También disponible en Español
A few years ago, Colin, a friend of mine from England, came to visit me here in Madrid. Whilst he was here, apart from going for cañas and tapas, I decided to make the most of the visit and invited him to join some of my English classes! My students are always really keen to practice their English with as many people as possible, so they were over the moon to have the opportunity to practice with someone new!
At the beginning of the classes, my students were a little bit nervous and it took them a few minutes to get their ears tuned in to Colin´s accent. This wasn´t at all surprising as Colin is from Newcastle in the North of England; a place famous for its distinctive local dialect called Geordie-one of the trickiest British accents to understand. Even people who live in the surrounding towns sometimes have problems understanding it!
So going back to my students. As the class went on, they got more and more confident and by the end of the class, they were able to understand around 80% of what Colin was saying. This gave them a huge confidence boost and motivated them to try and improve their listening even more.
One thing I have noticed is that students tend to get comfortable with their teacher’s accent and they find it extremely frustrating when they take a trip abroad or have a meeting in English and find they have problems understanding the other person speaking. Has this ever happened to you?
One way to solve this problem is to make sure you listen to as many different accents as possible. Nowadays, it is pretty easy to get access to all kinds of listening materials online; we have YouTube videos, Ted Talks, radio programs, podcasts, music videos, and so on and so forth. Try to listen or watch something in English every day, even if it’s only for 10 minutes. This way, you will open your ears to a wider variety of accents and dialects and this will truly help you to improve your listening. Also, if you are taking English classes, try changing English teachers every 3 or 4 months, so you can continue the learning process but at the same time listen and get used to a new accent (we offer this option at Breeze Lingo).
Which accents do you usually find the most difficult to understand? Can you tell the difference between the different English accents?
Here are a few different recordings of famous actors talking about different things. Let´s see if you can tell which of the accents is Irish, Welsh, Scottish, British English and American English.
If you have any questions or doubts about any of the audios, write to me in the comments box below and I will help you out.
Happy Listening!
