First of ALL need used to understand with subtitles over and over again and after start take off sentences little by little untill have a Full understanding
Turn on subtitles only when you absolutely cannot make out what's being said because of background noise or characters talking over each other. Try to pick up the whole idea based on the context and listen to the phrases. So for instance if you hear "a piece of cake" and you know what it means next time when you hear this phrase and even if you didnt pick the whole phrase so long as the context gives away that you know that it must've meant "its easy" you know instantly it was "a piece of cake"
I would have said the back button, I hate to miss even a single word. But I also have that reading. I'm dutch but mostly read in English and it's hard to not go back and reread. I guess it's getting used to missing things and not worry about it too much? I do realize how silly it is, like after a few days you'll only remember the main idea in the story not every word. But I guess it just takes practice. I plan on trying speed-reading one day, pick a book I've already read and see how easy it is to go superfast and not get frustrated. I plan the same for watching a movie, one I know well, in a language I don't speak (Spanish or German) and see if I can make heads or tails of at least some of the words. (I need to find out how to add languages ). I bet this will help in watching stuff without English subs a lot.
in brief: In this video, Hadar Shemesh discusses three reasons why people struggle to understand English spoken on TV and in movies and shares tips to improve listening skills. 1-Brain capacity: When watching TV or movies, your brain processes various elements, including dialogue, storyline, characters, facial expressions, and more, which can make it difficult to focus solely on language. 2-Lack of experience with spoken English: English speakers often emphasize important words and reduce less important ones when speaking, making it challenging for non-native speakers to understand. Practice listening to chunks of speech rather than individual words. 3-Technology: Sound compression and actors' lack of diction can make audio less clear, even for native speakers. This issue is not exclusive to non-native speakers. Tips to improve listening skills: -Expose yourself to different speakers and accents, practicing without subtitles. -Train your brain to understand the main idea of a sentence or chunk, rather than analyzing every word. -Practice pronunciation, focusing on reductions and function words. -Transcribe lines from TV shows or movies and compare your transcription with scripts or captions to identify weaknesses in your listening skills. Hadar encourages viewers to share their experiences and advice in the comments section to help others who struggle with understanding spoken English in TV shows and movies.
To me it's always 3. Feature-length films usually have better sound quality and I don't struggle with them as much, or voice-acted animation always has clear speech and good sound quality but TV shows are the worst when it comes to sound quality or mumbling, even worse than amateur RUclips videos.
I just found yr vid by "accident". I'm a 70YO Australian who is a native English speaker. This is the best vid I've found on addressing non-native English speaking difficulties. I have trouble listening to dialogue which you descibe as "chunks". My hearing is OK. My advice is to listen to content through headphones. American shows introduce this street-talk for the sake of authenticity. But hey, without sub-titles, you can't get the plot. Great recommendations Hadar. BTW, many Eastern countries rely on sub-titles to know what's going on, eg. Home & Away & Neighbours from Australia.
One of my favorite exercise for improving my listening is to transcribe songs I am fond of. For example, in the ghetto by Elvis Presley, the beauty of his words are worth it.
its funny how i can understand completely what you are saying without being helped by subtitles. maybe it's because you have a clean and smooth speech. it not happen with other people and teachers. you're awesome. keep it!
Год назад
Thank you for your very useful video. I have been teaching in Argentina for half a century and now I only hear may be a 30 % of only one ear. Subtitles help lot but I can understand you perfectly because of your amazing diction. When I was in D.C. I understood people but not the TV. You are right, I always tell my students that is not necessary to undertsand all the words. Thank you from frozen Patagonia.
I started with subtitles in my native language and now I use English subtitles. This way you can hear and read the words. For me, this is the best way to learn
that explains it , why when I am absolutely good at listening and understanding sometimes (and just in movies) I need to focus and struggle to hear , and because of that I don't turn off subtitles always , but people who learn English from subtitles need to turn them off at some point , because we hear with different part of our brain and you need to let go of the subtitle , 20 years ago I was at that point and believe me you will be soon learn to improve your listening , and English has lots of accents and you need to learn them all . so its better to start from something that you already know what is what and soon you don't need to use them anymore
Fine analysis. Having been trained in voice and diction as a native English speaker, with tesol degree, and having taught immersion English, l can attest to your assertions. Again, a fine analysis.
I'm a native english speaker and holy sh*t your english is really really good. I can't really tell you're not a native speaker. You're like 99% of the way there. Basically speak as good as a native. People think it's not possible for a non native to reach a native level. But there are a few like you tgat show it's possible.
Congrats! I usually recommend your channel to my students! Another point that stops them from understanding is quite obvious: they may not know the meaning of the words or expressions. That's why I focus a lot on vocabulary acquisition as well.
I understand every 20th-century movie dialogue, but not the dialogue in movies nowadays. I am slowly realizing that it is not only a weakness on my part; there is also a problem with the dialogue delivery of actors.
I usually rewatch movies, and whenever I don't wanna feel stressed about it, I'll just pick an old movie or series. Something you know really well and you already know the dialogues, music, background noises, everything. Your favorite movie, or some childhood movie works really well. So for example, a Disney movie, or something along the lines. It's easy to handle, you already know the story, and you can follow along pretty much everything. That goes for every language (I'm currently learning Japanese, Russian and French) and I'm understanding everything 😅😂 even when it's on the background just making noise and I'm working on something else not really paying attention to it. So, I'd also say, exposure. Keep listening to things even if you don't understand.
For me, it's entirely the third reason. The actors mumble or speak unclearly. Sound compression might be a factor but I really think it's mainly the actors.
I am trying to improve my Spanish listening skills. The speed of natural speech is 25% faster than English. so it's a bit challenging. I divide listenng practice into three types: extensive, e.g. just having the radio on in the background, listening, but not straining to understand anything: enjoyment, e.g. listening to a song that you know some of the words to, or a show or film that you know the gist of the storyline, only looking up a word that is recurring: and intensive, a segment of maximum a few minutes, from a film etc. I listen to the segment once at normal speed, then once or twice at .75, then normal speed, then1.25 and then at normal speed. It sounds a lot but only takes about 12 minutes. By that time, I can understand the segment at normal speed. All of this is without subtitles. But I suppose you could use them intially.
After two decades in the u.s I can say that learning the diffrent accents is really important too. For me its hard to understand when someone talks fast and the way some country texans speak has made me feel like I don't even speak the language at all. Oddly enough I don't know anyone to practice this type of english with so even after all these years I still struggle with listening accents.
One thing for me that makes it hard to understand TV without subtitles are slangs or advanced vocabularies, and contents that relate to a specific culture or history. It is also hard for me to understand a sentence that has a complicated grammar.
in my opinion first of all you should listen to it so fast as 1,5 speed and after you should repeat normal pace . because brain get used it and when you start to listen slow this listening get easy
I've noticed that I understand much more while listening to podcasts or watching news, RUclips videos, than while watching movies. In movies, it seems, another reason is that they use a lot of unfamiliar, sofisticated vocabulary that is not often used in real life. But I might be mistaken here. What do you think?
These may be familiar words, but used not in a common way. Many things, like names, jargon, abbreviations make it difficult, as it requires at least 20-30k words vocabulary, which only native speakers can accomplish
Or... The final sound editing fails to balance background music and sound effects to allow someone to actually hear the dialogue adequately. It could be fixed very easily with competent sound editing, but manufacturers of TV sound bar speakers that include a "dialogue boost" capability are selling a crapload of product, so there is built-in disincentive for a practical solution.
To me that happens when I'm watching Spanish movies, especially South and central Americans. Europeans speak more clearly. I'm improving though because I've been watching a lot more American Spanish tv! I think if you don't really have a grip on the language, whichever language, you'll need to train your ear!
People do not speak like teachers. Unfortunately, understanding Hadar is not a confirmation you can deal with native "speakers". People speaks so badly we must learn from that level.
I used my skills to communicate for business with several natives with different accents within the U.S... a few misunderstandings here and there. I can't do the same watching a movie. Let alone music.
@@marcoarrieta4983 People tend to speak more clearly in business meetings, especially with non-native speakers. If you sit at a dinner table with a group of them talking casually, they tend to be harder to understand. Even more so in a movie.
Becuase you say the word “English” like “englesh” with two clear short /e/ sounds, you made me realize that I, as a native English speaker, actually say it like “inglish”. How funny.
