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Vanessa: Hi, I’m Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.

Can you understand me but not other English speakers?

Let’s talk about it.

Can you understand my speaking voice?

I get a lot of comments from English learners that say, “Wow, I could finally understand a native English speaker.

I’ve never been able to do this before.

Amazing.”

But then the next sentence is always “Wait, why can’t I understand other English speakers?”

It’s a good question.

It would be great to understand every English TV show, and movie, and your American coworkers, and every English conversation you’re part of, but first let’s talk about why you can understand me and then we’ll talk about how you can understand other English speakers as well.

Why can you understand me?

Well, the topic is comfortable.

This probably isn’t the first time that you’ve learned English, right?

So you’re familiar with the words and the expressions and the ideas in general about what I’m talking about.

If I started talking really fast about specific tools that you need to carve a pumpkin, for example, maybe it would be a little bit tougher for you to understand because that topic isn’t comfortable.

Number two, I speak clearly but fast.

When I first started this YouTube channel, my husband Dan said, “Oh, I think you’re speaking way too fast.

People are not going to understand you.”

But do you know what?

That’s not the case.

A lot of you can understand me and you can understand me clearly.

I’m not speaking slowly like this for a small child.

No, I’m still speaking quickly, but I do speak clearly, because it’s my goal 100% for you to understand as much as possible in this topic.

For example, in this video I made about how to pronounce the word the, I want you to understand every explanation that I give.

If you don’t understand those explanations, then you’re not going to understand the idea which is how to pronounce the word the.

I want you to understand this topic, this tutorial so that you can improve your English.

Number three, it’s just one person talking.

To me this is the key.

You’re only listening to my voice.

You’re only focusing on my voice.

When more than one person speaks together, they cut off each other, they interrupt each other’s sentences, they speak quickly, they link words together in different ways, so listening to one person compared to listening to two or three people is much different.

Now let’s solve this problem.

It’s great that you can understand me, wonderful, but I want you to be able to understand your coworkers, movies, TV shows, every English conversation that you encounter.

But do you know what?

In those situations, sometimes the topic is not comfortable.

They’re usually not speaking clearly and there’s often more than one person who is speaking at a time.

So how can you take what you’ve learned, my lessons, understanding my voice, to the next level, and taking it to a more challenging situation?

To understand other English speakers, you need to start with what you know.

So my first tip is, if you can’t understand my voice, well, you need to continue watching my YouTube videos specifically with subtitles.

You can click CC for any of my videos and you can watch the subtitles.

This is going to help to train your eyes and train your ears so that you can hear a new word and you see it at the same time and you realize, “Oh, that’s how she said it.”

So subtitles in English can be really helpful if you’re at this first starting point.

If you can’t understand my voice, 80 to 90% without subtitles, okay.

It’s fine to start at the base and listen to me with subtitles.

Let’s take a look at this clip to kind of test your listening skills.

Can you understand this real natural lesson that I gave?

A couple of months ago I started to volunteer in an organization called the Free Forest School.

If you live in the US and you have kids, you should check it out, check it out online to see if there’s a branch near you.

It’s a lot of fun.

The basic idea is that kids and parents go to nature and have free play for a couple hours.

It’s just a chance to be in nature.

The kids can play together and build their sense of curiosity and independence.

If you could understand about 80 to 90% of that clip, great.

It’s time to move on to step number two, which is to challenge yourself to listen to me plus the same speaker, so you’re listening to two people, but the second person is the same, so you’re getting used to a second person’s voice instead of getting used to 20 different people’s voices.

I have a lot of videos with my husband Dan, and this is a good way to train yourself because you already know my voice and then you’re trying to train yourself to get to know one other person’s voice.

Hopefully you’ll already understand 50% of the conversation, me, and then you’re going to slowly test yourself to understand more and more of what he says.

Let’s take a look at this clip where my husband Dan and I are speaking together and if you can understand 80 to 90% of what we’re saying without subtitles, great test yourself.

Let’s see.

What about you?

What would you miss most about your home if you moved?

Dan: Ironically, we probably are moving soon.

Vanessa: We definitely are moving soon.

Dan: We’re definitely moving soon.

Vanessa: So what would you miss most about this home when we move?

Dan: I think everything in the new home is better, on the inside, everything is better.

I’ll miss this homes location.

Vanessa: Did you understand?

Pretty much everything we were saying, maybe 90% without subtitles.

Awesome.

It’s time to move on to step number three.

After you can understand a conversation with me plus the same person, maybe Dan, it’s time to move on to more speakers.

You could jump right into an English TV show, but a slower way to do that is to test yourself with my voice.

Plus someone else who you’ve never heard before.

You already feel comfortable with me plus Dan, so maybe test yourself with me plus someone else who you’ve never heard before.

I have a lot of videos on my channel where I’m speaking with someone else.

So let’s take a look at this clip here with Gayle, who’s a yoga teacher.

Maybe you can understand a my portion, 50% of the conversation, but can you understand her voice?

It’s a good test.

Did you just go in full force after that or was there just a slow progression because you’ve been doing yoga for-

Gayle: A long time.

Vanessa: A long time.

Gayle: It was like I dabbled, you know, when I was in New York city, I dabbled, like sometimes I would go to class, but I’d never completely committed like I did later on.

So I dabbled in New York and then I moved from New York to Bryson City, North Carolina and got into whitewater paddling.

And so-

Vanessa: How did you do?

Could you understand everything that both Gayle and I said without any problems or did you have a little bit more difficulty?

If you had a little more difficulty, no worries.

It’s a great way to start here.

You know that this is the step for you to help you really understand more English speakers.

If you have a favorite TV show, you can jump right in and do this with an episode that you’ve already watched.

So this is my recommendation.

Let’s say that you like the TV show Friends, this is a really common TV show.

Let’s say that you liked this show and there’s an episode that you’ve already seen.

Great.

Watch it with English subtitles.

Make sure it’s in English and English subtitles.

Read while you hear them speaking.

You’re probably going to catch expressions that you don’t know, maybe expressions that you didn’t hear before, maybe you understood the general meaning but there was specific words that, “Oh, I didn’t know they said that.”

The subtitles can be really helpful.

Then watch it a second time with subtitles again.

This should be a lot easier because it’s the second time and then that final third time that you watch the episode, watch it without subtitles.

This is testing your ears.

Can you hear those expressions that you learned by reading the subtitles?

Can your ears hear that a little bit more naturally?

Now with a TV show, it’s usually 30 minutes, sometimes longer, so it can be challenging to do this in just three tries.

If you need to do it more, that’s fine or watch a different episode because often they use similar expressions in other episodes too.

This type of training will help you graduate from understanding only me, to understanding other English speakers too.