About listening, or what knowledge of a foreign language consists of

Often people, despairing of achieving the desired progress after many years of irrational language learning, conclude: “I study and study, nothing works… Something is going wrong. Probably, only immersion in the language environment will help me make a qualitative leap.”

Buy a course in London. They return with excellent impressions, almost no money and a growing conviction: “My case is unique, some special approach is needed.”

There really isn't anything unique, the situation is very typical. All this stems from a total, widespread misunderstanding of what knowledge of a foreign language actually consists of. And it’s not easy to figure it out – the entire airwaves are filled with advertising demagoguery. 9 out of 10 complain: I have poor listening comprehension… what should I do… Advertisers already have the answer ready: “Improve listening comprehension? – No problem! Come! Let's help! “

Well they are coming. It all ends with another disappointment and an even deeper conviction in one’s hopelessness and the “uniqueness” of one’s case. In general, let's try to figure out what “knowledge” of a foreign language consists of.

Firstly, do not believe friends who say that they can easily perceive the speech of native speakers by ear. Speakers often ask each other questions, even understanding the context of the conversation. And unless you grew up in England, you will ALWAYS have problems understanding British speech. Now I'll tell you why.

Remember situations when you understood the speaker while he was talking to you, but instantly stopped understanding him when he started talking to another speaker. How so?

Real live speakers do not pronounce exactly the words that we expect to hear when reading subtitles. The word forya (emphasis on the first syllable) is not in any dictionary, but it is, meanwhile, common (it will be written for you in the subtitles). No less common is the word whaddaya (in the subtitles they write what do you). The same thing happens in high-speed Russian speech: instead of “he says” in real life we usually use the word “ongrt” with an indistinct “n”. I doubt it's in the dictionary. Once, in front of me, a dark-skinned guy explained to a dark-skinned girl in the middle of Moscow: “…and instead of “shto” they say “chyo” (instead of “what” they say “what”). “What” doesn’t even sound like “what.”

Any language has 2 variants. One is the one that is taught to foreigners and in which native speakers usually talk to you if they realize that you are not a native speaker. The second is the one that speakers speak to each other. It uses similar words, but some sounds or individual syllables are removed from them. Entire phrases are compressed into one word (whatchamacallit has even been included in dictionaries due to its extreme frequency). But you still have to learn the first option first.

From birth, a native speaker perceives the sounds of his native language as the absolute norm for the sound of human speech, a point of reference. Therefore, he records the slightest deviations from this norm, distinguishes dozens of accents even within his linguistic environment. By the way, a foreigner cannot get rid of his accent not because of the structural features of the speech apparatus of different nations. The main reason is that he simply does not hear someone else’s norm: his ear does not register it, the receiver is not the same. For a foreigner, the starting point is the sounds of HIS native language.

Now let's imagine that you understand English speech perfectly by ear. This is unlikely to happen in the coming years, but let's just assume for a moment that you distinguish English sounds right at the native speaker level! Ok, now we have another problem. Most students have no idea how much information they are dealing with.

English leads the world in the number of words and expressions. Why is a separate long story. So, in addition to words and their stylistic compatibility with each other, the English language is:

Idioms (“he didn’t have a horse lying around”, “to beat his thumbs”, etc.). On any radio or television channel, several thousand idioms are used routinely. In everyday speech – less, but not much. And yes, they are quite different in England and the USA.
Slang. It is VERY different in England and the USA, Australia and Canada. Varies according to the regions of these countries.
A huge corpus of abbreviations. Speakers of laconic English use them in conversation much more often than Russians. Knowledge of most of them, of course, is only necessary if you live there. Widely used by the British, DWP or GP, for example, will be incomprehensible to an American.

Oh yes. All of the above is constantly becoming outdated to some extent. This is about the “benefits” of reading classics in the original.

Phrasal verbs. There are many hundreds of only the most commonly used ones. Some have dozens of meanings.
Legal and economic terms that are often found in colloquial speech and in the media. For these terms there are often no correspondences in the Russian language due to the peculiarities of the structure of Western political, legal and financial institutions. Go figure out who your Russian lawyer friend is – attorney, barrister or solicitor.

And if we take conversations at work… There are tens of thousands of highly specialized terms – they exist in every profession. Naturally, they are almost always abbreviated, just like ours: individual/legal entity – physicist/legal. Musicians don't say “piano” and “rehearsals” – they say “turnips” and “phono.” Remember your work – even a native speaker may not understand your conversations with colleagues.

It is useful to know special terminology at least at the level of high school. For example, the term “lowest common denominator” is widely used in English-language journalism and on television (though not in the mathematical sense). Remember the baggage of terms we learned from high school and use in everyday speech. It's still the same for them.