I got your point of view, but most of the English teachers teach English for English learners so they have to speak slowly to be more understandable using easy words with less phrase verbs
I've been fighting this battle for more than a year now. Key things I came up with: 1. Practice as much as you can, spend as much time listening native English speech as you can afford to. Like 8 hours a day, 7 days a week is a good starting point. 2. Don't expect fast results. It makes sense to measure your results not more often than every couple months. Day to day progress is absolutely not visible in this case. For me, a year was not enough to reach the desired level (robust understanding without an effort), but the result is significant, so I can already tell the efforts are paid off. 3. Additionally, master the vowel chart, linking speech, and reductions. IPA is also helpful, especially when you learn new words. All these really help, but this is not enough. It won't work without the practice of listening real native speech. 4. Subtitles do not help at all, in fact, the opposite is true. Human brain is only good in processing just ONE speech input at a time. It could be written speech, or spoken speech, not both. When you read the subtitles it might seem like you understand more, but the truth is you are reading, not listening. So, when practice listening, only turn subtitles on when you listen to for the second or third time or whatever attempt you give yourself to try to understand it by listening, until you give up and read. 5. The last, but not least: learn to stop your internal dialog. It always helped me in studying, since stopping your thoughts increases your ability to focus dramatically. But the effectiveness of this technique in the case of listening foreign speech is stunning. I've already said that human brain is only good in processing ONE speech input at a time. Your internal dialog counts against this limit. It is a speech input too. Moreover, this one is in your native language, which makes its negative impact on your ability to focus on foreign speech enormous.
@@lilzupa1661 it's basically our thoughts. When you think without speaking out loud, it is called internal dialog or internal monologue (I've met both terms). I usually stop my thoughts for half a minute just before starting to read or listen to something important. The brain doesn't like this silence, it is trying to find something to think of. If you give to your brain any information at a moment like this, it would happily dive into whatever it would be. This trick was usually enough to help in studying. The internal dialog run again while I read or listening, but it is in form of my comments about the subject of studying so it usually not a problem at all. It is OK to have thoughts about things you've just heard. But when I started to practice my listening in English I realized these occasional thoughts are a problem because I need every bit of my attention to keep up with fast native speech. The fact these thoughts are not in English is not helping either. I don't know if it were better if my thoughts were in English, but for now, to think in English is not a trivial task for me by itself, so I decided to try not thinking at all and it seems to work.
Really interesting writeup@@cryvage1354 . I like how you're observing your inner voice. In my opinion, though, trying to force stop your thoughts isn't very effective. It takes energy and negative thoughts always come back. I think in my video about confidence i talked about how it's better to acknowledge and accept one's negative thinking, and then quiet it down with actions that produce confidence and positive thinking. Anyway, Keep up the good work!
I'm a native English speaker and I got a lot out of this video! As I get older, I have more difficulty hearing overall, but I also tend to lose the way younger people speak. Languages change and as your social group gets smaller and less diverse, it's easy to sort of lose touch with how your own language is spoken. So I have been getting more and more dependent on subtitles in English for many of the same reason non-native speakers rely on them. So I'm taking your suggestions to heart and plan to wean myself back off of subtitles. I think you've come up with something that is more universal than you might think.
I’m a native English speaker and I need subtitles to understand people on TV. That is a rather new experience. The speakers are dropping a lot of ending consonants - speaking sloppily. The practice of not moving their lips in order to appear powerful does not help.
Oh I always understand Jean-Luc Picard or Seven of Nine. Or mr. Président, for that matter. But this mumbling in the movies... So many words in a language, but that's not the problem here. There are also so many ways to pronounce every single word. Even when you, as a foreigner, have generally got what my mom used to call "the music of the language" -- still, I suppose, mumbling is an individual thing, no system there😁😁😁
A little dumb thing I did helped me a lot: I don't usually read much aloud. However when I tried , I realized that I had a 'mismatch' between what I read with what I thought it would sound. So I started practising reading aloud few minutes a day (no that much, 10-15 will do). This single practice suprisingly improved my 'internal' understanding of many words on how they should be pronounced, sounded and being written. Also my pronunciation improved and made me 'untangle' my tongue reading very much faster. This trick helped a lot when you don't have anybody near in miles capable of maintain a single english conversation.
Same with my Italian! My teacher gave us a book with extra exercises. I completed the exercises, read every sentence and every batch, then read again past lessons. It worked for me in any level.
Thanks for sharing your experience with this technique. It's really encouraging to hear study tips that have worked for others--and to have less excuses for not advancing when I can't practice my target language with others!
@@MrDavidSoro It might be possible with a little help, like learning IPA or listening to the words and dialogues on youglish, and repeting and recording until the words sound better. I've also found that shadowing technique is very helpfull
These explanations and advice apply to every language. Not just English. I have a lot of trouble understanding Spanish in vídeos. Technology is a big part of the problem. Also the people are not talking directly to me. They are talking to each other. They may not be facing the camera directly. They may😅 speak in a low voice. And they do not fully pronounce words. They shorten words. And some speakers speak at an incredible speed that seems humanly impossible. I noticed that when listening to songs If I don’t understand words if the vídeo has the text on screen I seem to be able to hear the words much better. Anyway, I am a native English speaker and I have a lot of trouble in real life conversations too in English. I constantly have to ask for repeats. People just do not speak clearly. It is really hard on the telephone. Yesterday I went to get my tax return packet. That lady asked for my ID. She had to ask me at least three times before I had any idea what she was saying. I even have had people on the phone get so frustrated with me that they ended up spelling out the word. So it’s not just non-natives that have trouble understanding English.
I have the same problem. I'm a not native english speaker, but even in mmy own language (BR Portuguese) I struggle in understanding people just as you said. It's even worse on the phone.
Three anecdotes: 1.- I was attending a meeting of an European project. The facilitator begun presenting the project and announcing what was to be the schedule of the meeting. I wasn`t understanding almost anything of what he was saying, so I begun wondering wether my level of English understanding had dramatically fallen. Suddenly, another one of the attendees (a native English speaking man) raised his hand and said: "Sorry, John, would you soften your Scottish accent? Otherwise we won´t understand anything at all!" 2.- Another international meeting. In this case, half of the attendees were European and the second half were North Americans. The meeting would last a whole week, from Sunday to Sunday. Well, until Wednesday I wasn´t able understanding the American colleagues. After Wednesday, once I had made my ear to how their English sounded, I begun understanding them better and better 3.- One day I was waiting for the start of a photographic event with a group of people, outside the premises of the gallery and just in front of the main Church in my hometown. At a given moment, I realized that one lady was trying to ask something to a teen girl, speaking to her in English. As I was aware that the girl wasn´t understanding what the lady was asking to her, I went towards them and offered my help. I was chatting with the lady for some 15 minutes or so. She was understanding me, and I was perfectly understanding her. At a given moment, another lady came towards us and asked something. The first lady answered her that for sure I could help her. So she asked to me something that I didn't understand. I told her and asked her to repeat. So she did ... with the very same result. So I looked at the first lady and asked her to explain me what was asking the second lady, who turned around and walked away saying something like: "Don ma'ar" In all of the three cases, no technology, no TV, no film. Just three unintelligible (to me) accents. 😀
As a Spanish learner, I prefer to use subtitles when watching TV in Spanish, and audio along with reading a book. It's helped my listening skills and makes the process much less frustrating. And as a native English speaker, I've also noticed the bad audio and mumbled/whispered speech in TV and movies. Disney plus is a big offender - I always need subtitles when I watch their app. So, ESL learners, don't feel bad if you need subtitles for English movies and TV!
It has been weird to me the fact that I'm capable of understanding real people but sometimes it is harder to understand a movie. I can speak with natives face to face or using an app like zoom or meet, but understanding pulp fiction was a nightmare with all that swearing and phrasal verbs 😢
My understanding skills improved when I started to watch videos on RUclips like yours, or conferences like TED talks. After a few months, my ears get used to the different accents because I heard people from all over the world pronounced the same words totally differently. Now I keep struggling in some movies, sure, and this video has great keys to improve that too. Thank you
Dear teacher, about encountering difficulties to understand listening on TV, I found a method; It is to turn your back to the TV in a way not to see images and thereby focus only on listening for a time. After that, we will come back to watch. It becomes easy to understand because the brain is accustomed to only practicing listening by separating the sound from the image.
I think one of the keys to developing our listening skills is patience. Be patient and listen to things you enjoy passively or actively. Practicing listening passively is not useless. Unconsciously we are exposing our brains to a variety of sounds and accents and it works like a "knife being sharpened to cut later".
