ELT365 · Day 171 — Bottom-up listening problems — fast speech and weak forms

Idea — Learners trained on clear, slow audio struggle with natural speech: words run together, vowels weaken, sounds drop. These are features of spoken English, not mistakes.

Example — ‘What are you going to do?’ in natural speech sounds like ‘Wotchagonado?’ Learners who haven’t met this hear noise.

Try — Say ‘I want to go to the cinema’ at natural speed. Can your learners transcribe it? Play it three times and see.

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