Conversation Strategies Part 1: Why can’t I understand native speakers?

By: Kimberly England and Chelsea Wicks

Have you ever been out when someone starts speaking to you? You can understand what they say, but for some reason, you cannot answer more than one or two words! It can be really frustrating. You can understand your teachers, your classmates, even popular songs or the news, but when a native speaker speaks to you outside of the school, you sometimes forget everything and cannot reply.

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Oh no…what is she saying?

The good news is…it happens to everyone!

There are so many things that can make it difficult to understand a native speaker when you are outside of the classroom. We have chosen three things to focus on:

  • Environment/background noise
  • Topics can change quickly
  • Native speakers themselves (this will be in the next post!)

Environment/background noise:

The classroom is a specific place for you to learn and study. However, there are different settings that can be busier, noisier, and faster-paced than the classroom. For example, you may go to a coffee shop. Think about the coffee shop environment: there might be background music, people talking, coffee makers making sounds. Compare that to your classroom where there is little background noise and normally, you are able to speak one at a time. So next time someone talks to you and you don’t understand, look around the place you are in: it could be because of your environment!

Topics can change quickly:

Native speakers tend to change topics quickly. One minute you could be talking about coffee, then suddenly about the new Avengers movie. Once you realize you are talking about the Avengers, the topic may have changed to baseball. Be prepared for that when you enter a conversation with a native speaker, it may cause less confusion.

We will discuss the last point about native speakers themselves, in the next post so please make sure to read it 🙂

Also, something that you and every language learner should remember:

Being a listener is a difficult job!

Many times, we focus on speaking, but listening is just as hard, maybe even harder. So don’t get frustrated, just remember that you have the difficult job in the conversation!

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