How to improve listenning ability I have been learning English for years. Recently I found I reached the bottleneck as I can easily understand the VOA Sepecial and ESL Pod, but refering to the VOA Sta

Sherry

How to improve listenning ability I have been learning English for years. Recently I found I reached the bottleneck as I can easily understand the VOA Sepecial and ESL Pod, but refering to the VOA Standard and BBC program, I feel confused and have no idea on how to continue my English study. Take the VOA standard program for example, it involves many different types of topic and its speakers come from different countries. I think it hard to understand what they talk about in the normal speed. Meanwhile, there are great differences between AnE and BrE. It seems Britain English is more difficult for me. I feel annoyed that I could't make progress anymore. So please tell me, what should I do to improve my English abiliy?

Jul 5, 2015 7:11 AM

Corrections · 7

How to improve my listenning listening ability?

I have been learning English for years. Recently I found that I have reached the a bottleneck, as I can easily understand the VOA Sepecial Special and ESL Podcast, but refering to the VOA Standard and BBC program, I feel confused and have no idea on how to continue my English study. Take the VOA Standard program for example,; it involves many different types of topic topics and its speakers come from different countries. I think it is hard to understand what they talk about in the at normal speed. Meanwhile, there are great differences between AnE AmE and BrE. It seems Britain British English is more difficult for me. I feel annoyed that I could't can't make progress anymore. So please tell me, what should I do to improve my English abiliy ability?

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You have said that you have reached a bottleneck. This is unlikely to be true. It is more likely that you *feel* like you are making no progress. You may listen to twenty British English podcasts and feel frustrated that you don't understand what they're talking about. However, you are developing an "ear" for the British accent. Soon you will start to understand what they're talking about. After a while, you will understand easily and will wonder why you ever had difficulty with the British accent. So, all you need to do to improve your English is to keep going. It really is as simple as that.

If it helps you, I can tell you that I am a native English speaker, yet there are English accents which I can't understand. Sometimes, I can't even recognize that they are speaking English, because their accent is so foreign to me. If you find that you are having difficulty understanding an accent, it is not a weakness with you. It is a problem everyone faces, even native English speakers. Again, the answer is simple: just keep going. 加油！

July 5, 2015

Thanks for your advice, in fact, I follow Rachel's English program, hoping it would help. But it seems I could find fewer BrE recources that suit me. PS, I just know PR and London accents in Britain English :-D

July 5, 2015

The thing about British English is that people do say words very differently not just from other English speakers but also from other British English speakers (which I admit must be rather bothersome to a foreign learner) and other English speaker to some extent I am sure all say the same words with different twangs but a lot stay loyal to the spelling of the words so perhaps (I say with no career in teaching) perhaps try looking more into the words spellings ( I hope this is helpful and apologize if it is not.)

July 5, 2015