Practice reading out loud with me! Sound more expressive in English

After five years of living in Japan and focusing on my craft, I felt

like I needed a new challenge".

Do you sound like a robot when you read out loud?

If the answer is yes, then this video is for you.

Because today we are going to talk about why we sound robotic

when we read out loud, especially a text we are not familiar with,

especially if we read in English, if English is your second language.

And also, I'm going to give you five tips on how to improve your reading

out loud so you sound more expressive and more like yourself when speaking.

For those of you who do not know me, my name is Hadar.

I'm a non native speaker of English, and I'm here to help you speak English

with clarity, confidence, and freedom.

Today, I'm going to teach you something that is really useful, not just for

reading out loud, even though that's pretty good in and of itself, but also

because practicing reading out loud in a more natural way – a way that

sounds like how you would speak – will help you improve your intonation,

rhythm, stress, and overall, self expression when you speak in English.

So that is the purpose of today.

Now, even if you think to yourself, "Wait Hadar, but I never read out loud", I

want to tell you that reading out loud is a really great way to practice your

English and improve your fluency because you develop confidence in your voice,

and you improve your pronunciation and understanding of how to deliver ideas.

So, I think it's a really great practice method.

And like I said, it's also going to help you sound more expressive

when reading and when speaking.

All right, so let's get started.

Why do we sound robotic when we read out loud?

First, it's because we don't know what we're about to read.

For the most part, when we read out loud, it's the first time we read it,

or we have read it once or twice before.

And sometimes we don't remember exactly what we're about to say.

So unlike reading out loud when you're speaking, you know where you're going.

So you're thinking about it and you're speaking your thoughts, and this is why

it sounds more natural and organized.

And also, we speak the way we think.

And sometimes we take breaks, we take pauses, we are thinking

about what we're about to say, and that makes it sound more natural.

When we're reading out loud, we always know what we're about to say.

So, as a result, it will sound a little less natural, but there are

ways to make it sound more natural.

And I'm going to share that with you soon.

Another reason is, like I said, when we are thinking and speaking,

then we group out thoughts, and a thought is delivered together.

And usually we take small pauses between thoughts and ideas.

And when we end saying something important, an idea,

then we usually take a pause.

Now, when we're reading, usually we begin at the beginning and

end at the end, and we don't take into consideration punctuation, or

if we do, it's not very natural.

So we don't take into consideration commas and full stops.

And as a result, you don't take pauses, you read at the same pace, and you

don't play with your intonation like you would if you were to speak it.

Another reason why you may sound robotic is because intonation

tends to be really repetitive.

That might sound something like this: 'After five years of living in Japan and

focusing on my craft, I felt like I needed a new challenge, so I moved to New York'.

You get what I'm saying.

What does that mean?

It means that sometimes you may have like a musical pattern in how you read

that could be something from your first language, or maybe this is just how you

read it out loud, because it may happen to us in our first language as well.

And you just repeat it again and again.

So that repetitive pattern is something that is going to make it sound robotic.

And lastly, and I think it's kind of connected to the other two things that I

mentioned, is because there is no emotion.

When we speak, usually we speak with some kind of emotion or attitude, or

you can hear what we think about what we're saying by hearing our voice.

And when we're reading, it's kind of like flat.

And that makes it sound robotic as well.

So we do want to charge our voice with more emotion, and that's how

it's going to sound more expressive.

Now, remember, all of the things that I'm teaching you here today

are relevant for speaking as well.

But it's easier to start applying it in reading out loud so that you can

improve your reading, but also, as a by product, you'll improve your speaking.

So first, when you read out loud, plan for the punctuation marks.

What does that mean?

When you read, always look for the next comma, the next full stop, the

next colon, the next quotation marks, because these are indications of

how you should break down your text.

A comma is a short break, a full stop or a period at the end is a longer break.

After a colon, you might want to take a small break, before quotation

marks you might want to take a break.

So you see how that works?

