Understand FAST English：Advanced Listening Practice

Have you ever watched an English TV show or movie and thought, oh, they're speaking so fast. How will I ever be able to understand what people are saying without subtitles? Well, you have come to the right lesson. In today's lesson, you are going to learn how to understand fast English conversations so that you can easily watch movies and TV shows with no stress and no subtitles. Hi, I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com, and like always, I have created a free PDF worksheet, which includes the entire transcript from today's sample conversation and a downloadable audio of the conversation so that you can listen to it and practice again and again. You will be able to level up your listening skills in no time at all. How can you get this worksheet? Well, you just need to click on the link in the description, enter your name and email address, and voila, just like that, you will get the worksheet in your email inbox plus the bonus audio of the conversation from today. And the best part is you never need to sign up for my weekly worksheets ever again. Once you sign up, I will automatically send them to you every week. It is my continued gift to you. So don't wait, click on the link in the description to download this free worksheet plus the downloadable audio. So how can you really understand fast movies and TV shows in English? Today, I'd like to present to you my four-step listening method. This proven method has helped thousands of students to level up their listening skills. We are going to practice the four-step listening method today. And if you enjoy this lesson, I want to invite you to join me for the next 150 days. Yes, that's right. Five months every day. If you join the 150 Day Listening Challenge, I will send you a lesson exactly like the one that we're practicing today. And you can bet at the end of five months, whoo, your listening skills will skyrocket and you'll have a great time along the way. Usually, the 150 Day Listening Challenge is $500, that's $100 each month. But right now, I am giving you a huge discount so that you can join and start studying with me. The full course with lifetime access is only $199. That is 60% off. We start on August 22nd with the 150 Day Listening Challenge. So I want you to practice with today's lesson with me. And if you enjoy it, you can click on the link in the description and join me for the next five months with the 150 Day Listening Challenge and get this huge discount. I would love to continue walking you through understanding fast English conversations. All right, let's get started with the four-step listening method and see if this can work for you. The first step is to listen to a clip of a real English conversation. This is not a scripted conversation. This is not a textbook conversation. This is a real conversation. We're going to listen to this clip just one time. You're going to hear me speaking with Nathan. Nathan participates in a really interesting organization called Toastmasters. You might have heard of it. It is a public speaking organization that exists all around the world. And in fact, I went to one of Nathan's Toastmasters meetings. It was so cool. But here he's telling me about the experience within Toastmasters. What happens? How do they really help people to level up their speaking skills? Even native speakers need to level up their speaking skills too. And you're going to hear his voice and mine. We're only going to listen to it one time. I want to challenge you. If you have subtitles turned on on YouTube, turn it off or just cover it up for a moment. I want you to only listen to our conversation. It's just 20 seconds. I want you to only listen to it and test your ears. By the end of this lesson, you're going to understand it way better. But this is the first time, so it's going to be tricky. All right. Are you ready? Let's listen to Nathan. You will receive a topic or a prompt. Okay. And you have to get up in front of the group and do a one to two minute speech off the cuff. Wow. With an introduction, you know, just like any normal speech. That's bound to terrify anybody. Right. And that's really the most uncomfortable part of the meeting, but it's where you grow the most. How was that? Was it pretty fast? You might have understood the general idea. Maybe you understood a couple words here and there. But can you understand every single word? Well, probably not, but that's okay. That's why you're here. What we're going to do now is move to step two, which is listen to a slowed down version of this clip. You're going to hear every single word a little bit more clearly, and then we're going to go back and listen to the fast version again. But let's listen to the slowed down version for step number two. Listen carefully. See if you pick up any extra words, and then we'll go on to step three. Listen. You will receive a topic or a prompt. Okay. And you have to get up in front of the group and do a one to two minute speech off the cuff. Wow. With an introduction, you know, just like any normal speech. That's bound to terrify anybody. Right. And that's really the most uncomfortable part of the meeting, but it's where you grow the most. How did you do with step number two, that slowed down version? So far, you have just listened. This is a passive skill. I want you now with step number three to be active. I want to challenge you. Take your pen. This is my favorite pen. I love it so much. It works so well, and it makes a nice sound. Take your favorite pen or just your phone, whatever you want to write down with. I want you to listen to the fast clip again, and I want you to try to write down every word that you hear. If you need to stop the video, pause it, go back, listen to it again. That's okay as well, but I challenge you to be active. Try to write down exactly what you hear. Are you ready? We're going to listen to Nathan one more time in the fast version. Test yourself because after you listen to this, I'm going to ask you a few questions. They are not going to be multiple choice questions. They're just going to be open-ended questions to test your overall comprehension, and then we'll dive a little bit deeper with step number four. So let's listen to the fast conversation one more time and try to write it down. Let's go. You will receive a topic or a prompt. Okay. And you have to get up in front of the group and do a one to two minute speech off the cuff. Wow. With an introduction, you know, just like any normal speech. That's bound to terrify anybody. Right. And that's really the most uncomfortable part of the meeting, but it's where you grow the most. All right. I hope you took a moment to write down what you heard. Now I have a few comprehension questions for you. Question number one is, what do you receive when you go to a Toastmasters meeting? What do you receive? I'll give you three seconds to think of the answer. There are actually two options. Nathan said you will receive a topic or a prompt. A topic or a prompt. Those are going to be the subject for the speech that you give. All right. Let's go to the second question. How long is the speech supposed to be? Do you remember what Nathan said? Check with your writing. How long is the speech supposed to be? Nathan said you have to get up in front of the group and give a one to two minute speech off the cuff. We'll talk about that phrase off the cuff in just a minute. But the answer is one to two minutes. It seems short, but when you have zero preparation and you've just been given the topic, one to two minutes can feel like a really long time. I want to know in context, what do you think this phrase off the cuff means? A