I'm afraid that if you expect to become able to understand with great ease every single accent and every single native speaker solely by doing innumerable listening exercises and tests during your English course, you'll sooner or later be hugely disappointed.

It may sound a bit harsh, but it's true: you're not going to further improve your listening skills unless you start exposing yourself to more authentic material in English so as to get used to the many different accents, speech rates, intonations, etc.

If you’ re reading this, it means that you most probably have a somewhat strong  native accent when speaking in English and always, often, or occasionally (the frequency of the incident is irrelevant, at least in my book) find it difficult to make yourself understood by native English speakers solely because of your pronunciation and accent.

It is true that a non-native could have a very good command of the English language, impressively rich vocabulary and profound knowledge of the English grammar and never fail to apply it correctly both in written and verbal speech, and yet find themselves struggling when it comes to oral communication with native speakers.

At one time or another, a non-native speaker’s pronunciation or accent will impede effective communication in English …

The reason being that (a) they pronounce some words incorrectly, (b) their speech sounds ‘flat’ or fragmented and lacks a natural flow – in other words, their rhythm and intonation are quite poor, (c) they just talk with a very strong foreign accent, or (d) they have a combination of the aforementioned characteristics which only makes matters worse.

But don’t despair!

The good news is that, for you to be here, you have finally come to grips with this issue and you are minutes away from discovering the first building blocks of your improvement in that area.