Sometimes the English learners get stuck when
listening to native speakers, in my case, when I started to make progress in my
English learning I realized that I could understand the language, it was easy
to understand discourses or audio magazines, but every time I talked to a
native speaker or when I watched movies in English I could not understand 100%
of their English, I was trying to understand why.
The informal words and expressions that people
use when they speak English are known as slang, and this was my problem, slang
was my problem.
Why couldn't I understand slang ... the real
English? I found the answer for this question while watching a TV show, in the
TV show there were two guys arguing about some mistakes they had done, and one
of them started screaming and going crazy, so the other guy said: “Chill out
man, we'll figure out this thing”, I couldn't understand anything. Over time I heard many times these expressions, and in the meantime I heard these words in different contexts and then I
realized the meaning, for instance, one day I was playing a video game that the
language was in English and one of the instructions of the game was something
like “…When you figure out the code, you have to get to the next floor of the
building… ”
Listening to this expression many times and in
different contexts helped me to realize that the expression “figure out” means
to understand or to solve or to get to know something. Now every time I hear:
“hey, I figured out that …..” I understand what people are saying.
One day I was talking to an American friend and
I asked her: “Hey so…what are you gonna do on summer vacation” and she went on
to say “uhhh well, I guess I'll go to the beach and chill out with my friends
for a couple of days” and then I said “wow wow!!! You gotta tell me what “chill
out” means”, I asked her for the meaning of this expression. My friend told me
that “chill out” means to relax, so now every time I hear the expression “chill
out” or “chilling out” I understand the meaning of this expression.
Some days later I watched the same episode of
the TV show where I had heard the expressions “figure out” and “chill out” and
then the guy said again: “Chill out man, we'll figure out this thing” I was so
happy I understood what they were talking about, in other words what the guy
had said was: “Relax man, we’ll find the answer for this thing”.
What can we highlight from the former
experience? That the key for learning slang is listening to real spoken
English, that is the way you'll learn to understand and to speak like native
English speakers do.
Listen to real spoken English
|
Repeat many times what you hear
|
Look for the meaning of the expressions or ask
a friend about them.
|
Don't memorize lists of words
Repetition is very important too, if you
notice, in my story, I watched the same episode of the same TV show twice, and
I also watch and listen to different things so I could get different contexts
of the words and expressions, and I did this until I understood 100% of what I
was listening to.
Also you can look for the meaning of the
expressions you don't understand, you could ask a friend or maybe you could
google for expressions you don't know, this is very helpful for your learning,
but one thing I do not want you to do is to memorize lists of words, never do
this, in fact this will only make you feel stressed, boring and frustrated.
To conclude today's article I want to make
clear that the best way to learn English slang is to listen to real spoken
English and if you want some material to learn real English I recommend a
really nice web site which name is, in fact, Learn Real English, here is one of
their videos, I really enjoy learning with these people and I hope you too.
REMEMBER: LISTEN TO REAL SPOKEN ENGLISH.
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