One tip I can share that has worked for me is increasing the volume. When someone is angry at you, they usually talk louder, which naturally grabs your attention. Increasing the volume can help your brain focus and pay attention, as it tricks your mind into thinking someone is angry at you. Additionally, a louder volume makes it easier to understand the quieter sounds that English has.
Great topic again, Hadar. I've said this in my previous comments but here I go once again. I like that you always try to cover the psychological angle of learning the language. Like what kinda feelings or questions it leaves the learner with, when they're unable to comprehend what's being said. :) And not too long ago, I happened to stumble upon the very same "Vox" video that you've quoted, to my relief. Ironically, with technological advancement in sound engineering, the audio quality around dialogs in movies has only gotten worse. lol One of the things I try to do in order to improve my listening skills while watching a movie or series is, try to have that conviction to not turn on the subtitles, no matter what. I've developed the patience to rewind and listen to the actor again. Also, it's important to make sure TV is the only sound in the room. Because the movie itself may have enough background noise that drowns out the dialog. Alternatively, wearing headphones could be a great solution. Having said all of that, more often than not, I find myself unable to understand anything at all, when the movie characters speak in diverse dialects. But it's for the same reason I intentionally pick movies involving subcultural American accents, just to challenge myself. Lastly, for a long time after I started to work on my American English phonetics, I didn't realize English was a non-phonetic language. :) My first language is [predominantly] phonetic in nature. [How we spell is how we pronounce. No interpretation]. This was indeed an awakening for me. It opened up all possible avenues and perspectives that helped me drastically improve my listening and speaking skills in English. Because I started to realize why things are the way they are in English and why I was doing [mistakes] what I was doing. It'd be great if you could post a video on this subject, if you haven't already. I'll share more of my experiences here as and when I'm able to recollect.
Hi Deepak Same here. In my mother tongue it's the same. It's a phonetic language and also a syllable time language. I tried not to turn on the subtitles.. 😂
@Nature Lover Good to know. Keep up the no-subtitle challenge. lol. And yes, knowing whether the target language is syllable-timed or stress-timed is important.
Another suggestion that works for me a lot is to listen to the same thing repeatedly until you internalize it. Music for example is very good for this because you can learn the lyrics of the song and that's going to stick in your brain forever. But watching your favourite movies and trying to repeat the dialogue again and again helps a lot.
I got used to subtitles so much that I watch movies in my native language with subtitles on. It just simplifies things in case you miss a word or something. I see it as an insurance.
I was struggling to try to understand each word in random dialogues. However, the approach to focus on keywords sounds pretty interesting. Thanks, Hadar. ❤
It took me 30 yrs of living in the US as an immigrant to have figured out what you outline in this video. Your points are exactly what I gradually grasped over the years.
What I do that is helping me a lot is listening to your videos first without subtitles, second I put subtitles in English and the third time I put them in my mother tongue. Doing this in a few weeks I understand practically everything I'm hearing, I do this with several English speakers.
I turn on the caption for the reason I want to enjoy the conversation or dialogues. I don't want to miss anything. I studied English as my second language and I don't intent to speak like a native speaker. I don't have any problem speaking or listening in real life. Caption gives me the full satisfaction of having seen a movie in full.
Yeah, me too! Usually I watch lots of videos here ob youtube without any subtitles for listening practice, but when I'm watching a movie it's my leisure time, I don't wanna lose anything
One tip that is scientifically proven while we are learning complex topics is to concentrate on just a couple of things at a time. As she said, if we are struggling when we are watching something in TV, then we can really watch the same parts over and over again but we have to try to concentrate on different things (1 or 3). It's tough, but it works.
When I stumbled upon the Vox video, it was such a relief. I'm glad you included it! When I first watched it, it felt like my experience was finally validated. Apparently, many people in the comments section felt the same way. It's something incredibly important, especially for non-native speakers of English. I'm reasonably comfortable with all sorts of accents, and I consume a large variety of content created by both native and non-native speakers from different parts of the world. Hence my confusion when I couldn't properly hear what was being said in movies. Thanks for sharing this incredibly important information. Great video, as always! ❤
I learned a lot wirh subtitles,, especially. I finned my ears, once my listening was fine, I abandoned subtitles the only thing is that it makes the learning process slow but effective improving your listening.
I'm doing this writing down exercise with music; I write down what I heard and then check the lyrics. I'm an advanced English speaker but I often had confidence problems with my Engliish because it is hard to understand a lot of songs, movies and TV shows. Now I'm starting to build more confidence since I'm realizing that even native speakers can find hard to understand some movies and songs in their language (there's even a hilarious instagram page only about misheard lyrics, lol!). And confidence is everything for your performance in pretty much anything. 🙂
Great video! Watching movies in a foreign language without subtitles can be really challenging and it requires a lot of focus and you can easily miss important details. I personally find it even harder to understand movies in the original language because the actors often mumble, like Til Schweiger for example. On the other hand, when the movie is dubbed into a foreign language, it can be easier to understand because the voice actors often have clearer pronunciation and don't mumble as much. Thanks for sharing these insights and tips!
Great video. Speaking about technical issues, I've done simultaneous interpreting (from English and Icelandic), and the audio in the booth is top-notch. Everything's so clear. That doesn't happen with videos (like Netflix; I felt so identified with the guy in the Vox video). I once was requested to subtitle a documentary in Icelandic, and I had to decline after realizing there were so many parts I didn't fully understand in just a few minutes. Regarding English, I speak it for 1-2 hours daily during the week, not so much on the weekends, and often with native speakers. Still, I struggle with London English when I am there (it's probably okay if I speak with a Londoner on Zoom and they know I'm not a native speaker of English). My friends there are from other parts of the UK, and I am fine understanding them even when they are speaking to each other (maybe they all started speaking in a way that ensures communication between different accents, and that's why they are easier to understand).
I'm a bilingual person, and studied three more different languages. The approach of understanding the idea and not every single word is the actual key to understand other languages that works for me, and I'm doing it since I was a kid because my bilingual brain was trained doing it. I "feel" the language more than "understand" it, and this is one of the most important achievement everybody should pursue learning a language. I believe bilingual kids are just more favored, but everybody can learn how to do it with a good guide (a good teacher) and quite a time/effort.
I'm a native English speaker learning Portuguese and I've gotten quite adept at reading to a point that shows with Portuguese subtitles on are actually fun to watch so long as the vocabulary isn't that crazy, but the minute I turn off the subtitles, I can't understand a word of it, even if I've seen that episode multiple times. The second tip has helped me a lot with how I need to listen moving forward, which is very exciting for me, thank you.
Hii! I'm native Portuguese speaker and I'm trying to learn English! Here in Brazil, some peoples have a bad diction, so it's harder to understand what they say! Sometime neither I can understand hahahaha😂
Once I was at a hall in a hotel in Dallas Texas and there were some people talking. I didn't understood anything they were saying. When I talked to my boss here in Brazil I understood everything and he was from Boston. I think some people don't want to be understood. Go to a "favela" and try to understand what they say there.
@@Fit_soldier basically, Portuguese have too much rules, focus to learn how to speak and write! Almost all the Brazilians don't know how to write or speak correctly because of the rules! So try your best and relax about grammar rules, anyone here don't care about this.
I think that the key to understand native speech is to learn more phrasal verbs - which are used in everyday life. This really helped me to improve my understanding
Soy un hablante de inglés primero, y he estudiado español por 4 años. Recientemente, vi clase de élite en el doblaje latino y fue difícil en algunos partes también 😅 Honestly bro, I’d say that it’s tougher to adjust to all the different patterns of speech in Spanish. It’s not as varied in English. Cuban and Chile can go craaaazy 😂
Spanish is hard asf, we have different kinds of accents and pronunciations depending by the country or city, even some of us don’t understand the way of the Chilean speak so don’t worry 😂
Tranquilo es normal, ni yo le entiendo a los chilenos, y tampoco trate de entendernos a nosotros los Dominicanos xd, te recomiendo ver series/peliculas spanglish como puss in boot, Narcos de netflix, etc.
