lessons on Friday March 21st so make sure

you join before this date because the discount will go away and you'll miss studying with everyone and getting feedback from our wonderful American English teachers you can click on the link in the description to get your huge discount on the 150-day listening challenge join us and level up your listening skills so that understanding real conversations is no problem well congratulations on leveling up your English skills in today's lesson don't forget to download the free pdf worksheet that includes all of the steps for the four-step listening method so that you can use this to finally understand

fast English conversations you will also get a transcript of the conversation between David and I so that you can go through this and see how real English speakers talk especially when we're having fast conversations it can sometimes feel like a mystery but it doesn't have to it can be simple with the four-step listening method when you click on the link in the description to download that free pdf worksheet just enter your name and email address and voila I will send it right to your email inbox and you will continue to get a free pdf worksheet

from me every week it is my gift to you well thank you so much for learning English with me and I'll see you again next Friday for a new lesson here on my YouTube channel bye but wait do you want more I recommend watching this video next where you will continue to learn how to understand fast conversations you'll listen to a conversation about the tastiest thing in the world desserts and break down some key pronunciation tips so that you can hear those in fast conversations I'll see you there