Hi guys!

Today a post for students of English. If you're a teacher, it can help as an extra resource,  if you're a student, it'll help with independent learning.

I would like to tell you a little bit about a site called elllo.org  - English Listening Lesson Library Online.

It's a site that I've been recommending for years! It's free and extremely educational if we use it in an intelligent way.

What I like about it is the fact that you can look for listening resources according to very specific criteria.

• Topic -> as the name suggests, you browse according to what the peeps are talking about
• Country -> you browse according to the nationality of the speaker
• Level - > you browse according to the level.

My students frequently complain that they have issues understanding particular accents.  This is something that can be fixed if we expose our brains to that particular accent and focus on connected speech.

     Connected speech, or connected discourse, in linguistics, is a continuous sequence of sounds forming utterances or conversations in spoken language. Analysis of connected speech shows sound changes affecting linguistic units traditionally described as phrases, words, lexemes, morphemes, syllables, phonemes or phones. The words that are modified by those rules will sound differently in connected speech than in citation form(canonical form or isolation form).    - Wikipedia 

To explain it plainly: words pronounced individually with no stress or intonation (like a robot) will sound differently than the same words in a sentence, especially if they are  uttered by a non-native speaker and/or someone with a strong accent.

How to teach our brain to recognize patterns of language?

Elllo can help, that's for sure, but it'll not be easy and it does take some time to master. First, choose a conversation (not a monologue!!!) according to the country of the speaker. 

 If your aim is not  to learn a lot of new vocabulary but simply listen and recognize patterns, even lower level listenings will prove beneficial for you!

1. Choose your speaker

2. Pick your conversation (notice I chose one with one flag, but if you go into the talk you can actually see it's a dialog between and American and Indian )

3. Look at the vocab tab -> any new phrases? words? Listen to the explanations, examples - write it down.

4. Do the vocabulary quiz

5/6. Listen to the track (without the tapescript) and try the quiz (third tab). Do you understand the general things? Can you listen for specific info? Check your answers.

(7). You may decide to listen again, this time with the tape script in front of you.

Now comes the fun part.

7. Pick a fragment of the conversation, not too long not too short, let's say around 6/7 sentences. Find the fragment in the listening material. TURN OFF THE TAPE SCRIPT (just open the vocab tab for example).

8. Open a WORD document (or any document that allows you to write text.

9. Divide your screen in half. If you have a WINDOWS computer you can do it by clicking the windows button and the left / right arrow. Have the listening on one side, and the open empty word document on the right.

10. Play the fragment that you wish and listen intensively to every single word and write it down in the WORD document. Of course, you'll have to rewind - that's the point! You need EVERY. SINGLE. WORD.  If you don't understand something, simply write what you hear, even if it doesn't make sense! It doesn't have to be spelled correctly - this is not the point of the exercise. Simply write question marks next to the word / phrase that is unclear like below:

11. Now, don't listen to too much like this. 6/7 sentences is really enough and you will be listening intensively which means your brain will be in sixth gear. When you're ready, open the tape script again, compare your notes, listen to that fragment, to the words you had issue with. How is he/she pronouncing the language?  What made it difficult? Is it just one word or a whole phrase?

By actively analysing the fragment you force your brain to look at the patterns, to look at how the word/phrase is pronounced.

After a few weeks or month of this, you should feel much more confident about your listening skills, especially if you follow all steps from above.

Remember, there are different accents, different people. Just because something is less British or American doesn't mean it's wrong. 

And - SURPRISE SURPRISE - THERE ARE MORE NON-NATIVES SPEAKING ENGLISH THAN NATIVES...

Hope you enjoyed this! Stay tuned for more!!!! And follow me if you like what you see :)