La sola ragione è che è difficile capire l'inglese senza sottotitoli per chi non lo parla, perché troppe parole si pronunciano uguali ad altre, e solo vedendole scritte, si capisce. Senza contare il vocabolario limitato, dove quasi ogni parola ha 300 significati diversi a seconda di quella che c'è prima o dopo. Le altre sono tutte scuse
For me the big difference is reality versus scripted. I have no problem whatsoever with videos, podcasts, talking to people, friends, etc. But when i watch a scripted show I end up using cc. I think it's because script writers wanna show their props, so characters speak at a higher level, plus the actors trying to voice everything contracted or sped up. I notice that regular people just don't talk like that, unless they have heavy accents. Another issue is that people regularly pause between sentences when talking, but in scripted shows they don't. See a show like The West Wing, where the characters are always immediately responding to every sentence, super fast. In real life we need more time to process what was just said in order to respond. Another problem for me is the British accent, in particular, names of people and places. I think one tip would be to watch an episode twice. The first time with cc and then again without it, because in the 2nd pass you already know the plot and the dialogue, so that you wouldn't be distracted and your brain could focus only on the listening.
I have no problem with understanding normal people on youtube, yet somehow in movies professional actors often pronounce words horribly that it's hard to understand, anyone can relate?
The reduction thing is very important, and I think that is the answer of why I don't fully understand the series,movies,etc. But study new vocabulary is crucial too.This video was really helpful. Thanks!
you showed the most easy examples, and this is not a point at all to understand/hear so common phrases. The issue is watching regular movie with regular dialogs. The grammar, words etc are out of regular knowledge of language
It's the first time I can understand someone speaking English without having to translate... You speak perfect English, clean and well articulated / é a primeira vez que eu consigo entender alguem falando ingles sem ter que traduzir... Voce fala um ngles perfeito, limpo e bem articulado / Es la primera vez que puedo entender a alguien hablando inglés sin tener que traducir... Hablas un inglés perfecto, limpio y bien articulado.
Just want to warn those who depend on subtitles. With the automatically generated subtitles used in many places today, sometimes the subtitle is the wrong spelling or the wrong word altogether!! The spoken word and written subtitle "sound" similar but are not the correct translation.
I would recommend starting listening practice with shows that do not require understanding every word. I mean cooking shows, reality shows on animal planet or HDtv, or talk shows or news shows on MTV do not require you to understand every word to enjoy them. For movies or dramas, it will be too frustrating to miss even one word because it could be an important clue to the storyline and it is hard for us to enjoy them without following the exact storyline, right? So, pick the practice materials that you can enjoy enough without understanding every single word. That will help you to build a habit of turning off the subtitles. That is my advice ❤
Lol, I understand almost everything when watching videos in English on RUclips, watching anime dubbed in English or even listening to native speakers in daily situations. However, when it comes to TV shows in English, I completely blank out. 😪
I do believe that the reason why we learners struggling with understanding is on RUclips channels they try to talk clearly in order to be understood easily, whereas on the TV, actors don't need to be understood by non_ native people
PARA MIM É UMA IMENSA SATISFAÇÃO PODER ESTAR ASSISTINDO ESSE TRABALHO MARAVILHOSO 🙌 MINHA ESTIMADA IRMÃ HADAR 👏👏👏 PARABÉNS PELO CONTEÚDO 🔥🔥TE DESEJO MUITO SUCESSO SEMPRE AMÉM 🙏👏 DEUS É CONTIGO AMÉM
I understand while some letter or words, no understand other some words! Deep silent Different subfrequency Big problem: different means, more sub-sentences parts while them, to compiler, like computer Yazdığım bu metinler anlatmak istediğimi, tam olarak ifade etmese de bir gerçeği gösterir. Beyim İngilizce gramer'e kolaylıkla adapte olabilsede konuşmaktaki zorluk dinlediklerimi anlamlı bir ifade bütünlüğüne cevirememis ve engelim olması! Ben anadili İngilizce olan insanların İngilizce konularını göremiyor engellenmiş olmam, Yani fiziksel bi siber Saldırı! Kitaplar bile sahte Bırakmak yok! Bahane yok! Eleştiri yok! Sadece çalışmak ve dua etmeye yer var!
Hello, I hope you are having and amazing day, I´m Chilean, my native language is spanish and recently I took the basic, intermediate and advanced test to measure my english skills, I made it to pass the basic and the intermedium levels, but I failed for a bit with the C1 and C2 levels (seven of ten correct answers on each one). I love to play pc games of the kind ""Visual Novels"" because they come with subs, also I use to see movies so many times, firts with the sub active, then without the subs. Don´t try to understand everything if you aren´t a native speaker, most of the learning comes paying atention and getting the idea, not trying to understand every word they say. That´s how I learned most of the language.
Actually, everything is much easier than Hadar said. 1. reason - you don't know engish well 2. reason - speaker speak bad. Here is the thing. If you know some word or phrase well, you will recognize this no matter how bad speaker said. For example "I love you" I pretty sure all of you can be able to understand this phrase even if speaker don't have front teeth, no matter how fast or how indistinct it will say. And second fact - native speakers say like hillbilly, they speak just gibberish. All this "wanna, gonna, gotta, needn't" and so on it isn't even words. You never read them in the book, because they don't exist. And of course your tutor or teacher never say you about something what don't exist. All this connected speech, shortcut and other cr*p - this is just speaking disability and ignorance. It's not your fault. If you understand bloggers and people in real life, but you don't understand some speaker in the movie it is speaker problem, not your. And you as speaker also have to realize what you must speak properly and distinct. Because you as english speaker want to send message to as much people as possible.
I use subtitles now that i live in an apartment. Especially with movies. The quiet parts are too quiet & the loud parts are too loud. Before using subtitles id often need to rewind certain scenes when i didn't understand something. I can't just crank the volume because its not fair to my neighbors. And im sick of playing every through my earbuds. So subtitles it is.
I showed a video of yours to my US friend who helps me practice my English and said, "Mark, just listen to Hadar, to me she sounds 100 percent American, but what do you think as a native?" And he was like "Yeah bud, that's 100 percent American! I mean, not 99 percent but a hundred percent! Everything's American in how she speaks, her pronunciation, vocabulary, intonation, sentence structure etc, just everything!" And all I could say was "wow! I've developed a great American ear then!" 😄 Hadar, you are the only non-native English tutor on RUclips he has ever commented on like that... Take care 👍
What’s your best piece of advice for understanding characters on TV shows and movies?
First of ALL need used to understand with subtitles over and over again and after start take off sentences little by little untill have a Full understanding
Firstly, watch the movie a lot of time. Allahu Akbar
Turn on subtitles only when you absolutely cannot make out what's being said because of background noise or characters talking over each other. Try to pick up the whole idea based on the context and listen to the phrases. So for instance if you hear "a piece of cake" and you know what it means next time when you hear this phrase and even if you didnt pick the whole phrase so long as the context gives away that you know that it must've meant "its easy" you know instantly it was "a piece of cake"
I would have said the back button, I hate to miss even a single word.
But I also have that reading. I'm dutch but mostly read in English and it's hard to not go back and reread. I guess it's getting used to missing things and not worry about it too much? I do realize how silly it is, like after a few days you'll only remember the main idea in the story not every word. But I guess it just takes practice.
I plan on trying speed-reading one day, pick a book I've already read and see how easy it is to go superfast and not get frustrated.
I plan the same for watching a movie, one I know well, in a language I don't speak (Spanish or German) and see if I can make heads or tails of at least some of the words. (I need to find out how to add languages ). I bet this will help in watching stuff without English subs a lot.
Just watch it without subtitles and by time you will use to it that accent.
in brief:
In this video, Hadar Shemesh discusses three reasons why people struggle to understand English spoken on TV and in movies and shares tips to improve listening skills.
1-Brain capacity: When watching TV or movies, your brain processes various elements, including dialogue, storyline, characters, facial expressions, and more, which can make it difficult to focus solely on language.
2-Lack of experience with spoken English: English speakers often emphasize important words and reduce less important ones when speaking, making it challenging for non-native speakers to understand. Practice listening to chunks of speech rather than individual words.
3-Technology: Sound compression and actors' lack of diction can make audio less clear, even for native speakers. This issue is not exclusive to non-native speakers.
Tips to improve listening skills:
-Expose yourself to different speakers and accents, practicing without subtitles.
-Train your brain to understand the main idea of a sentence or chunk, rather than analyzing every word.
-Practice pronunciation, focusing on reductions and function words.
-Transcribe lines from TV shows or movies and compare your transcription with scripts or captions to identify weaknesses in your listening skills.
Hadar encourages viewers to share their experiences and advice in the comments section to help others who struggle with understanding spoken English in TV shows and movies.
