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• Hello everyone, and welcome back to English with Lucy.

Today, I have an advanced listening lesson for you.

But don’t worry, you don’t have to be

at an advanced listening level

to participate and understand.

This lesson is more about showing you

how to reach an advanced level.

I’m going to teach you how to start

understanding fast English conversations

and fast native English speakers.

In this lesson, I’ve got three listening activities

for you to do, so please have a pen and paper ready.

Let’s start with exercise number one.

This exercise is all about

showing you the importance of vocabulary.

Many listening exams will have a gap-fill exercise,

where you’re given a passage of text

and you have to listen to an audio and fill in the gaps.

The same goes for natural fast English conversation.

You may understand the majority of the words,

but you may miss some keywords

that are essential to understanding the conversation.

How can you understand a passage of text

or a fast English conversation

if you don’t know the vocabulary?

Yes, sometimes you can understand the context

and many exams will rely on this for the easier questions.

But to get full marks,

you need to have a broad and expansive vocabulary.

On your screen, there will appear a gap-fill exercise.

I’m going to read this text,

and I would like you to see

how many of the words you can fill in.

I will read this once,

but please replay it if you feel like

you need to listen again.

Before you attempt any of the exercises in this lesson,

please turn off the subtitles,

because they could ruin your chances

of giving a genuine attempt.

Are you ready?

Let’s begin.

Over the past two decades,

the average annual death rate of climbers on Mount Everest

has remained at about six.

But this spring, at least 10 people

have already been reported dead or missing

on the world’s highest peak.

This is all the season that saw a record

381 climbing permits issued by the Nepalese government.

In reality, this means about 600 people

were preparing to embark on the climb,

with permit holders accompanies

by support staff up the mountain.

Make sure you play that again if you need help.

Here are the answers.

Now, none of this is truly specialised vocabulary.

So it’s likely that if you have a broad vocabulary,

you’d be able to do this exercise.

Listening and vocabulary go hand in hand.

And if you’re struggling with your listening,

really consider improving your vocabulary

or at least trying to improve your vocabulary.

One of the best ways of doing this

is picking up vocabulary on your own in your daily life,

and combining that with a structured curriculum.

You get the best of both worlds.

You learn words that you have to learn,

because they’re on the curriculum,

and you also learn words that you need to learn,

because you come across them all the time.

I truly believe that’s the perfect combination

So, to summarise this first exercise,

it was more about showing you the importance of vocabulary.

There are lots of tips and tricks that I can give you

to help you improve your exam prospects,

but realistically, if you don’t know the words,

how are you going to understand the words?

I’ve got lots more videos on expanding your vocabulary

which you can use if you want to improve your listening.

I know it sounds like they don’t go together,

but they really, really do.

Now, let’s move onto exercise number two.

This is an exercise that you can practise at home

as much as you want.

It’s a speed alteration exercise.

This exercise is so, so effective

if you practise it frequently.

If you commit to doing this exercise every day

for a month or for two months, I guarantee you,

your listening will improve so much.

The best thing about this exercise

is it’s one that you can create for yourself at home

with very little effort.

If you have a YouTube account,

which I presume you do, because you’re watching this video,

unless it’s been illegally downloaded,

which makes me very, very angry,

well, you have all the tools and resources

to create your own speed alteration exercise.

For this one, you really do need a pen and paper.

Let me show you how it works.

I’m going to give you a short audio.

I’m going to play it at a slightly slower speed than normal.

I want you to write down everything you hear.

It might be a full sentence, it might just be words.

I’m then going to play again at normal speed,

and I’m going to play it one more time at fast speed.

During each of the three times that I play the audio,

I want you to be writing down what you hear

or editing what you’ve written down.

Again, remember to turn off subtitles

or you will completely ruin the exercise for yourself.

Are you ready?

Let’s begin.

The British supermarket chain, Waitrose,

is starting a trial aimed at reducing packaging

by removing plastic from flowers and plants

and offering more lose fruit and vegetables.

Customers will be able to use their own containers

to buy and refill produce

such as pasta, rice, and cereals.

Okay, now I’m going to play it at normal speed.

Are you ready?

Let’s begin.

The British supermarket chain, Waitrose,

is starting a trial aimed at reducing packaging

by removing plastic from flowers and plants

and offering more lose fruit and vegetables.

Customers will be able to use their own containers

to buy and refill produce

such as pasta, rice, and cereals.

The British supermarket chain, Waitrose,

is starting a trial aimed at reducing packaging

by removing plastic from flowers and plants

and offering more lose fruit and vegetables.

Customers will be able to use their own containers

to buy and refill produce

such as pasta, rice, and cereals.

And I’m going to play it once more, at fast speed.

Are you ready?

Let’s begin.

The British supermarket chain, Waitrose,

is starting a trial aimed at reducing packaging

by removing plastic from flowers and plants

and offering more lose fruit and vegetables.

Customers will be able to use their own containers

to buy and refill produce

such as pasta, rice, and cereals.

Here is what I said.

Here is what I said and once again at normal speed.

The British supermarket chain, Waitrose,

is starting a trial aimed at reducing packaging

by removing plastic from flowers and plants

and offering more lose fruit and vegetables.

