How can learners cope with so many English accents?

Non-native speakers often tell me that, no matter what their level of English, it is a real challenge to communicate with speakers sporting such a variety of accents.

So what can be done to make things easier? Well, training our ear to the different accents can be a first step; thanks to YouTube and similar sites, we can experience people speaking English from countless different regions and countries. What’s more, if we delve a little deeper into the video vault, we can find some very talented people who are actually capable – by themselves – of reproducing a multitude of different accents amazingly well.

As one example, take this lady and her British accents:

or this guy with his American and many other accents:

Then if learners want to study differences in greater detail, e.g. between American and British English, they can even start to practise themselves:

Have fun!