Listening Tips

Listening Tips

You are going to watch a TED talk presented by Matt Mullenweg entitled Why Working From Home is Good for Business. Mullenweg is the co-founder of WordPress and the founder of Automattic, and he is a passionate believer in remote working. He expresses his enthusiasm by speaking quite quickly.

When you listen to fast speech, these tips will help you to understand better:

• Word boundaries: in fast speech, some text can appear to be one very long word. Try to identify a few individual words.
  
• Stressed and weak forms: listen for stressed words and syllables and then try to imagine the weak syllables and words that are more difficult to hear.
  
• Other tips: focus on understanding the main idea and use the visuals and graphics in the TED talk to support you. If you can see the speaker’s face, watch the mouth closely to help with pronunciation.

It’s also helpful if you listen first to a short extract of a presentation, to help you get used to the speaker’s accent and pace. Listen to the first part of the presentation (0:00-0:50) and try the techniques above. Then answer this question:

• Is Matt Mullenweg American or British?