I like the way you teach us
Sounds like chat gpt 😊
@@renemrt that's what i was about to say. llol
To me it's always 3. Feature-length films usually have better sound quality and I don't struggle with them as much, or voice-acted animation always has clear speech and good sound quality but TV shows are the worst when it comes to sound quality or mumbling, even worse than amateur RUclips videos.
that's summary for the video it's so great. thank you
I just found yr vid by "accident". I'm a 70YO Australian who is a native English speaker. This is the best vid I've found on addressing non-native English speaking difficulties. I have trouble listening to dialogue which you descibe as "chunks". My hearing is OK. My advice is to listen to content through headphones. American shows introduce this street-talk for the sake of authenticity. But hey, without sub-titles, you can't get the plot. Great recommendations Hadar. BTW, many Eastern countries rely on sub-titles to know what's going on, eg. Home & Away & Neighbours from Australia.
I grew up watching these shows 😍
Thanks for sharing your point of view, glad you came across this video:)
One of my favorite exercise for improving my listening is to transcribe songs I am fond of. For example, in the ghetto by Elvis Presley, the beauty of his words are worth it.
Hi, I just want to congratulate you for your clear lesson and amazing and beautiful pronunciation!
its funny how i can understand completely what you are saying without being helped by subtitles. maybe it's because you have a clean and smooth speech. it not happen with other people and teachers. you're awesome. keep it!
Thank you for your very useful video. I have been teaching in Argentina for half a century and now I only hear may be a 30 % of only one ear. Subtitles help lot but I can understand you perfectly because of your amazing diction. When I was in D.C. I understood people but not the TV. You are right, I always tell my students that is not necessary to undertsand all the words. Thank you from frozen Patagonia.
I started with subtitles in my native language and now I use English subtitles. This way you can hear and read the words. For me, this is the best way to learn
that explains it , why when I am absolutely good at listening and understanding sometimes (and just in movies) I need to focus and struggle to hear , and because of that I don't turn off subtitles always , but people who learn English from subtitles need to turn them off at some point , because we hear with different part of our brain and you need to let go of the subtitle , 20 years ago I was at that point and believe me you will be soon learn to improve your listening , and English has lots of accents and you need to learn them all . so its better to start from something that you already know what is what and soon you don't need to use them anymore
Your English is clearly heard and understood.Some speak in such a way that I cannot underststand them.Why such a thing/situation happen?
Fine analysis. Having been trained in voice and diction as a native English speaker, with tesol degree, and having taught immersion English, l can attest to your assertions. Again, a fine analysis.
... by the way, if people would speaks clearly like you I've been able to understand the 100% of what they say! Excellent, Brava!
I'm a native english speaker and holy sh*t your english is really really good. I can't really tell you're not a native speaker. You're like 99% of the way there. Basically speak as good as a native. People think it's not possible for a non native to reach a native level. But there are a few like you tgat show it's possible.
Congrats! I usually recommend your channel to my students! Another point that stops them from understanding is quite obvious: they may not know the meaning of the words or expressions. That's why I focus a lot on vocabulary acquisition as well.
Great point, that is very true!
I understand every 20th-century movie dialogue, but not the dialogue in movies nowadays. I am slowly realizing that it is not only a weakness on my part; there is also a problem with the dialogue delivery of actors.
Thank you kindly! Greetings from Brazil!
Great explanation and your style to explain it is very clear
I usually rewatch movies, and whenever I don't wanna feel stressed about it, I'll just pick an old movie or series. Something you know really well and you already know the dialogues, music, background noises, everything. Your favorite movie, or some childhood movie works really well. So for example, a Disney movie, or something along the lines. It's easy to handle, you already know the story, and you can follow along pretty much everything. That goes for every language (I'm currently learning Japanese, Russian and French) and I'm understanding everything 😅😂 even when it's on the background just making noise and I'm working on something else not really paying attention to it. So, I'd also say, exposure. Keep listening to things even if you don't understand.
Thank you! Love your videos, I’ve found some very helpful methods and essential points that a lot of tutor training materials don’t have.
✨👌🏼💐🍭🏆
Listening with subtitles 😅 I fully understand you with/without subs, l run in trouble with other speakers. Thanks for your hints... Great video!
For me, it's entirely the third reason. The actors mumble or speak unclearly. Sound compression might be a factor but I really think it's mainly the actors.
I am trying to improve my Spanish listening skills. The speed of natural speech is 25% faster than English. so it's a bit challenging. I divide listenng practice into three types: extensive, e.g. just having the radio on in the background, listening, but not straining to understand anything: enjoyment, e.g. listening to a song that you know some of the words to, or a show or film that you know the gist of the storyline, only looking up a word that is recurring: and intensive, a segment of maximum a few minutes, from a film etc. I listen to the segment once at normal speed, then once or twice at .75, then normal speed, then1.25 and then at normal speed. It sounds a lot but only takes about 12 minutes. By that time, I can understand the segment at normal speed. All of this is without subtitles. But I suppose you could use them intially.
Your pronuciation is easy to understand, my god! first time see one of your videos and wow for me was easy to understand,
Happy to hear!!
It was an amazing video!!! Thank you so much!
After two decades in the u.s I can say that learning the diffrent accents is really important too. For me its hard to understand when someone talks fast and the way some country texans speak has made me feel like I don't even speak the language at all. Oddly enough I don't know anyone to practice this type of english with so even after all these years I still struggle with listening accents.
One thing for me that makes it hard to understand TV without subtitles are slangs or advanced vocabularies, and contents that relate to a specific culture or history. It is also hard for me to understand a sentence that has a complicated grammar.
I understood all I’m speak Portuguese 😁😁😁so happy
Great video!! Thanks 👍
Fabulous Content!! 🤩🤩 thanks for sharing us these useful information❤️❤️🔥
in my opinion first of all you should listen to it so fast as 1,5 speed and after you should repeat normal pace . because brain get used it and when you start to listen slow this listening get easy
A great question popped-up in my mind... IF i uanderstand u without sub, so why can't I do The same when It comes to movies and series?
I've noticed that I understand much more while listening to podcasts or watching news, RUclips videos, than while watching movies. In movies, it seems, another reason is that they use a lot of unfamiliar, sofisticated vocabulary that is not often used in real life. But I might be mistaken here. What do you think?
Hi hadar, this is subhashini. Please make a video on 'How to talk about past situations'?
Me convenciste 😂, me suscribo,
Felicidades por tu canal
Very nice video. Thanks
Perfect English...vos tenés
Love it yeahhh❤
These may be familiar words, but used not in a common way. Many things, like names, jargon, abbreviations make it difficult, as it requires at least 20-30k words vocabulary, which only native speakers can accomplish
my technique is to watch multyple times my favourit videos which is less than 20 min.
Or... The final sound editing fails to balance background music and sound effects to allow someone to actually hear the dialogue adequately. It could be fixed very easily with competent sound editing, but manufacturers of TV sound bar speakers that include a "dialogue boost" capability are selling a crapload of product, so there is built-in disincentive for a practical solution.
To me that happens when I'm watching Spanish movies, especially South and central Americans. Europeans speak more clearly. I'm improving though because I've been watching a lot more American Spanish tv! I think if you don't really have a grip on the language, whichever language, you'll need to train your ear!
Of course I understood everything u said in this video
personally i learned to understand ,ore watching south park. they usually talk a bit fast so it helped me
People do not speak like teachers. Unfortunately, understanding Hadar is not a confirmation you can deal with native "speakers". People speaks so badly we must learn from that level.
people speak*
I used my skills to communicate for business with several natives with different accents within the U.S... a few misunderstandings here and there. I can't do the same watching a movie. Let alone music.
@@marcoarrieta4983 People tend to speak more clearly in business meetings, especially with non-native speakers. If you sit at a dinner table with a group of them talking casually, they tend to be harder to understand. Even more so in a movie.
Becuase you say the word “English” like “englesh” with two clear short /e/ sounds, you made me realize that I, as a native English speaker, actually say it like “inglish”. How funny.
I got your point of view, but most of the English teachers teach English for English learners so they have to speak slowly to be more understandable using easy words with less phrase verbs
I've been fighting this battle for more than a year now. Key things I came up with:
1. Practice as much as you can, spend as much time listening native English speech as you can afford to. Like 8 hours a day, 7 days a week is a good starting point.
2. Don't expect fast results. It makes sense to measure your results not more often than every couple months. Day to day progress is absolutely not visible in this case. For me, a year was not enough to reach the desired level (robust understanding without an effort), but the result is significant, so I can already tell the efforts are paid off.
3. Additionally, master the vowel chart, linking speech, and reductions. IPA is also helpful, especially when you learn new words. All these really help, but this is not enough. It won't work without the practice of listening real native speech.
