Beating Speaking Anxiety: 3. I’m scared I won’t understand people
Learning English Conversations
BBC
4.6 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 2 February 2026
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Speaking is only one side of the conversation. You also have to listen to and understand the other person.
In this episode of our new series, Georgie and Hanan talk about how you can improve your listening in real life conversations.
With Erhan Aslan, Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Reading.
WATCH – Find Georgie’s videos with tips to improve your speaking here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/features/beating_speaking_anxiety/not_understanding-video
TRANSCRIPT – Read along with this podcast and learn useful vocabulary: https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/features/beating_speaking_anxiety/not_understanding-podcast
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.4 | You're listening to the Learning English Conversations podcast from BBC Learning English. |
| 0:11.2 | We'll have another episode of the English we speak soon, but today we're continuing with our special series, beating speaking anxiety, a podcast to help you fight your fears of speaking English. |
| 0:23.1 | This episode is called I'm Scared of Not Understanding People. Do you struggle to understand people |
| 0:29.3 | when you're having a conversation in English? I'm scared when I don't understand the other people. |
| 0:40.3 | It's really hard to understand the British accent. |
| 0:44.3 | Like when I ate dinner with my family, |
| 0:46.3 | I couldn't understand their speaking and they couldn't understand my speaking. |
| 0:52.3 | You have to understand that it's about communication. |
| 0:54.9 | It doesn't matter how many times you ask, how many times you don't understand. |
| 1:00.5 | When we think about language anxiety, we often think about the fear of speaking. |
| 1:05.0 | But that's only one part of a conversation. |
| 1:08.0 | We also have to listen. |
| 1:10.0 | In today's episode of beating speaking anxiety, |
| 1:12.3 | we'll look at what to do when you don't understand the other person. |
| 1:18.5 | Hello and welcome to beating speaking anxiety. In this podcast, we help you understand speaking |
| 1:24.3 | anxiety and fight your fears of speaking English. |
| 1:31.8 | I'm Georgie, an English teacher and presenter at BBC Learning English. |
| 1:37.7 | And I am Hannan, a bilingual correspondent for BBC Arabic and presenter of the Arabic educational series, Ders. |
| 1:39.9 | Find a transcript for this episode to read along on our website, BBC learning English.com. |
| 1:48.2 | So we heard from some learners at the start of the program about the difficulty they have |
| 1:53.0 | understanding English speakers, particularly native English speakers. And it's a very common problem. |
... |
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