When you open the transcript of English you could not catch, you sometimes find it lined with words you already know. It is a frustrating moment. But deciding right there that “I know the words — it is just my ears” and replaying the same passage is hasty. Your ears may not be the only reason you got stuck.
Listening is not just a matter of picking words out of sound. Your mind is also working at the same time to build meaning from the situation, the words around it, and your background knowledge (TeachingEnglish's explanation of listening). Feeling that you “know” a sentence when you see the transcript and actually understanding it when you hear it are two different things. Once you know where you got stuck, there is more you can do than simply repeat it.
Once you open the transcript, first break that sentence down into three parts.
- Meaning of the expression: whether you knew the meaning as a chunk, not as individual words
- Correspondence to sound: where in the sound the part you can read actually was
- Surrounding context: what that sentence was picking up on in the conversation
If it does not make sense even when you read it, suspect the chunk, not the words
The company offered her a job in Osaka, but she turned down the offer.
turn, down and offer are all familiar words. Even so, if you do not know turn down as a single chunk, the sentence stalls at “She was offered a job in Osaka, but she … lowered? the offer.” If you do not feel settled even after reading the transcript, the problem is not your ears. The meaning has a hole in it.
If you listen again as it is, the sound may come through more clearly than before, but the hole in the meaning will remain. For a part you cannot get from the text, it is better to fill in the meaning first. Do not look up turn and down separately; look up turn down as a whole. Once you know it means “to refuse”, what comes before and after the but connects into a single line.
The test is simple: can you say what the transcript means in your own language when you read it with your eyes? If you cannot, that is your starting point.
If you understand it when you read it but it disappears when you listen, find where the sound lives
We can meet at eight.
In the transcript, you instantly understand it as “We can meet at eight.” Yet when you listen, it feels like We meet at eight, and you do not know where can was. meet at eight runs together as one stream, and you can also lose track of where one word switches to the next.
This is not a problem of meaning, but a state where the positions of text and sound are not linked. Spoken language is not pronounced word by word, separated out. Words like can have a strong form and a short, weak form, and in the weak form it does not stand out as much as it does in writing (TeachingEnglish's explanation of connected speech). Of course, it does not always become weak. Sometimes it is said clearly, too.
So rather than replaying the whole sentence, it is better to cut the place you were unsure about into a phrase of two or three words and listen to that. Narrow the range to We can meet, meet at eight, compare it with the transcript, and line things up: “can is around this short sound.”
If you understand the sentence but got the conversation wrong, go back to the previous line
A: We could take the bus at six, or wait for Ken and drive.
B: Ken won't be free until seven.
A: Then let's just take the bus.
B: That sounds better.
The final That sounds better. is easy in both words and sound, and you can translate it as “That sounds better.” Even so, if after listening you took it to mean “they decided to wait for Ken and go by car”, you have taken the conclusion the wrong way.
What is stuck is what that points to. If you build the conclusion from the drive or seven that stayed in your ears, this kind of mismatch happens. What that is picking up is the line just before it, Then let's just take the bus. — in other words, the plan to take the six o'clock bus.
The answer to that is not written inside That sounds better. Repeating this one sentence will not solve it. Go back one line, and then the line before that, and check what that, it and then are picking up on. That is the shortcut.
When you are unsure, work through it in order, starting with meaning
A single sentence can have several overlapping causes. When you are unsure, check them in order from the top. If the order is fixed, breaking it down is not difficult.
What it is like when you see the transcript ｜ Where to suspect ｜ What to do next
You cannot say what it means in your own language even when you read it ｜ Meaning of the expression ｜ Look it up in the dictionary as a chunk
You understand it when you read it, but do not know where it was in the sound ｜ Correspondence to sound ｜ Listen to a phrase of two or three words and match it to the text
You understand the sentence, but got the conclusion of the conversation wrong ｜ Surrounding context ｜ Go back to the line that a demonstrative is picking up on
The reason for putting the meaning check first is clear. If you keep relistening to a sentence you do not understand as a sentence, treating it as only a sound problem, you will not move forward. Once the meaning makes sense and you listen again, you can also see what you had not been hearing.
Next to a sentence you could not catch, write a single word noting whether it was “meaning”, “sound” or “context”. The next time you open the transcript, you will immediately know where to start. If you start wanting to rethink the material itself, five perspectives for looking at practice materials can also help. If the material does not fit, you will keep stumbling before you even get to breaking down a single sentence.