What is the best strategy to get used to listening to natural English? It is impossible for me to understand every word.
听懂很地道的英语的最佳策略是什么呢? 对我来说，要听懂每一个词是非常困难的。
How often I have heard the lament: I can understand my teacher’s English, but I can’t understand anyone else’s! I can only suggest a few tips for improving your listening comprehension:
我听过这样的抱怨已经不止一次了：我可以听懂我的老师说的英语，但我却不能理解别人说的英语!这里，我只能就如何提高你的听力理解提几点建议：
1) Try to extend the range of English you listen to. This means listening to as much native-speaker English as you can (varieties of British and American English) and different varieties of non-native English (Spanglish, Frenglish, Gerlish, etc.). The BBC World Service is an excellent source of native-speaker English, as are films on video.
1) 尽可能扩大你听英语的范围。这就是说尽可能多听说英语的本族人的谈话(英国英语和美国英语，等等)。同时也要多听非英语国家人们的谈话(西班牙英语、法国英语、德国英语，等等)。英国广播公司(BBC)的面向世界的广播是听地道的英语的极好来源，观看电影录像也是如此。
2) When listening to English (whatever its source) don’t try to puzzle out the meaning of individual words. Try to get the gist of the whole, by listening for the global meaning and ignoring words you haven’t fully heard or understood.
2) 在听英语时(不论其来源)，先不要为个别单词的意思犯愁。一定要先抓住所听的内容的大概意思，即先听懂内容的全貌，忽略个别你没有完全听懂或理解的词。
3) Remember, that native speakers in particular take a lot of short cuts when speaking and you have to get used to them. For example, something that sounds like‘Wodjasay?’would be ‘What did you say?’when written out in full.
3) 请你记住，说英语的本族人在说话时，通常省掉一些词，以求省事，你必须习惯他们的说话方式。例如：你若听到他们说Wodjasay?，那么写全了就是What did you say?
4) One of the biggest barriers to understanding is the failure to recognize word boundaries, so that you can’t tell, when English is spoken at speed, where one word ends and another begins. If someone quickly says‘You shouldn’t’ve done that’it may sound like a single word, whereas it is actually six separate words. A good way of training yourself to distinguish word boundaries is to listen to recordings of English, while silently reading the printed text at the same time. There are whole libraries of books on tape, so that you can listen and read at the same time to train the ear and the eye simultaneously.
4) 对英语学习者来说，听懂英语的最大困难还有一个，即他们不能正确地辨出词与词之间的界线。这就是说当别人在快速说英语时，你不能分辨一个单词在哪儿结束，一个单词在哪儿开始。如果有人以很快的速度说You shouldn’t’ve done that(你本不应该做那件事)，这句话听起来就像一个词一样，但实际上它却是由六个单独的词组成的。训练你自己分辨词与词之间界线的最好方法是一边听英语录音，一边默读与之对照的课文。类似这类的材料可说是汗牛充栋，你可以以这种方法同时训练眼和耳。
That’s enough to be getting on with, for the time being, and good luck!
眼下，你可以开始试试，祝你好运!
文：路易亚历山大 新概念英语作者