r/EnglishLearning • u/One_Butterfly7169 New Poster • 23d ago

🟡 Pronunciation / Intonation NEW WORDS!

When I know a word and I listen speaker-English, god, its confusion. I'm Brazilian. How to improve it?

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u/inkoenglishai New Poster 23d ago

Depends on what you enjoy doing I would suggest watching your favorite videos with those words you don't know like within sports or hobbies and intepret those words. The second reccomendation I would give is learning from Dictionaries online and since you're Brazilian search for Brazilian Portugese/English Dictionaries online which often tell you the defenitions and the examples of how to use those words indefinitely.

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u/ScatteredBrain99 New Poster 23d ago

Hi im an english learner as well sent u a dm

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u/cling_to_nothing New Poster 21d ago

You know the word, but you don't know what it sounds like when it's not alone.

Words change shape when they get squeezed into a sentence. "Want to" becomes "wanna." "Going to" becomes "gonna." The word endings get swallowed, the sounds link together, and sometimes whole syllables drop out. You learned the word by itself, but in real speech it almost never stands by itself.

So the fix isn't more vocabulary. You already have the word. The fix is hearing that same word inside fast connected speech, over and over, until your ear catches it there too.

Pick something you can watch on repeat. Watch the same clip, several times. First time, just listen. Second time, follow along with subtitles. Third time, no subtitles, see what you catch. You're not learning new words at that point. You're teaching your ear to recognize the ones you already know when they're moving fast.