Customers will be able to use their own containers

to buy and refill produce

such as pasta, rice, and cereals.

Now this is a really interesting exercise,

because it really affects the brain in a funny way.

When you turn something down to slow speed,

it gives you more time to think about what you’re hearing.

When you turn it back to normal speed,

it sounds really, really fast,

but again it gives you another chance.

When you put it onto fast speed,

it sounds almost impossible to understand.

But because you’ve already heard it twice

and at slower speeds,

you can still pick things up

and then when you play it the final time

to check your answer at normal speed,

well, it seems much easier.

Now, I would like you to find YouTube videos

in accent that you desire,

maybe it’s a TED Talk, maybe it’s your favourite YouTuber,

maybe it’s some of my videos,

I want you to listen to them once in slow speed,

once at normal speed, and once at fast speed.

Then go back to normal speed

and see how much more you understand.

If you want to do the writing down exercise,

I encourage you to take very short videos

or snippets, maybe one minute of news videos

or commentary videos.

If you do maybe five minutes a day,

if you do maybe two minutes a day,

you play it slow, normal, fast, then normal again,

if you do that every day for 30 days,

I guarantee, you will start becoming

much more used to listening to fast English conversations.

It’s a really great technique,

but it does need a little bit of dedication.

Exercise number three is connected speech.

I’m going to say this sentence quite a few times.

I think I’m going to say it four times.

I recommend that on the first time

that you just write down what you hear,

if it’s letters, phonemes.

Maybe it’s just a load of letters that you hear

or random words.

Then over the next couple of times that you hear it.

Try and make it out into a full sentence.

What you’re doing is training your brain

to adapt to connected speech.

Ready?

Let’s begin.

I’d been intending to visit it for a long time.

I was so amazed by the absolute beauty of it.

I’d been intending to visit it for a long time.

I was so amazed by the absolute beauty of it.

I’d been intending to visit it for a long time.

I was so amazed by the absolute beauty of it.

I’d been intending to visit it for a long time.

I was so amazed by the absolute beauty of it.

So the full sentence was.

I had been intending to visit it for a long time.

I was so amazed by the absolute beauty of it.

But I said it in a very natural, connected speech.

Fashion.

Instead of saying I had, I said I’d.

It’d of been saying been intending.

I said be-nintending.

It’d of saying to visit it, I said t’ visit-it.

Tuh, with the schwa, visit-it.

Instead of for a long time, I said, f’r a long time,

f’r a long time.

Instead of I was was so amazed,

I said I w’s so amazed,

I w’s so amazed.

Instead of by the absolute,

by the absolute, by the absolute.

Instead of beauty of it,

I said beauty of it.

Right, let’s talk about why.

While we don’t seek like robots, we use connected speech.

Now I do have a whole video on connected speech.

I’m going to give a brief overview now,

but the technique I’ve just shown you

is a really good thing to practise,

because it gets you thinking about connected speech.

If you have an English teacher,

you could ask them to send you some sentences

and have you work out what they’re saying.

It’s something you could request in a private class.

There are four parts of connected speech

that I’m going to talk about.

The first one is catenation.

This is when a consonant sound at the end of one word,

and note I say sound, it’s not just a letter.

It’s all about the phonemes.

A consonant sound at the end of one word

is joined with the vowel sound

at the beginning of the following word.

An apple,

an apple.

In the example sentence, been intending,

been intending, that’s catenation.

There’s also intrusion.

This is when two words are sent together.

An extra sound might be placed between them

to make it easier to say.

I am, I am.

You are, you are.

I explained this more in my connected speech video,

which I have linked down below.

But if our mouth is wide, like ee,

then we normally do a yah sound.

And if our mouth is round, like ooh,

then we normally do wuh sound.

Ee, yah.

Ooh, wuh.

For example, the sentence,

we all play out.

We all play out.

Play, again, it’s this wide sound, yout.

We all play out.

Now take this sentence,

go out to open.

Go out to open.

It’s the ooh, round shape,

so we use a wuh sound.

We also have the er sound.

For example, there is, there is.

Better alone, better alone.

Now in British English,

we don’t tend to pronounce the Rs at the end of words,

but those secret Rs are still there,

so they come out when the following word

begins with a vowel sound.

Again more detail in my connected speech video.

In the example sentence,

the absolute became the absolute with the yah sound.

We also have a lesion,

which is the omission of one or more sounds.

It can be a vowel sound, a consonant sound,

a whole syllable.

A common form that is clear to see is contractions.

Do not becomes don’t.

Is not becomes isn’t.

In the example sentence, I had became I’d.

Lastly, we have assimilation.

This is where two phonemes comes together

and change into a new phoneme which is easier to say.

For example, don’t you becomes dontchu.

That’s because tuh and yah comes together

to make a ch sound.

Don’t you like it, dontcha like it.

Duh and yah come together to make a ja sound.

For example, did you like it?

Did you like it?

Right.

That’s it for today’s lesson.

I hope you enjoyed it.

I hope you learned something,

and I really hope you enjoyed doing the exercises,

especially exercise number two.

Please, if you practise that often,