4. Subtitles do not help at all, in fact, the opposite is true. Human brain is only good in processing just ONE speech input at a time. It could be written speech, or spoken speech, not both. When you read the subtitles it might seem like you understand more, but the truth is you are reading, not listening. So, when practice listening, only turn subtitles on when you listen to for the second or third time or whatever attempt you give yourself to try to understand it by listening, until you give up and read.
5. The last, but not least: learn to stop your internal dialog. It always helped me in studying, since stopping your thoughts increases your ability to focus dramatically. But the effectiveness of this technique in the case of listening foreign speech is stunning. I've already said that human brain is only good in processing ONE speech input at a time. Your internal dialog counts against this limit. It is a speech input too. Moreover, this one is in your native language, which makes its negative impact on your ability to focus on foreign speech enormous.
Great tips!
Thanks a lot!
What do you mean by "Internal dialog"?
Could you give an example?
@@lilzupa1661 it's basically our thoughts. When you think without speaking out loud, it is called internal dialog or internal monologue (I've met both terms).
I usually stop my thoughts for half a minute just before starting to read or listen to something important. The brain doesn't like this silence, it is trying to find something to think of. If you give to your brain any information at a moment like this, it would happily dive into whatever it would be. This trick was usually enough to help in studying. The internal dialog run again while I read or listening, but it is in form of my comments about the subject of studying so it usually not a problem at all. It is OK to have thoughts about things you've just heard. But when I started to practice my listening in English I realized these occasional thoughts are a problem because I need every bit of my attention to keep up with fast native speech. The fact these thoughts are not in English is not helping either. I don't know if it were better if my thoughts were in English, but for now, to think in English is not a trivial task for me by itself, so I decided to try not thinking at all and it seems to work.
Great points, thanks!
Really interesting writeup@@cryvage1354 . I like how you're observing your inner voice. In my opinion, though, trying to force stop your thoughts isn't very effective. It takes energy and negative thoughts always come back. I think in my video about confidence i talked about how it's better to acknowledge and accept one's negative thinking, and then quiet it down with actions that produce confidence and positive thinking. Anyway, Keep up the good work!
I'm a native English speaker and I got a lot out of this video! As I get older, I have more difficulty hearing overall, but I also tend to lose the way younger people speak. Languages change and as your social group gets smaller and less diverse, it's easy to sort of lose touch with how your own language is spoken. So I have been getting more and more dependent on subtitles in English for many of the same reason non-native speakers rely on them. So I'm taking your suggestions to heart and plan to wean myself back off of subtitles. I think you've come up with something that is more universal than you might think.
I’m a native English speaker and I need subtitles to understand people on TV. That is a rather new experience. The speakers are dropping a lot of ending consonants - speaking sloppily. The practice of not moving their lips in order to appear powerful does not help.
Oh I always understand Jean-Luc Picard or Seven of Nine. Or mr. Président, for that matter. But this mumbling in the movies...
So many words in a language, but that's not the problem here. There are also so many ways to pronounce every single word. Even when you, as a foreigner, have generally got what my mom used to call "the music of the language" -- still, I suppose, mumbling is an individual thing, no system there😁😁😁
A little dumb thing I did helped me a lot: I don't usually read much aloud. However when I tried , I realized that I had a 'mismatch' between what I read with what I thought it would sound. So I started practising reading aloud few minutes a day (no that much, 10-15 will do).
This single practice suprisingly improved my 'internal' understanding of many words on how they should be pronounced, sounded and being written. Also my pronunciation improved and made me 'untangle' my tongue reading very much faster. This trick helped a lot when you don't have anybody near in miles capable of maintain a single english conversation.
What a great tip! Thank you for sharing, I’ll try doing the same! 😃🙏🏼
Same with my Italian! My teacher gave us a book with extra exercises. I completed the exercises, read every sentence and every batch, then read again past lessons. It worked for me in any level.
Thanks for sharing your experience with this technique. It's really encouraging to hear study tips that have worked for others--and to have less excuses for not advancing when I can't practice my target language with others!
I think I don't fully get it, how could you now that you are pronouncing some word in an incorrect way? Thx
@@MrDavidSoro It might be possible with a little help, like learning IPA or listening to the words and dialogues on youglish, and repeting and recording until the words sound better. I've also found that shadowing technique is very helpfull
These explanations and advice apply to every language. Not just English. I have a lot of trouble understanding Spanish in vídeos. Technology is a big part of the problem. Also the people are not talking directly to me. They are talking to each other. They may not be facing the camera directly. They may😅 speak in a low voice. And they do not fully pronounce words. They shorten words. And some speakers speak at an incredible speed that seems humanly impossible. I noticed that when listening to songs If I don’t understand words if the vídeo has the text on screen I seem to be able to hear the words much better. Anyway, I am a native English speaker and I have a lot of trouble in real life conversations too in English. I constantly have to ask for repeats. People just do not speak clearly. It is really hard on the telephone. Yesterday I went to get my tax return packet. That lady asked for my ID. She had to ask me at least three times before I had any idea what she was saying. I even have had people on the phone get so frustrated with me that they ended up spelling out the word. So it’s not just non-natives that have trouble understanding English.
I have the same problem. I'm a not native english speaker, but even in mmy own language (BR Portuguese) I struggle in understanding people just as you said. It's even worse on the phone.
Three anecdotes:
1.- I was attending a meeting of an European project. The facilitator begun presenting the project and announcing what was to be the schedule of the meeting. I wasn`t understanding almost anything of what he was saying, so I begun wondering wether my level of English understanding had dramatically fallen. Suddenly, another one of the attendees (a native English speaking man) raised his hand and said: "Sorry, John, would you soften your Scottish accent? Otherwise we won´t understand anything at all!"
2.- Another international meeting. In this case, half of the attendees were European and the second half were North Americans. The meeting would last a whole week, from Sunday to Sunday. Well, until Wednesday I wasn´t able understanding the American colleagues. After Wednesday, once I had made my ear to how their English sounded, I begun understanding them better and better
3.- One day I was waiting for the start of a photographic event with a group of people, outside the premises of the gallery and just in front of the main Church in my hometown. At a given moment, I realized that one lady was trying to ask something to a teen girl, speaking to her in English. As I was aware that the girl wasn´t understanding what the lady was asking to her, I went towards them and offered my help. I was chatting with the lady for some 15 minutes or so. She was understanding me, and I was perfectly understanding her. At a given moment, another lady came towards us and asked something. The first lady answered her that for sure I could help her. So she asked to me something that I didn't understand. I told her and asked her to repeat. So she did ... with the very same result. So I looked at the first lady and asked her to explain me what was asking the second lady, who turned around and walked away saying something like: "Don ma'ar"
In all of the three cases, no technology, no TV, no film. Just three unintelligible (to me) accents. 😀
As a Spanish learner, I prefer to use subtitles when watching TV in Spanish, and audio along with reading a book. It's helped my listening skills and makes the process much less frustrating. And as a native English speaker, I've also noticed the bad audio and mumbled/whispered speech in TV and movies. Disney plus is a big offender - I always need subtitles when I watch their app. So, ESL learners, don't feel bad if you need subtitles for English movies and TV!
It has been weird to me the fact that I'm capable of understanding real people but sometimes it is harder to understand a movie. I can speak with natives face to face or using an app like zoom or meet, but understanding pulp fiction was a nightmare with all that swearing and phrasal verbs 😢
My understanding skills improved when I started to watch videos on RUclips like yours, or conferences like TED talks. After a few months, my ears get used to the different accents because I heard people from all over the world pronounced the same words totally differently.
Now I keep struggling in some movies, sure, and this video has great keys to improve that too.
Thank you
Dear teacher, about encountering difficulties to understand listening on TV, I found a method; It is to turn your back to the TV in a way not to see images and thereby focus only on listening for a time. After that, we will come back to watch. It becomes easy to understand because the brain is accustomed to only practicing listening by separating the sound from the image.
I think one of the keys to developing our listening skills is patience. Be patient and listen to things you enjoy passively or actively. Practicing listening passively is not useless. Unconsciously we are exposing our brains to a variety of sounds and accents and it works like a "knife being sharpened to cut later".
One tip I can share that has worked for me is increasing the volume. When someone is angry at you, they usually talk louder, which naturally grabs your attention. Increasing the volume can help your brain focus and pay attention, as it tricks your mind into thinking someone is angry at you. Additionally, a louder volume makes it easier to understand the quieter sounds that English has.
