native English speakers? Do you understand your English teacher, but then

find it difficult to understand movies and TV series? Well, don't worry, you are

not alone. This is actually really common, and in this video I'm going to tell you

the main reasons why. We'll look at understanding people in real life, and in

movies and TV shows. Hopefully if you understand the reasons why, you will

worry about it a bit less, because you'll see that it's very normal, and it might

also help you realise which areas in English you maybe need to focus on more.

Know hope!

As always, remember that you can follow me on social media. Don't forget

to subscribe (it's completely free, so why not?), and if you want to watch this video

with subtitles, you just need to turn on the captions. First let's look at

understanding native English speakers in real life. One reason why it might be

difficult to understand people is that native English speakers don't tend to

learn other languages. Often if people aren't used to learning languages, they

don't necessarily understand the difficulties that a non-native speaker

might have. In addition, they might assume that you understand everything and

therefore they probably won't make an effort to speak more slowly. If you've

watched my videos before, you will know that I do speak some foreign languages.

But I'm not saying this to sound superior. The only reason I learnt

foreign languages was because it's my passion - it's something that interests me.

Honestly, if it didn't interest me, I probably would have just

studied French for one year in high school, because when I was at school that

was the minimum requirement. I think it's a shame that it's not compulsory to

study a foreign language for several years in English-speaking countries,

but English is the international language and that's just the way it is.

Another reason why you might not understand native speakers in real life is that we

often speak badly. For example, we often make grammatical mistakes and some of us

mumble. Mumbling is when you don't open your mouth

very wide and you therefore don't speak very clearly. I'm an English teacher, so I

probably make fewer mistakes than the average person (I hope), but it does happen

to me sometimes as well. Particularly when I'm speaking quickly or I'm just

not paying attention. And I definitely mumble sometimes. It's a bad habit.

Now I have two things that just apply to movies and TV shows. The first thing is

that characters in movies and TV series often don't speak like people in real life.

Have you ever thought: Why do fictional characters often sound so smart?

Well, it's because they have scriptwriters, so very often they use

vocabulary or constructions that we don't necessarily use every day.

Of course that's not always the case - it depends on the movie or the show - but

often the English isn't as simple as in real life. Secondly there is often other

noise that can make the dialogue difficult to understand. For example,

background music, sound effects or just other background noise. If you're a

native speaker, or you have a very advanced level, that's not normally a

big problem because it's not so important for you to understand every

single word. If you are very used to listening to a language, your mind will

subconsciously fill in the gaps, so to speak, if you

don't understand every word. But if you don't have a lot of experience listening

to a language, obviously it will be a bit harder. Now let's look at some things

that apply to both real life, and movies and series. Firstly, there are lots of

different accents in the world. Obviously if you're not used to hearing a certain

accent, you might find it difficult to understand. But if it makes you feel any

better, that often happens to native speakers as well. The second thing is

slang. Slang is something that you don't often learn in English lessons and it

also changes from place to place. (Yay!)

The third thing is contractions.

We use lots of contractions in English. There are the standard contractions like

"don't" and "I'm", and there are also spoken informal contractions, like "gonna",

"wanna", "coulda", etc. If you are not used to contractions, you will definitely find it

hard to understand native speakers. I've actually already made some videos on

contractions. The links will be in the description. The fourth thing is

reductions. This is something that I could probably make several videos about.

Reductions are sounds that change or disappear when we speak at a normal or

high speed. For example, this sentence pronounced slowly is: Do you want a cup of tea?

But we don't normally say that. We would say:

Do you want a cup'v tea? Do ya want a cuppa tea?

D'you wanna cuppa tea? Or even: Dge wanna cuppa tea?

And the final thing is connected speech.

This is something else that I could probably make several videos about, and it's

similar to the concept of reductions. Connected speech is when one word

follows into the next word. For example, we don't usually say: "This afternoon."

We normally say: Thissafternoon. Thissafternoon.

Thanks very much for watching, guys.

If you liked the video, please hit the thumbs up. Let me know in the

comments if you find it difficult to understand native speakers and why,

and also tell me if you can think of any other reasons that I haven't mentioned

in this video. See you next time.