Today, we're going to talk about three reasons why you might not understand native English speakers.

Uh, reason number one: Native speakers sound funny.

Now, the reason for this is that most native speakers have their own personal English, really.

Um, if you think about it, uh, native speakers might come from different countries.

They come from different cities, they come from different towns.

Quite often it can be more difficult to understand native speakers who are from small towns and villages

because they might speak very quickly, they might blur the sounds they use together,

and perhaps they don't really use maybe a high-level or academic English sometimes.

So, all of these things can make it difficult to understand them.

Also, native speakers might have their own personal habits or phrases that they use a lot but no one else uses,

so this could make it quite complicated.

Uh, every native speaker uses their own pronunciation and ways to express things, and again, this makes it hard.

So, if you don't understand one native speaker, don't be discouraged, you might understand many more.

Okay, reason number two: You might be too used to classroom English.

Now, the problem with this is that classroom English is very good for getting started at learning a language.

Uh, it is very important to learn basic vocabulary, basic expressions, and the proper grammar,

but in real life, native speakers don't speak using classroom English.

They really like to use their own phrases, their own, uh, slang, and they don't always speak with perfect grammar actually.

So, this could make it difficult if you're only used to classroom English.

So, quite often it's useful to listen to native speakers on the street or watch movies or TV shows in English.

That will give you a much better idea of what real or natural English sounds like.

Finally, reason number three is that you might not know enough phrasal verbs or idioms.

So, in English there are a lot of phrasal verbs that native speakers use every day.

These aren't commonly used in writing, but when we speak we often use phrasal verbs.

I always recommend to my students to study many, many phrasal verbs.

Also, learning idioms is helpful as well.

They can be much more difficult to learn, but it's important to be able to understand them.

So, phrasal verbs and idioms are a great way to understand native speakers better and to sound more natural yourself.

So, to review, three ways that you can understand native speakers better:

Realize that native speakers might sound funny, depending on who you're talking to.

Also, remember that you might be used to classroom English a little bit too much.

And three, remember to learn phrasal verbs and idioms.

This will help you to understand native speakers much more.

So, this has been Jason Palmer. I'll see you next time.