Great topic again, Hadar. I've said this in my previous comments but here I go once again. I like that you always try to cover the psychological angle of learning the language. Like what kinda feelings or questions it leaves the learner with, when they're unable to comprehend what's being said. :)
And not too long ago, I happened to stumble upon the very same "Vox" video that you've quoted, to my relief. Ironically, with technological advancement in sound engineering, the audio quality around dialogs in movies has only gotten worse. lol
One of the things I try to do in order to improve my listening skills while watching a movie or series is, try to have that conviction to not turn on the subtitles, no matter what. I've developed the patience to rewind and listen to the actor again. Also, it's important to make sure TV is the only sound in the room. Because the movie itself may have enough background noise that drowns out the dialog. Alternatively, wearing headphones could be a great solution.
Having said all of that, more often than not, I find myself unable to understand anything at all, when the movie characters speak in diverse dialects. But it's for the same reason I intentionally pick movies involving subcultural American accents, just to challenge myself.
Lastly, for a long time after I started to work on my American English phonetics, I didn't realize English was a non-phonetic language. :) My first language is [predominantly] phonetic in nature. [How we spell is how we pronounce. No interpretation]. This was indeed an awakening for me. It opened up all possible avenues and perspectives that helped me drastically improve my listening and speaking skills in English. Because I started to realize why things are the way they are in English and why I was doing [mistakes] what I was doing. It'd be great if you could post a video on this subject, if you haven't already.
I'll share more of my experiences here as and when I'm able to recollect.
Hi Deepak
Same here. In my mother tongue it's the same. It's a phonetic language and also a syllable time language.
I tried not to turn on the subtitles.. 😂
@Nature Lover Good to know. Keep up the no-subtitle challenge. lol. And yes, knowing whether the target language is syllable-timed or stress-timed is important.
would you like practice listening and speaking with me?
Watched that vox video. Good points
Another suggestion that works for me a lot is to listen to the same thing repeatedly until you internalize it. Music for example is very good for this because you can learn the lyrics of the song and that's going to stick in your brain forever. But watching your favourite movies and trying to repeat the dialogue again and again helps a lot.
You can't expect to learn much grammar reading the lyrics of a song. Even those of "The Boss"
I got used to subtitles so much that I watch movies in my native language with subtitles on. It just simplifies things in case you miss a word or something. I see it as an insurance.
I was struggling to try to understand each word in random dialogues. However, the approach to focus on keywords sounds pretty interesting. Thanks, Hadar. ❤
Keywords are king!
would you like practice listening and speaking with me?
It took me 30 yrs of living in the US as an immigrant to have figured out what you outline in this video. Your points are exactly what I gradually grasped over the years.
Oh wow, I’m actually very proud we share the same insights!
What I do that is helping me a lot is listening to your videos first without subtitles, second I put subtitles in English and the third time I put them in my mother tongue. Doing this in a few weeks I understand practically everything I'm hearing, I do this with several English speakers.
Great strategy and advice!
I turn on the caption for the reason I want to enjoy the conversation or dialogues. I don't want to miss anything. I studied English as my second language and I don't intent to speak like a native speaker. I don't have any problem speaking or listening in real life. Caption gives me the full satisfaction of having seen a movie in full.
Yeah, me too! Usually I watch lots of videos here ob youtube without any subtitles for listening practice, but when I'm watching a movie it's my leisure time, I don't wanna lose anything
One tip that is scientifically proven while we are learning complex topics is to concentrate on just a couple of things at a time. As she said, if we are struggling when we are watching something in TV, then we can really watch the same parts over and over again but we have to try to concentrate on different things (1 or 3). It's tough, but it works.
When I stumbled upon the Vox video, it was such a relief. I'm glad you included it! When I first watched it, it felt like my experience was finally validated. Apparently, many people in the comments section felt the same way. It's something incredibly important, especially for non-native speakers of English. I'm reasonably comfortable with all sorts of accents, and I consume a large variety of content created by both native and non-native speakers from different parts of the world. Hence my confusion when I couldn't properly hear what was being said in movies. Thanks for sharing this incredibly important information. Great video, as always! ❤
I learned a lot wirh subtitles,, especially. I finned my ears, once my listening was fine, I abandoned subtitles the only thing is that it makes the learning process slow but effective improving your listening.
Thank you for sharing this!
That Vox video is the best, even in my native language sometimes I don’t understand movies, the Vox video makes so much sense.
I'm doing this writing down exercise with music; I write down what I heard and then check the lyrics. I'm an advanced English speaker but I often had confidence problems with my Engliish because it is hard to understand a lot of songs, movies and TV shows. Now I'm starting to build more confidence since I'm realizing that even native speakers can find hard to understand some movies and songs in their language (there's even a hilarious instagram page only about misheard lyrics, lol!).
And confidence is everything for your performance in pretty much anything. 🙂
Great video! Watching movies in a foreign language without subtitles can be really challenging and it requires a lot of focus and you can easily miss important details. I personally find it even harder to understand movies in the original language because the actors often mumble, like Til Schweiger for example. On the other hand, when the movie is dubbed into a foreign language, it can be easier to understand because the voice actors often have clearer pronunciation and don't mumble as much. Thanks for sharing these insights and tips!
Never thought about this. Great point!
Great video. Speaking about technical issues, I've done simultaneous interpreting (from English and Icelandic), and the audio in the booth is top-notch. Everything's so clear. That doesn't happen with videos (like Netflix; I felt so identified with the guy in the Vox video). I once was requested to subtitle a documentary in Icelandic, and I had to decline after realizing there were so many parts I didn't fully understand in just a few minutes.
Regarding English, I speak it for 1-2 hours daily during the week, not so much on the weekends, and often with native speakers. Still, I struggle with London English when I am there (it's probably okay if I speak with a Londoner on Zoom and they know I'm not a native speaker of English). My friends there are from other parts of the UK, and I am fine understanding them even when they are speaking to each other (maybe they all started speaking in a way that ensures communication between different accents, and that's why they are easier to understand).
Wow! That is really interesting to hear.
Gott kvöld! Ég er að læra íslensku. Mér finnst þetta tungumál frábært! Ég er frá Québec-fylki! Takk fyrir og bless bless!
@@user-mrfrog gaman að kynnast þér! Ég var í Québec 2008. Fallegur staður! 😊.
I'm a bilingual person, and studied three more different languages. The approach of understanding the idea and not every single word is the actual key to understand other languages that works for me, and I'm doing it since I was a kid because my bilingual brain was trained doing it. I "feel" the language more than "understand" it, and this is one of the most important achievement everybody should pursue learning a language. I believe bilingual kids are just more favored, but everybody can learn how to do it with a good guide (a good teacher) and quite a time/effort.
@alessandroperigo6731 I'm from Italy.
I'm a native English speaker learning Portuguese and I've gotten quite adept at reading to a point that shows with Portuguese subtitles on are actually fun to watch so long as the vocabulary isn't that crazy, but the minute I turn off the subtitles, I can't understand a word of it, even if I've seen that episode multiple times. The second tip has helped me a lot with how I need to listen moving forward, which is very exciting for me, thank you.
Happy to help!! ❤️
Hii! I'm native Portuguese speaker and I'm trying to learn English!
Here in Brazil, some peoples have a bad diction, so it's harder to understand what they say! Sometime neither I can understand hahahaha😂
Once I was at a hall in a hotel in Dallas Texas and there were some people talking. I didn't understood anything they were saying. When I talked to my boss here in Brazil I understood everything and he was from Boston. I think some people don't want to be understood. Go to a "favela" and try to understand what they say there.
@@ziquinhogamer5213 please help me learn Portuguese
@@Fit_soldier basically, Portuguese have too much rules, focus to learn how to speak and write! Almost all the Brazilians don't know how to write or speak correctly because of the rules! So try your best and relax about grammar rules, anyone here don't care about this.
I think that the key to understand native speech is to learn more phrasal verbs - which are used in everyday life.
This really helped me to improve my understanding
would you like practice listening and speaking with me?
@@adolfolowskibautista646 it may be interesting to try
@@andreysavinykh6890 yes of course! would you like giveme any contact you ? For example email or some social media I have a nevel of B1 TOEFL score
@@andreysavinykh6890 but I need practice with someone:(
@@adolfolowskibautista646 it's strange. I left my email a couple of times, but after a few moments my answer disappeared...
