Problems with listening to English
I had just received a phone call from overseas. The speaker was a former employer I met in a career fair. Although I have been practicing speaking English for more than 2 months, I still faced immense difficulties talking with her.
The biggest problem was about her speed. During the conversation, she spoke much faster than anyone I had practiced with in these two months, and it was really challenging for non-native speakers like me to catch what she said. I felt bad that I had to constantly ask her to repeat her words.
Secondly, she seemed to have the habit of connecting words together. When she wanted to use supportive words such as "of" and "it", she would speak them together with her previous words. Combining with her hasty speed, I had a hard time knowing what she was talking about. I could only get a glimpse of her words.
I do not know how to improve my listening. Any ideas?
Memphis -- 16/9/2016
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Corrections · 4
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HI Fung
If you have language exchange partners here, why don't you try asking them to speak to you at different speeds? They could read five pages of a book to you - the first page they would read at a speed where you can easily understand, but then each page would be read at a slightly quicker speed.
p.s. You should only use the word "glimpse," in a way that relates to sight. It does not make sense to use "glimpse," (which means a brief look at something) when you are talking about listening to something or someone.
You could say "I could only hear some of her words," or "I could only piece together some of what she said."
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English speakers such as myself sometimes do end up skipping or combining words in that way. Personally I would prefer someone who was conversing with me to be blunt about the situation. State the issue directly, simply ask for the English speaker to slow down please and explain why. It's likely that she didn't even realize she was doing that, it would likely make her pay attention to her speaking and perhaps even improve her conversation skills as well.
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Here is one idea. Identify which country she is from, then search for some radio stations from that country. Choose a radio station you like, then listen to that radio station online, while you are working, or driving or catching bus / train. I often use www.tunein.com for this purpose, because they have a computer app and a smartphone app, which is very useful. There are other similar websites available as well.
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Was she from the South of the United States? Identify her accent and listen to YouTube videos of people speaking from that same geographical area .
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