Adjust Your Ears to Fast English

In this short session, I'm going to help you train your ears to understand real fast American English speech. We're going to go over some reductions, some connected speech, we're going to go over some slang words, some idioms, everything that will help you understand native speakers like myself when we're speaking quickly and casually in conversation. If you want more lessons like this one, make sure to visit englishwithkayla.com. Now, let's get started with the lesson. Let's start out with some repeating and we're going to listen once. Try to think of what I'm saying before you see the text on screen. I'll say the phrase a second time with the text on screen and then I want you to imitate my tone and my connected speech. Let's get started. I was going to text you back. Nice job. Make sure you're repeating out loud. You're practicing this video in a space where you can do that. The phrase is I was going to text you back. Now we tend to have connected speech here when we say text you, text you, text you, text you. I was going to text you back. So here you is sounding more like chew, text you back. Go ahead and practice that one more time. I was going to text you back. What are you been up to? Here we're saying what have you been up to? Here we're using the reduction or when we write it, we're using the contraction to say what if what if instead of what have you been up to? What are you been up to? And sometimes when I say this quickly, you don't even hear the what if you hear just what you been up to? What have you been up to? So let's try it one more time. Go ahead and repeat. What are you been up to? Nice job. That's a really common way to greet someone and ask how they've been. I don't know if it's worth it. Here I don't know if it's worth it. What could you be talking about here? Maybe you're talking about you don't know if something's worth the amount of money it is or the amount of effort it takes, whatever it might be. Here we're changing I don't know to I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if it's worth it. Let's try it one more time. Go ahead and repeat. I don't know if it's worth it. Nice. You got to be kidding me. So this phrase it's used when you're kind of frustrated or annoyed with a situation. I actually say this all the time to my friends or to my husband. Again, it's really kind of a negative phrase and it's used in a more casual informal environment. But here you say you gotta you gotta instead of you have got to be kidding me. I can't even say the whole phrase. You have got to be kidding me. I say you gotta be kidding me. You gotta. So here again more connected speech. Go ahead and repeat. You gotta be kidding me. Nice. If you repeated that out loud you're definitely sounding more American in your English. Let's move on to the next phrase. I'm just trying to figure it out. Here the main reduction that we hear is I'm just trying to. Tryna. Again, a lot of times in English I'm sure you're very familiar with it. English speakers will say to instead of to. And here it all comes into one word. I'm just trying to. Tryna. So go ahead and practice that once more repeating. I'm just trying to figure it out. Nice job. Let's move on to the next portion of this lesson. Let's go over a few natural English expressions that I think are a little tricky for English learners. But they also just help you sound more natural and speed up your English a bit. The first one. That threw me off. We use this phrase just to say that something was unexpected or super confusing to you. It just threw you off. The next phrase. I'm running a little behind. This means you're running a little late or behind the schedule that you had planned. If you're at a restaurant and they say, sorry, your reservation is going to take a little bit longer. We're running a little behind means behind schedule. I'll keep you posted. This phrase. It's super useful to say that you're going to keep someone updated on a situation or a project. So you can use this in your personal life. Like I'll keep you posted on how this date goes or at work. I'll keep you posted on the project. That's not really my thing. This phrase. It means you're not really interested in something sports. That's not really my thing. Or you could say, oh, Chinese food. That's not really my thing. Meaning you're just not interested in it. You don't typically like it or enjoy it. Or you could say, oh, that's totally my thing. This means that this is something that really interests you and that you usually like or partake in. I'm still getting the hang of it. If you say that you are getting the hang of something, it means you're getting used to it or you're getting good at it. We use this phrase when we're talking about learning a new skill or practicing something new at work. Or any sort of process that we're getting used to. We're getting the hang of it. Now, get your ears ready. Maybe get a pencil or get ready to type. I'm going to say a phrase or a sentence in English. Something that I would actually say in my everyday life. And I want you to try to copy it down and figure out the words that I'm saying. I'm going to say it three times. And I'm going to make sure that every time I say it, maybe a little bit differently. Maybe slightly. It might sound similar. But I'll try to change it up. And then we'll put the text on screen and I'll say it slowly. And explain anything that needs to be explained. Are you ready? Let's go. She ended up backing out. Are you ready? She ended up backing out. If someone backs out, it means they canceled plans. Or they changed their mind on something last minute. She ended up backing out. I'm wiped out after today. Pause if you need to. Think about what I just said. The phrase is wiped out. I'm wiped out after today. If you are wiped out, it's just an expression that means you are exhausted or very tired. He totally brushed it off. Are you ready? He totally brushed it off. If you brush something off, it means you kind of just ignore it or forget about it very casually. So if someone says something rude to you and you just say, I don't care. You kind of brush off their rude comment. We're just hanging out tonight. The phrase, the sentence here is, We're just hanging out tonight. And it comes together really quickly. We're just hanging out. Hang in. Hanging out. We're just hanging out tonight. This just means you're just relaxing or just, you know, having a casual time getting together as friends. Nothing formal at all. Here are some shortened words or some slang that I think you should know that will really help your ears listen to fast English. The first one is app or apps. You might already know this means an application on your phone or on your computer. Sometimes we can say, do you want to get apps? Meaning, do you want to get appetizers at a restaurant for dinner? So these would be the small plates that you kind of share together before the main dish of a meal. Do you want to get apps or what app is that? Meaning what application on your phone is it? Sometimes in English we say pics instead of pictures. Say you want to go take some pics with your friends. This just means take pictures, usually on your phone or on a camera. Have you ever heard someone say that's legit? Do you think that's legit? This is short for legitimate. So we use this as a way to say legitimate, like in a more formal sense. Like is this paper legit? Is that document legit? Meaning is it real? Or if you want to just kind of compliment someone, sometimes it's slang to say, oh, that was so legit. Like it was really good. It was really well done. Sometimes formally people will shorten conversation as convo. Like we had a convo earlier about this. It's just it can be used formally or informally. Convo for conversation. I see it a lot in writing as well. Fam can be shortened for family. You might say to someone, oh, how's your fam doing? My fam's doing good. It's used not in a really cool slang way, but just a shortened way to say family. So people my age, especially men, will say, oh, they're my bro. That's my bro over there. That means their friend. They could literally mean their brother. But I noticed that younger kids, girls and boys, as a slang phrase, as just kind of a goofy way of greeting each other. Or, you know, saying like, what are you doing? They go bruh, bruh. So bruh or bro can mean a lot of different things here. But usually it just means friend or like your family. Or it can mean like, what are you talking about, bruh? In the UK, they will say holiday for a vacation. Here in the United States, we don't often use holiday, but we do say vacay instead of vacation. And finally, one of my last shortened words on here is comfy instead of comfortable. Are you comfy? I'm comfy. This is just a shortened way to say comfortable. And I think a lot of native English speakers don't even realize this is the shortened version. We just use this word so often. Like that was so comfy. Good job taking your English to the next level by training your ears with this lesson. If you want to learn more with me, Kayla, make sure to visit englishwithkayla.com. You could subscribe to my monthly membership where I'll teach you every week a new lesson. You'll get the guides on a PDF and a quiz and access to my community to ask me more questions about these words and phrases. Thank you so much for watching. And if you're in the mood, make sure to watch another video that's on screen so I can teach you more English. I'll see you guys in the next lesson. Goodbye.