For the last few weeks, we have been looking at some of the most common features of British connected speech.   We have looked at the elision of T sounds in consonant clusters,   the glottal stop  T and disappearing G  at the end of …ing in many regional accents, and also the linking R sound in connected speech.

Now you know more about how real English sounds and how it is different to what it looks like on paper.  This will help you to recognise the words when people speak to you in everyday informal English.   We connect our words up, miss out sounds and make new words – like “gonna”  out of everyday phrases like “going to“.

Here is a new listening exercise.  Remember, you will not hear all the words fully as I don’t pronounce them all fully.    There are many unstressed words that are difficult to hear, but these words are not the important words in the sentence.     Listen many times before reading the transcript.    Write down what you can hear.   When you have listened multiple times, then listen again reading the transcript and then notice which words you could not hear.

Please let me know in the comments or by email which words are difficult to hear.  I will make new lessons focusing on the words and phrases you can not hear.

My email is helen  @   helenslanguagehome    .com

Are these exercises useful?    Is it getting easier each week to hear all the words?  Please let me know if you want me to carry on making one every week.  If you contact me I will make a lesson to help you if I can.