Bába Kitti - Tanulj meg velem angolul - Budapest

This is a question English learners ask all the time – and now I’ll share my tips and tricks with you! Understanding native English is really hard, so you need to practice a lot! Here’s how:

Listen to something. All the time.

This might sound weird, but the more you listen to English voice, the sooner your ears will get used to it, and once they get used to it, it will be much easier for you to understand it! Don’t panic, if at first, you don’t understand a word, try not to give up and keep listening!

You don’t have to actually pay attention to what you are listening to, it’s enough to just leave it as background noise. Turn on some tv or English radio channels, youtube videos or podcasts. Here are my top 5 podcasts for English learners.

Listen & Repeat

Once you find the perfect listening material – whether it’s a youtube video or a podcast – here’s what you should do: Listen, pause and repeat what you hear sentence by sentence.

It’s best if the material has a transcript – a written text, same as the audio – so you can check and correct yourself. If the language is too hard to understand, find an easier one until you are comfortable enough!

Listen, write, repeat

This method is similar to the previous one except this one requires some writing. Find an audio with a transcript – language exam recordings will do, there are usually a lot of them online – and listen to it once or twice to understand it as a whole.

After that, listen to it in shorter sections and this time try to write down every word you hear. You’ll have to pause and repeat many times, but this is the most effective way to improve your listening and exam writing skills.

Listen first, read later

Always listen before you read! The natural steps of acquiring a language as follow: listening, speaking, reading, writing. This means that listening must always be the first. Whether you are solving a listening exercise or have a transcript for the audio don’t read anything before you listen to the whole recording.

This will help you focus on the story as a whole, and your ears won’t focus on only one word but will listen to the whole message.

Watch Netflix

The time when learning English was a long and boring process is over! Nowadays it’s super easy to find English movies and tv series online. Bingle watch Watch an episode of your favourite show every day – with English audio and subtitle – and practice English the fun way!

I’d definitely start with Friends since the language is easy, it’s funny and entertaining. Let me know your favourite show in the comments!

That’s it for today, I hope this article can help many of you! If you have any requests on tips or lessons, don’t hesitate to let me know! In the meanwhile subscribe to the newsletter to be the first to read my new posts! Cheers!