Why is it difficult for us to understand foreign speech by ear - and 8 ways to fix it

Experts evaluate the skill of understanding foreign speech by ear as the most difficult, writes Life hacker. Many language learners are “blown away” right here. Why? People respond differently.

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• Everyone distracts me.
• I do not understand the emphasis of the interlocutor.
• I do not understand half the words in the conversation.
• To understand a foreign language by ear is not mine.
• In general, a bear in my ear has come.

Know yourself?

Step by step, we will examine all the main reasons why it is so difficult to understand a foreign language, and find the best solutions for you.

1. Ambient conditions

These are noises, technical problems, everything that does not depend on us and the interlocutor. What prevents effective communication.

Imagine that you are driving a car to the country and talking on the phone. When you go out of town, the connection is interrupted. What will you do? Usually we warn the interlocutor that the signal is now gone, and we ask you to call back later or send a message.

What do we do when in a similar situation we do not understand the interlocutor in a foreign language? Usually we immediately decide that the problem is in us. The overwhelming majority of those who are just beginning to learn a foreign language are embarrassed to ask again. Or do not know how to do it.

1 solution. "Repeat, please, once more"

In live communication, we are sometimes distracted by extraneous sounds: the noise of the street, the office, conversations around. Even in our native language, we can not always hear the interlocutor from the first time, and this is normal. But when communicating in a foreign language, we just forget about it.

What to do if you interfere with extraneous sounds when communicating, and you still do not understand foreign speech very well without them? What to do if the external environment does not allow you to catch the interlocutor's speech on all 100%?

Tell your friend about this!

Ask again, even if it seems that everyone understood.

2 solution. "Stephen Covey Method"

This is a more advanced method than just asking again. The author of the principle is an American psychologist and best-selling author Stephen Covey. I began to use his method for learning the language recently, and the results of my students are very inspiring.

1. After hearing the interlocutor, retell in your own words the meaning of what was heard.
2. Do this until the other person confirms that his words are understood correctly.
3. You can ask again the meaning of individual words, as well as the meaning of whole phrases.

For example: "I understand you correctly, do I need to come on Monday, at 15 hours, for a Chinese test?" In addition, the skill to highlight the most important thing heard is being pumped in this way.

2. Features speech interlocutor

Difficult to understand can dialect, accent, slang. As well as any individual peculiarities of the interlocutor's speech - the pronunciation of certain sounds, intonation, rate of speech.

A couple of years ago I needed to translate for an Australian company at an exhibition. It took me a whole day to begin to understand the Australian dialect, even with my level of English at the media level. And then another half day to learn how to imitate him.

How to cope with such situations without unnecessary stress? After all, to learn all the dialects is unreal. Almost every German village speaks its own dialect, and each interlocutor has individual peculiarities.

My translation practice led me to two effective life hacking. First: “strong position” can be applied if conditions allow you to control the conversation: for example, when you want to sell something. It is better to use the second life hacking, if you yourself need something from your interlocutor, but you still can’t get a strong position.

1 solution. "Strong Position"

Consists of three steps.

1. Set the framework for the interlocutor - insist on the literary language in the conversation. For example, in Germany, almost all residents speak Hochdeutsch, a common language. Sometimes the exception is older people or young people who do not want to give up slang.
2. Identify patterns during a conversation, determine which familiar sounds are pronounced differently. If the conversation does not allow you to do this quickly, ask the other party to point to them. For example, these may be vowels: “o” instead of “a”, and the English “spider” (spider, “spider”) will sound like a “spider”. Usually every carrier is aware of these patterns and will be happy to help if you politely ask him.
3. Practice hearing these patterns. Modern video and audio courses include a variety of entries in the learning process. Male, female and children's voices, the speech of the elderly, conversations in the dialect - everything can be found.

2 solution. "Shurik"

It is useful in the following situations:

• The interviewee speaks very quickly;
• We listen to the news in the media;
• We have just started to learn the language, and any speech for us sounds like news in the media.