You want to take that into consideration, into your breathing,

into how you read it out loud.

And that alone is going to make a huge difference.

Also, it's going to give you some time to organize your brain and organize yourself

and catch your breath if you need to.

To give you an example of what that looks like, I'm going to use this text.

It's from a TED Talk called How Drawing Can Set You Free.

And this is a small part of the TED Talk.

So let's say I start reading.

Before I start reading, I want to detect the punctuation marks.

So there is a comma here and a full stop here.

So I'm going to start reading and I'm going to try to keep my voice going

and connect as much as I can everything together until the comma, and then I

know that I have a small break here.

So I'm kind of like planning my breath and I see that the comma is

not very, very close to the beginning, so I might take a deeper breath.

"After five years of living in Japan and focusing on my craft",

now I can take a break, "I felt like I needed a new challenge."

So when there is a period, I know that I'm going to take a longer break.

And then I take a quick look at the next sentence, and then I see there

is a quick comma here, and then another one here, and a question mark.

So as I'm about to start the next sentence, I already know that I'm

going to have like two quick breaks.

Maybe I'm not going to take a breath there, but I'm going to take a mini pause.

"So I moved to New York because that's what you do as an artist, right?"

All right, so that is tip number one.

Tip number two is be aware of the melody of the language.

It doesn't have to sound super natural, but as you read out loud,

try to recognize if you're repeating the same pattern again and again.

If you are, remember that you have full control of your pitch

simply by using your voice.

Play a game.

Imagine like you're reading a story to a little child, right?

So there are no inhibitions.

You will give yourself permission to exaggerate a bit.

So do that when you're reading out loud, especially if you're doing

it while practicing and there's no one around, and see how expressive

you can get with your voice.

And when you do, remember that you want to make sure that there is

versatility in how you use your voice.

It's really just like music.

If you were to hear the same musical pattern again and again and again in

a song, it would be kind of boring.

That's the same when we're speaking.

And doing it while you're reading is going to help you improve your

speaking and make you sound less monotonous and more interesting.

All right.

So now let's try practice technique number two, using the same text.

I'm going to exaggerate my intonation and I'm going to try to make

sure that it's not repetitive.

Let me show you what that means.

"After five years of living in Japan and focusing on my craft", see how

I exaggerated it - CRAFT, "I felt like I needed a new challenge."

Now, it's okay if it doesn't sound natural, but you're

just exploring your voice.

"So I moved to New York because that's what you do as an artist, right?"

Now, if you want, you can do it the second time and see what that does

to your speech and your intonation.

"After five years of living in Japan and focusing on my craft, I

felt like I needed a new challenge.

So I moved to New York, because that's what you do as an artist, right?"

Now, I can do it in a different way: "After five years of living in

Japan and focusing on my craft, I felt like I needed a new challenge.

So I moved to New York, because that's what you do as an artist, right?"

The idea is to really practice different things using your voice, as long as

it's not repetitive and you're not using the same melody again and again.

Tip number three is, play with your pace.

I'm talking about the overall pace of the paragraph.

Because when we're speaking, we're not speaking in the same pace all the time.

Sometimes we speak a little slower when, especially when

we're trying to make a point.

And sometimes we speak faster when we need to fill someone in on some information,

or when we get to the less interesting parts or the less important parts.

So when you read out loud, you also want to notice when you can go a little faster

and when you can go a little slower.

New ideas and new information is usually set in a slower pace.

When you notice that you rephrase something or when there's a clause

that explains a previous clause, this is where you can go faster.

Alright, so now let's play with the pace.

Let's say that the beginning is going to be a little faster.

And then the second part of the sentence could be a little

slower, where I get to my point.

Let's try.

"After five years of living in Japan and focusing on my craft", now I

want to start slowing down, "I felt like I needed a new challenge."

Now I'm going back to my story, so I'm going to go a little faster.

"So I moved to New York, because that's what you do as an artist, right?"

I'm going to slow down a bit.