Now comes the fun part! Any language comes with HUGE layers of pop culture.

American TV series “The Sopranos”. In an intimate context, the main character says to his girlfriend: “And her name is G…”. And that's it – the scene is over, no more context! I called an American friend and described the situation. She: “What’s your boyfriend’s name?” Me: Gloria. She: “So everything is clear! There is a song with the chorus “And her name is G, L, O, R, I, A.” For an American over 40, this song is a well-known hit. The speaker’s speech is overloaded with such references to songs, phrases from films, and socio-political events. In the same series, the phrase The lone gunman theory in context is a bitter reproach, but this is understandable only to those who at least in general know the circumstances surrounding the assassination of John Kennedy. All American adults know them.

A special nightmare is television. Speakers grew up on it, so in their speech they directly or indirectly refer to hundreds of television programs, the names of the presenters evoke an associative series. The word “Malysheva” instantly tunes the Russian brain to the associative series “health/medicine”. The phrase This must be how Carl Sagan felt, walking through the halls of PBS for a Russian is meaningless gibberish, for a Briton or American everything is simple and clear.

By the way, all these data sets related to pop culture that accompany language are quickly becoming outdated. Dialogue between buyer and seller:

– Give me a bottle of beer.
– Do you have a passport?
– No.
– Poplar fluff?
– It's hot, July.
– 60 rubles.

The buyer was tested for age. And I wouldn’t be surprised if very young people didn’t understand this joke. Literally 10-15 years – and pop culture becomes obsolete, but it is still very different in England and the USA. An American often does not understand the speech of a Briton who refers to phenomena from British reality.

It is impossible to list all the relatively small components of the language, but I will cite three:

In the everyday vocabulary of England and the USA, terms from sports that simply do not exist are often found. Therefore, it will not be superfluous to know the rules of golf, cricket, and American football. For example, the term second base in colloquial language means “woman’s breasts,” and why – you first need to understand the rules of baseball.
The Bible is quoted much more often than here in English everyday speech. Shakespeare is their “everything” – they learn him by heart, quote him, and stage school plays. Both the Bible and Shakespeare are Old English, it sounds like ours “like you are”, “I am”, etc.
In Russian schools and universities they teach English, in English-speaking countries it is usually French, so in everyday life you can often hear French words and phrases – they have become as common as in our country “boyfriend” or “ay love u”. Try reading reviews of British critics about London restaurants or fashion shows – half of the words there are written in French spelling – with these icons above the vowels.

A foreign language means thousands of strangers names: chain stores, local and national manufacturer brands, providers of various services – from car services and clinics to gyms and language courses. All of these names DO make it difficult to perceive spontaneous speech because the brain often perceives them as ordinary words that affect the meaning of a sentence. In Russia, “she went to INVITRO” sets the context of the conversation that everyone understands. A foreigner may well decide that we are talking about clothes. You will be interested in what “tagil” or “Saransk” is. He heard about “bugulma” – it’s a balm, 40 degrees.

In living speech, of course, all these names are constantly abbreviated. A foreigner will have to explain that “I’m going to Leninka” means “to the library” (named after Lenin), and that “Yoburg”, “ekAt” and “ekabE” are Yekaterinburg.

It can be argued that in the Russian language everything is the same: we do not understand technical terms, advanced youth or criminal slang, references to some films, jokes or socially significant events – this does not prevent us from being full-fledged speakers , does not interfere with communication! Unclear? Ask again!

With a foreign language everything is more complicated. The speaker keeps in his head a large amount of background information about the stereotypes of his culture (what to expect from whom), about the intonations and specific vocabulary inherent in different social strata. Based on the words “colidor” or “velisaped”, one can draw a number of conclusions about the background and social status of the speaker, and no longer pay much attention to the incomprehensibility in his speech. Gopnik is given away by his specific intonation – is it worth clarifying the meaning of incomprehensible words? In the speech of a Moscow State University student, the expression “in the area” is obvious sarcasm, but for provincial punks it is a natural form of self-identification.

Technical terms often consist of the same roots as ordinary words: firewall, root folder, container migration to the cloud. But if you take these words in their usual meanings, it turns out to be abracadabra. For a native speaker, this is obvious, because he holds more or less the entire significant corpus of his native language in his head and is CONFIDENT of his status as a native speaker. For a foreigner this is never obvious; he is NOT SURE and constantly doubts the correctness of his perception.

In our native language, we feel the stylistic affiliation of a word: whether it is formal (car), neutral (car), informal, slang (wheelbarrow) or vulgar (tachila). Stylistics helps the speaker instantly and almost accurately determine the lexical category of an incomprehensible word (technical term, jargon, name of a store/locality) and correctly interpret it in spontaneous speech. For a conservatory student hearing the word “hanurik” for the first time, the details of the speaker’s wardrobe and intonation are enough to attribute the word to a stylistically reduced vocabulary without etymological analysis and perceive a derogatory connotation.

