Section 3. Outlining, The standard topic outline form. Listening and Understanding.
A student learning English often finds the following problems when he listens to talks or lectures.

Firstly, he doesn't always identify all the words correctly. I refer here to known words, i.e. words which the student would certainly recognize in print.

Let's examine some of the reasons for this particular difficulty. In writing, there are clear spaces between each word, in speech, one word runs into the next. It's very difficult to decide, therefore, where one word finishes and the next one begins.

In writing, the words consist of letters of the alphabet. These letters have a fixed shape, they are easy to identify.

In speech, however, vowel and consonant sounds are often very difficult to identify. Some of these sounds may not exist in the student's native language.

Many of them, particularly the vowel sounds, are given different pronunciations by different English speakers.

Finally, some words in English, words like and or there or are or will are frequently pronounced with their weak or reduced form in speech.