"You move to the greatest city in the world that has the ability to make you

feel completely and utterly invisible."

And I really slowed down on the words that I want to stress:

completely and utterly invisible.

"This is when I began to truly ask myself", so here I went a little faster

to get to the main part - "who are you?"

This is when I began to truly ask myself, who are you?"

Now, there isn't a right way or wrong way to play with your pace, as long

as you keep it varied and interesting, and you move between a little faster

to a little slower, especially when you want to stress a certain part.

The next thing is to charge your words with emotion.

So, try to recognize ahead of time, again, especially if you had time

to read it, If this is something that is cheerful, or that you maybe

want to engage your listeners.

Or maybe it's something that is more informative.

Or maybe it's a scene and there are jokes there.

Or maybe it's dramatic.

So try to think about how you would sound if you were happy, or if you were

afraid, or if you were just trying to be very certain in how you say things.

And see what that would do to your voice, and try to infuse

that emotion into your voice.

Because sometimes when we are happier or when something good happens, our

voice tends to be a little lighter, a little more airy or breathy,

maybe higher in pitch, right?

And sometimes when we're really, really straight to the point,

matter of fact, very certain, we tend to go a little lower, drop

the pitch at the end all the time.

So, notice what happens to your voice when you feel different emotions and

when you have different attitudes, and try to put some of that emotion

into what you're reading, depending on the text or depending on your

attitude or intention while reading it.

So now we're going to charge our voice with emotion.

And I usually like to do it after I have somewhat of an idea what I'm reading

and what the intention of the person speaking is, or when I see words that

are big words, strong words, I call them operative words, words that have meaning.

And then I slow down on these words and I try to use my voice to express

my attitude or feelings about this word or about what I'm saying.

So let's see what that looks like.

"After five years of living in Japan and focusing on my craft, I felt

like I needed a new challenge."

Right?

It's kind of like, okay, so there is this need here.

How can I convey with my voice that I need something new?

"I felt like I needed a new challenge."

Now back to casual: "So I moved to New York because that's what

you do as an artist, right?"

It's kind of like funny, sarcastic.

"You move to the greatest city in the world."

So now I'm trying to show appreciation to the city.

How would you show appreciation with your voice?

Try it with me.

"You move to the greatest city in the world that has that ability to make you

feel completely and utterly invisible."

So, you have to have an opinion about what that means.

Is it good?

Is it bad?

I believe that the character is saying that from her own perspective,

it's something that is good.

And this is why the feeling that I try to convey with my voice is a positive one.

There is no right way or wrong way of doing it, it's

really how you feel about it.

But the most important thing is that have clarity around what you're

saying and see what that does to your voice, to your emotions, and

ultimately, to how you read it.

The last thing to improve your reading out loud is, of course, practice regularly.

One of the best methods to practice is to read out loud while recording

yourself, to listen back to it, give yourself feedback, and try again.

It always works and it's a win win.

You both get to practice and to do it many times, but you also get to listen

to yourself and to improve by doing that.

Another great way to practice is to practice scenes or

monologues – things that tend to get you more engaged emotionally.

So you can do it on your own.

You can practice with your speaking partner or your friend

or your spouse or your children.

So practicing out loud scenes, dialogues, monologues, something fun is a really,

really, really good strategy to improve.

All right.

So first of all, good job for your practice, if you did the practice.

Even if you just listened, it's okay, but try to do this practice.

And second, I'm really curious to hear if it helped you sound more expressive

and natural when reading out loud.

So let me know in the comments, please.

And if you found it useful, then keep on practicing.

And remember that it's not just for the sake of getting better

at reading out loud, even though it's a great skill to have.

This work also helps you become more expressive and natural in speaking

daily in your first language and any foreign language that you might speak.

Okay?

All right.

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All right, everyone, have a beautiful, beautiful rest of the day.

Thank you so much for practicing with me today.

And I'll see you next week in the next video.

Bye.