Remember the drunken Shurik from the “Caucasian Captive” and his “slower, I write down”? This life hack is perfect for beginners to listen and hear a foreign language. It’s not at all scary to show your ignorance, and sometimes it is even profitable! In a conversation, you can choose the steps that suit your particular communication situation.

1. Warn the interlocutor that you have just started learning a foreign language.
2. Ask to speak more slowly.
3. Warn you write down.
4. Ask for the meaning of the words heard but not understood.
5. If you listen to the speech in the recording, more often pause to make it easier for you to understand.

3. The experience of the listener and the individual characteristics of perception

The third reason is ourselves and how we hear, how we perceive speech. These are our strengths and weaknesses. For example, hearing and remembering city names or surnames can be easy for us, and numbers are very difficult.

German complex numerals have one interesting feature - they are called starting from one. The German will call 81 number literally “one and eighty”. And the French will generally say "four multiplied by twenty plus one." Imagine my horror when I needed to translate from German into French one morning. And it was about money and the size of parts. Numbers Numbers Numbers

1 solution. "Nothing but the truth"

Life hacking - tell the truth. In that situation with the translation of numbers, I confessed to my interlocutors that my weak point was the perception of numbers by ear, even in my native language. Therefore, I offered to write down all the numbers, the clients were only delighted with this idea, and the negotiations even accelerated without loss of efficiency.

Admit to yourself that you are not perfect. Identify your weak points in listening in your own language. These can be dates, last names, complex terms.

Admit your interlocutor what exactly you do not perceive at the hearing. Forewarned is forearmed.

Offer your interlocutor an alternative way to work with your “bottleneck”: for example, write down all the numbers, surnames - everything that you cannot fully perceive by ear.

2 solution. "Broken phone"

If you have weaknesses in listening, then there are also strong ones. Transfer these skills from your native language to a foreign language! To train them, mentally play with the interlocutor in the game "spoiled phone". If you don’t have a buddy, you can use a TV show, podcast, or video on YouTube.

1. Guess to yourself the meaning of what was said, even if you have not heard the speech to the end.
2. Highlight the main ideas.
3. Highlight pauses and accents, memorize intonation.
4. Train a quick reaction to what you hear.

4. Language proficiency level

The reason for the fourth and last is the level of your knowledge. Simply put, how many words and grammatical structures you already know and how often they have been heard before. Yes, yes, heard, not just seen or read about myself. If you have learned the words 100 from the dictionary but have never heard them, it means that you don’t know them at all.

This is very easy to understand with the example of my favorite English patter: "The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick". Translation also sounds fun: "The sixth sheep of the sixth sick sheikh is sick." Imagine that a set of such sounding words you heard very quickly. Even if you know all these words, in a new sound combination you cannot always understand the meaning. Of course, the patter is an artificial situation, but for training it is ideal.

In the meantime, apply the “ambulance” to save the conversation when you hear unfamiliar words or grammatical structures.

1 solution. “Guess by context”

Relax, your whole life is not enough to learn all the words of a foreign language. In addition, in various professional areas there are many terms - medical, technical, economic, political. Do you really need to know them all, even if you do not know their native language? I do not know the term "to the top" in German, but if I need it in my life, I have a dictionary for this.

Learn the words that you need to communicate. But learn to hear them in various combinations.

Practice guessing the meaning of the unknown from the context. Context is all the words that stand next to a word you do not know. This is the topic of speech, background and so on. And for training, you can use the exercise "damaged phone" described above.

2 solution. "Subject and predicate"

1. Live speech is much more flexible than recorded text. And we are not always ready to “break” the patterns of grammatical structures that we have learned.
2. Be prepared that the interviewee will say "not according to the rules."
3. Select in the heard segment or sentence the main thing - subject and predicate.
4. Repeat heard patterns. This is a live speech and your reaction to it.

Summary

To understand by ear is the ability to listen and hear a foreign language. Difficulties can cause both external factors (the manner of speech of the interlocutor, ambient noise), and internal (features of perception and level of knowledge of the language). But they can and must be overcome - I hope the life hacks from my practice will help you with this.

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