Another suggestion for fellow native speakers: if someone asks you “Can you repeat that?”, don’t rephrase what you said, just repeat the exact same words in the same order.
Lots of people are perfectly capable of understanding what you said, you just said it too fast!
For what it is worth, I’ve often had different experiences:
sometimes I simply didn’t hear clearly. Maybe the person wasn’t speaking loudly, I wasn’t paying attention, or there is a lot of background noise. So the problem isn’t one of A) the sound reaching my ears and my brain struggling to process the information, but instead is one of B) not enough sound reaches my ears.
sometimes I didn’t didn’t understand the words or the phrasing that was being used, and rephrasing the same concept using different words allowed me to understand.
Off the top of my head I can’t think of any heuristic (other than observing your conversation partner or asking for clarification) to figure out what the specific point of failure is when someone doesn’t understand.
Another suggestion for fellow native speakers: if someone asks you “Can you repeat that?”, don’t rephrase what you said, just repeat the exact same words in the same order.
Lots of people are perfectly capable of understanding what you said, you just said it too fast!
For what it is worth, I’ve often had different experiences:
sometimes I simply didn’t hear clearly. Maybe the person wasn’t speaking loudly, I wasn’t paying attention, or there is a lot of background noise. So the problem isn’t one of A) the sound reaching my ears and my brain struggling to process the information, but instead is one of B) not enough sound reaches my ears.
sometimes I didn’t didn’t understand the words or the phrasing that was being used, and rephrasing the same concept using different words allowed me to understand.
Off the top of my head I can’t think of any heuristic (other than observing your conversation partner or asking for clarification) to figure out what the specific point of failure is when someone doesn’t understand.