Soy un hablante de inglés primero, y he estudiado español por 4 años. Recientemente, vi clase de élite en el doblaje latino y fue difícil en algunos partes también 😅 Honestly bro, I’d say that it’s tougher to adjust to all the different patterns of speech in Spanish. It’s not as varied in English. Cuban and Chile can go craaaazy 😂
Spanish is hard asf, we have different kinds of accents and pronunciations depending by the country or city, even some of us don’t understand the way of the Chilean speak so don’t worry 😂
Cuban is impossible for me, and as a mexican spanish speaker
Tal vez sería útil ver videos en español con doble rapidez para acostumbrarme a los chilenos 🙂
Tranquilo es normal, ni yo le entiendo a los chilenos, y tampoco trate de entendernos a nosotros los Dominicanos xd, te recomiendo ver series/peliculas spanglish como puss in boot, Narcos de netflix, etc.
La sola ragione è che è difficile capire l'inglese senza sottotitoli per chi non lo parla, perché troppe parole si pronunciano uguali ad altre, e solo vedendole scritte, si capisce. Senza contare il vocabolario limitato, dove quasi ogni parola ha 300 significati diversi a seconda di quella che c'è prima o dopo. Le altre sono tutte scuse
I'm Australian, and I put on the subtitles when watching American films. I dont like to miss any little bits!
For me the big difference is reality versus scripted. I have no problem whatsoever with videos, podcasts, talking to people, friends, etc. But when i watch a scripted show I end up using cc.
I think it's because script writers wanna show their props, so characters speak at a higher level, plus the actors trying to voice everything contracted or sped up. I notice that regular people just don't talk like that, unless they have heavy accents.
Another issue is that people regularly pause between sentences when talking, but in scripted shows they don't. See a show like The West Wing, where the characters are always immediately responding to every sentence, super fast. In real life we need more time to process what was just said in order to respond.
Another problem for me is the British accent, in particular, names of people and places.
I think one tip would be to watch an episode twice. The first time with cc and then again without it, because in the 2nd pass you already know the plot and the dialogue, so that you wouldn't be distracted and your brain could focus only on the listening.
I have no problem with understanding normal people on youtube, yet somehow in movies professional actors often pronounce words horribly that it's hard to understand,
anyone can relate?
But heeey... Subtitles are not your enemy, use them as much as you can because they will give you more and more confidence. ❤
The reduction thing is very important, and I think that is the answer of why I don't fully understand the series,movies,etc. But study new vocabulary is crucial too.This video was really helpful. Thanks!
you showed the most easy examples, and this is not a point at all to understand/hear so common phrases.
The issue is watching regular movie with regular dialogs. The grammar, words etc are out of regular knowledge of language
I am Mexican and It ocurs the same misshearing to my fellowcountry people because the region spoken differences, speed, accent and use of local words
I'm a native English speaker and sometimes I have to put on subtitles. Some shows have a lot of mumbled lines and quiet dialog.
Subtitles should be mandatory in any video.
It should be illegal to make videos without subtitles.
Especially if you sing like in the song below or when you mumble in a movie like that:
El Chombo - Chacarron
Other aspects: Slangs, idioms, jokes, puns, double sense, irony, context, etc....
It's the first time I can understand someone speaking English without having to translate... You speak perfect English, clean and well articulated / é a primeira vez que eu consigo entender alguem falando ingles sem ter que traduzir... Voce fala um ngles perfeito, limpo e bem articulado / Es la primera vez que puedo entender a alguien hablando inglés sin tener que traducir... Hablas un inglés perfecto, limpio y bien articulado.
Don't show off what it's obvious when their pronunciation it's kind of so-so...
Me being indian still understand hollywood movie series without subtitle💀
Just want to warn those who depend on subtitles. With the automatically generated subtitles used in many places today, sometimes the subtitle is the wrong spelling or the wrong word altogether!! The spoken word and written subtitle "sound" similar but are not the correct translation.
I would recommend starting listening practice with shows that do not require understanding every word. I mean cooking shows, reality shows on animal planet or HDtv, or talk shows or news shows on MTV do not require you to understand every word to enjoy them. For movies or dramas, it will be too frustrating to miss even one word because it could be an important clue to the storyline and it is hard for us to enjoy them without following the exact storyline, right?
So, pick the practice materials that you can enjoy enough without understanding every single word. That will help you to build a habit of turning off the subtitles. That is my advice ❤
Lol, I understand almost everything when watching videos in English on RUclips, watching anime dubbed in English or even listening to native speakers in daily situations. However, when it comes to TV shows in English, I completely blank out. 😪
I do believe that the reason why we learners struggling with understanding is on RUclips channels they try to talk clearly in order to be understood easily, whereas on the TV, actors don't need to be understood by non_ native people
Дякую за це відео!
З Вами дуже приємно вивчати англійську мову!
PARA MIM É UMA IMENSA SATISFAÇÃO PODER ESTAR ASSISTINDO ESSE TRABALHO MARAVILHOSO 🙌 MINHA ESTIMADA IRMÃ HADAR 👏👏👏 PARABÉNS PELO CONTEÚDO 🔥🔥TE DESEJO MUITO SUCESSO SEMPRE AMÉM 🙏👏 DEUS É CONTIGO AMÉM
ı think she uses basic words so we understand him.
You didn't even mention the centre channel/5.1 issue. That's the number one problem everyone has
I understand while some letter or words, no understand other some words!
Deep silent
Different subfrequency
Big problem: different means, more sub-sentences parts while them, to compiler, like computer
Yazdığım bu metinler anlatmak istediğimi, tam olarak ifade etmese de bir gerçeği gösterir.
Beyim İngilizce gramer'e kolaylıkla adapte olabilsede konuşmaktaki zorluk dinlediklerimi anlamlı bir ifade bütünlüğüne cevirememis ve engelim olması!
Ben anadili İngilizce olan insanların İngilizce konularını göremiyor engellenmiş olmam,
Yani fiziksel bi siber Saldırı!
Kitaplar bile sahte
Bırakmak yok! Bahane yok! Eleştiri yok! Sadece çalışmak ve dua etmeye yer var!
Hello, I hope you are having and amazing day, I´m Chilean, my native language is spanish and recently I took the basic, intermediate and advanced test to measure my english skills, I made it to pass the basic and the intermedium levels, but I failed for a bit with the C1 and C2 levels (seven of ten correct answers on each one). I love to play pc games of the kind ""Visual Novels"" because they come with subs, also I use to see movies so many times, firts with the sub active, then without the subs. Don´t try to understand everything if you aren´t a native speaker, most of the learning comes paying atention and getting the idea, not trying to understand every word they say. That´s how I learned most of the language.
Actually, everything is much easier than Hadar said. 1. reason - you don't know engish well 2. reason - speaker speak bad. Here is the thing. If you know some word or phrase well, you will recognize this no matter how bad speaker said. For example "I love you" I pretty sure all of you can be able to understand this phrase even if speaker don't have front teeth, no matter how fast or how indistinct it will say. And second fact - native speakers say like hillbilly, they speak just gibberish. All this "wanna, gonna, gotta, needn't" and so on it isn't even words. You never read them in the book, because they don't exist. And of course your tutor or teacher never say you about something what don't exist. All this connected speech, shortcut and other cr*p - this is just speaking disability and ignorance. It's not your fault. If you understand bloggers and people in real life, but you don't understand some speaker in the movie it is speaker problem, not your. And you as speaker also have to realize what you must speak properly and distinct. Because you as english speaker want to send message to as much people as possible.
Love from Bangladesh 🇧🇩
Aprende inglés básico A1:
ruclips.net/p/PLrdliY5vpFJskY6eQnE8Pu1wGZs77dkgS
I use subtitles now that i live in an apartment. Especially with movies. The quiet parts are too quiet & the loud parts are too loud. Before using subtitles id often need to rewind certain scenes when i didn't understand something. I can't just crank the volume because its not fair to my neighbors. And im sick of playing every through my earbuds. So subtitles it is.
You speak very fast and I can't understand you 😢
Can you speak slower, please?
Thank so mucho.
I showed a video of yours to my US friend who helps me practice my English and said, "Mark, just listen to Hadar, to me she sounds 100 percent American, but what do you think as a native?" And he was like "Yeah bud, that's 100 percent American! I mean, not 99 percent but a hundred percent! Everything's American in how she speaks, her pronunciation, vocabulary, intonation, sentence structure etc, just everything!"
And all I could say was "wow! I've developed a great American ear then!" 😄
Hadar, you are the only non-native English tutor on RUclips he has ever commented on like that...
Take care 👍