Mateo Puzzled in Listening

It is a dream for Mateo to understand English native speakers. He watches movies and listens to music. Frustratingly, he still cannot pick many words from a song or a conversation. He usually fails to interpret the whole meaning. He assumes that many native speakers speak too fast.

A long challenging journey is unavoidable to acquire the newly learned language. During this long journey, the learner has to practice language skills needed, which is reading, writing, listening and speaking. Listening has several specific obstacles. Reduced forms, colloquial language, and performance variables are some of them.

 Reduction is common among English native speakers. This may confuse some non-native speakers. It is one of the obvious obstacles in acquiring the target language. Teachers give this difficulty the needed concern. Usually, there are two points ESL learners need to be aware of. The first is when and how reduction occurs. They need to know what they expect to be reduced. For example, native speakers say, "wanna" for "want to", but "wantsta" if the subject is third person singular. The second point is to practice listening and speaking. Of course, there is no way but to practice listening to an authentic conversation is essential. Movies are a great resource. Trying to imitate what characters say builds confidence in applying reduction in a dialog.

Colloquial language makes some English learners feel confused. The word "sorted" in spoken British English means "completed". It may puzzle some new learners if they try to get the meaning by referring to the original verb "sort" which means, "to separate". It is hard to go over all different colloquialism. However, learners should realize that they are going to hear these colloquial words. Also, if they are going to live in London, for example, it is very recommended to have an idea and learn a list of these words.

In spoken language, repetition, grammatical errors, stress, intonation, gestures (body language) are common. The basic learners ought to pay attention to all these. It takes time to practice different situations. Listening to a lecture is different from a conversation at a party!

By caring about what their students may face in their real life, teachers make their classes more beneficial. It helps students to be more involved since it is about their future life.