Problem listening to foreign accents [closed]
From the beginning I had some problems listening to foreign accents. Like when someone from my native country (India) speaks English I understand it at once, but if someone from a foreign country especially US speaks English, I have to make them repeat the sentence several times to understand it. Also, I have noticed I have more problems when watching movies, talking than when watching lectures. I am having lot of trouble these days because of it.
So how can I solve this problem? Also, is there is particular term for this state?
Note: I have watched 100's of movies but still there is very less improvment.
Understanding a particular accent comes along when our ear is not trained for it. So, the more you listen to that accent, the more you get trained for it.
You are already on the right path. Keep watching movies/videos. You can start listening to songs and may be start following a particular band. Start watching videos of important people from your field.
While you go about this thing as an exercise, the important thing is to enjoy it and not treat it like work.
Listen to recordings from librivox.org AFTER having read the script. Many of the audio books on librivox you can find in a written form on ProjectGutenberg. If that is still to difficult, use audio material that is intended for beginning learners of the English language.
I copied my answer from ELL here, because you seem to be watching this page at the moment.
One way is to focus on the sound, rather than the words.
A technique I found especially useful is to try to transcribe something non-English. For example, you can challenge yourself to transcribe the lyric of some song that you are sure its lyric is easy to find on the web.
The important point is: you must transcribe it before you take a peek at the lyric. Transcribe the whole song if possible. If that is a little too difficult, try to transcribe at least one verse at a time.
For example, I remember I did that with the soundtracks of Descendants (2011). I chose them because it wasn't too difficult, and the music is quite pleasant to listen to repeatedly. (I especially like the song Ulili E.) I found that although most parts of the song are easy to transcribe, some of them are quite tricky. :)
Hope this helps.
It's not you. It's... well, it is you, but it is the same for everybody.
Foreign languages are foreign. They have all different words and grammar and when words or syntax are sort of the same, even then the meaning can be annoyingly slightly different. And pronunciation of sounds (accent) is similar.
You can obviously understand those who speak your language natively very well (almost by definition), and its hard to understand foreigners speaking your language because of their accent.
But the same goes in the foreign language. You've been raised hearing an accent of a certain kind (everybody has an accent, they just can't hear their own) and you're good at hearing it. So even if someone with your accent is speaking a foreign language, you an understand them easier than the person who is better, well... perfect, at the language, a native speaker of it, even despite the fact that this foreign speaker is speaking correctly.
It's hard for you to hear correctly and easier to hear in an accent that is closer to your native language.
There is no particular term for this (maybe there's one among language teachers).
Notice that none of this is English specific. If you are a Thai speaker and you are learning Mandarin, you will understand Thai people speaking Chinese more easily than native Chinese speakers speaking Chinese, even if your second language Chinese teacher is a native Chinese speaker.