The wearer senses where and what he might have misunderstood. Where you need to ask again, and where it’s not even worth delving into. Incomprehensible youth speech without an accent? Clearly, it’s the latest slang, we’re turning a deaf ear.

To master such competencies, a foreigner will need so many years and special efforts. Just like a Russian in another country.

The speech of a living speaker is an explosive mixture of all this. Advertisers of language schools reassure: “In everyday life, native speakers use 2000-3000 words, everything is easy and simple, blah blah.” It's not easy and it's not simple. 3000 is just the roots of words. Does knowing the roots help a lot when working with phrasal verbs? These roots form terms, idioms, slang. If everything were so simple, the situation “I know all the words, but I don’t understand what the phrase is about” wouldn’t constantly repeat itself.

It’s funny, by God, to watch beginners who have not yet learned to understand simple phrases in a foreign language, even in WRITTEN form, and are already eager to communicate with native speakers or try to watch ordinary films made for native speakers. It’s not even worth trying to reach the Intermediate level for such films.

If the purpose of watching is to learn a language, films are needed educational.

There is no need to look down on educational films – they are played by normal speakers with normal diction, but! They do not chew sounds, but pronounce exactly the words that you were taught, no forya or whaddaya. In educational films, only the most relevant and most commonly used words and colloquial expressions are heard today. Abbreviations are only the most necessary. Slang is only the most commonly used, and then in a limited volume. Terms and references to pop culture that are overloaded with regular TV series are excluded. Such films are made specifically to teach foreigners modern spoken language. Educational films are good, watch educational films.

Regarding grammar. Learning it on your own is hard, but teaching it is a real art. In any city you can count on one hand the number of specialists who can present it well. Even holders of the Upper-Intermediate certificate, as a rule, have some very crooked version of grammar in their heads, which allows them, at best, to construct a phrase correctly. Without understanding WHY this is so, all their lives they get confused, even in times.

Regarding pronunciation. Once in London I observed a simply enchanting Russian man. He spoke English masterfully, God grant that every Englishman do so. In my experience, this was the only Russian person who spoke English well, but at the same time did not make the slightest attempt to portray any kind of British or American accent. He emphasized Ryazan and spoke in absolutely Russian sounds. Pronunciation is such a thing… Not for everyone. If you want, try to bet. If you don’t want to, they’ll understand you anyway based on the context.

Let's face it. Few people have the desire/opportunity to study the language in all of the above areas – this takes many years of effort. Even if you only do this.

The ability to forget is the most highly developed human skill, so grabbing unsystematized pieces of information from everywhere is not a good idea. You read the article in English, took the time to look into the dictionary, and learned a few phrases and terms. Six months later, I forgot them just as surely as if I had never read the article. I watched the film, picked up a few words and phrases, and six months later you don’t remember them at all. For years, everything goes in circles – they learn one thing, forget another. But the puzzle still doesn’t fit.

Thousands of people constantly and honestly make efforts trying to learn a foreign language, but due to myths firmly entrenched in the mass consciousness, these efforts are wasted. Without any exaggeration, an ongoing tragedy is unfolding before our eyes.

Of course, not everything is so scary – it is important to understand what you are dealing with and set reasonable goals. Get rapid tangible progress under time pressure IT IS POSSIBLE, but in no case should you be scattered among many different sources of information. There should be a limited number of sources, but they need to be very carefully selected and returned to them again and again. I would recommend high-quality materials on your profession: the terms and phrases from them will always be relevant to you. And educational films to learn colloquial expressions.

Everyone has heard that learning a second or third foreign language is much easier than learning a first one. Why is this so? If a person has DEEPLY studied one foreign language, he will no longer make numerous mistakes that ALL beginners make – he will no longer be confused by advertising demagoguery that comes out of every iron. He understands how much information he is dealing with, what is primary in this information, what needs to be concentrated on, and what is secondary, what can be neglected without compromising the fundamental understanding of the language.

In other words, there is a hierarchy in this whole mass of information. Some words, expressions, grammatical subtleties are more important, some less. And theoretically, a competent language course should be built on the basis of this criterion – from more important to less important. In practice, in most cases, people are dumped on an almost haphazard set of facts. Those. They are formally taught the language, yes. It’s just that you can’t see the forest for the trees.

In any field, you move to a qualitatively new level only when the previous level – simpler, BASIC, but at the same time more important information about the subject has crystallized from units of information into CONCEPTS. When brain resources are no longer spent on remembering how much 6×7 is and you begin to see a broader and more complex picture.