cuff is the bottom of a men's dress shirt. Off the cuff. I don't know exactly why we're using that exact word in this phrase, but off the cuff means it is spontaneous. No planning. You're just given the topic and boom. You have to stand up and start speaking. How do you think this makes people feel? Well, that is our next question. I want to know what was the exact word that we used in this conversation for how this type of speech makes people feel. In the conversation, I said that's bound to terrify anybody. The word I used was terrify. This is a really strong word. Terrify. And maybe it's better used for really dangerous situations, but when you're speaking in front of a group of people, sometimes it feels like a dangerous situation, right? Speaking spontaneously off the cuff is terrifying. I want you to notice the verb that I used. That's bound to terrify anybody. Bound to. Usually we use this when we're tying something together. The criminal was bound to the police car, but here that's not what's happening. What does bound to mean? This means definitely. It is definitely going to terrify anybody to give a spontaneous speech. It's bound to terrify anybody. So you might say, if you win the lottery, you are bound to be contacted by random family members you didn't even know you had. They'll probably ask you for money. This is definitely going to happen. You are bound to be contacted by random people, or you're bound to be terrified if you have to give a speech spontaneously. Okay, my final comprehension question for this quick, very real conversation clip is this. Why is it good to give a spontaneous speech? What does Nathan have to say about this? Why should you do something uncomfortable like this? I want you to think about what you wrote down. Think about what he said, and I'll give you 30 seconds to answer. Nathan said, that's really the most uncomfortable part of the meeting, but that's where you grow the most. When you do something uncomfortable, something spontaneous, something that really challenges you, maybe something that terrifies you, that's where you grow the most. And I love this mindset because it is absolutely true for English too. If you never do something outside your comfort zone, you never have an English conversation, you never try to go to that English meeting in your town, you never try to do something new, well, you're not going to grow. So I challenge you to try to do something new because Nathan has said that's where you grow the most. All right, so in the four-step listening method, we have listened to the fast version, we have listened to the slowed down version, and with step number three, you have written down what you've heard and we've practiced some vocabulary as well. Because if you don't understand the words, you're not going to be able to actually understand the best context, the nuance of the context. So understanding key vocabulary is also important. What about step number four? Step number four is where we put it all together. I want you to check and see exactly what we said in the conversation and compare it word for word with the transcript. Did you catch every single phrase? Did you catch off the cuff? Can you catch it now? So what we're going to do is we're going to listen to the fast version one more time, and I want you to take a look at what you wrote. I want you to fix it up based on any vocabulary you just learned, based on anything I just explained about this clip. I want you to fix it up and test yourself. Test to see, can you get it as accurate as possible? So let's listen to Nathan and also me, and I want you to test your writing. See if you could actually understand every single word. Let's listen. You will receive a topic or a prompt. Okay. And you have to get up in front of the group and do a one to two minute speech off the cuff. Wow. With an introduction, you know, just like any normal speech. That's bound to terrify anybody. Right. And that's really the most uncomfortable part of the meeting, but it's where you grow the most. All right. How did you do with step number four? You compared your writing to the actual transcript. I hope you were able to catch a few more phrases and correct your writing as well. As a little bonus, usually what I suggest to my students is to go back and listen to the audio without reading anything. Just listening to our original conversation and see if you can pick up way more than you could the first time. Usually that's the case. So we're going to test that. We're going to listen to this. Yes, that's right. One more time. There's going to be no text on the screen. You're just going to be listening. And I have a feeling you are going to pick up. Pick up means understand way more than you did just a few minutes ago when we started this lesson. Are you ready for the final time? Let's listen. You will receive a topic or a prompt. Okay. And you have to get up in front of the group and do a one to two minute speech off the cuff. Wow. With an introduction, you know, just like any normal speech. That's bound to terrify anybody. Right. And that's really the most uncomfortable part of the meeting, but it's where you grow the most. Well, excellent work leveling up your listening skills. Could you understand our conversation better than you could at the beginning of this lesson? I bet you could. And imagine if you could do this every single day, 15 minutes per day over the next five months. You can do this if you join me in the 150 day listening challenge. There are over 50 different native English speakers. So you get to hear different voices, different types of speaking. All of these will challenge your listening skills. And you're also going to learn over 450 new vocabulary words. That's three words every single day so that you can level up your vocabulary and understand way more English. Usually the 150 day listening challenge is $500. That's $100 every month. But right now I'm offering a 60% off discount. The full challenge with lifetime access so that you can review these lessons whenever you want is $199. This is available just for a limited time. So make sure you click on the link in the description to see if this discount is still available. We will start our day one lesson of 150 days on August 22nd. So don't miss this. Make sure that you join us before then. Get the discount and level up your listening skills. It's going to be so fun to help you with this challenge. Well, thank you so much for learning English with me today. I want to know in the comments, would you ever give a spontaneous, off the cuff, one to two minute speech in front of other people? In English, would you do this? It could be a good way to grow. A challenging, terrifying way, but it could be a good way to grow as well. And don't forget to download the free PDF worksheet for today's lesson. It includes the entire worksheet and transcript for today's conversation with Nathan. Plus you can download the audio versions that we listened to. You can listen to those as much as you want and continue to improve your listening skills. Just click on the link in the description, enter your name and email address, and just like that, the free worksheet and audio downloads will be available in your email inbox. It is my gift to you. Well, thank you so much for learning English with me, and I'll see you again next Friday for a new lesson here on my YouTube channel. Bye. But wait, do you want more? I recommend watching this video next, where you are going to continue to level up your listening skills, this time with a conversation between David and me about a lovely woman who he met when he was much younger. Let's watch that video and find out more. I'll see you there.