Do THIS to transform your accent and pronunciation in English forever

hey everyone my name is Veronica and I'm currently learning three foreign languages when I began  

learning English pronunciation wasn't my top  priority but when I started learning Spanish I  

actually began with it and there are many reasons  why whether you're a beginner or an advanced  

learner you will benefit from watching this video  I will share information that helped me become a  

better speaker and I'm sure it will be valuable  to you to number one identify your priorities  

when it comes to pronunciation you actually want  to start by ident ifying your challenging sounds  

if people often say to you please repeat come  again it wasn't clear what was that there is a  

high chance that you mispronounce certain words if  you say free instead of three that might lead to a  

miscommunication problem that you don't want to  have but if you say better instead of better or  

vice versa there's no problem here everyone is  going to understand you this is by the way the  

main difference between pronunciation and an  accent accent pronunciation is the way words  

should be said all the sounds and syllables that  make up the word an accent is how a person sounds  

when they speak the language it's influenced by  the way people from a certain region or country  

pronounce words to avoid miscommunication you  should start with the sounds that do not exist  

in your native language and that you tend to  substitute and confuse with other sounds for  

example a typical issue for Japanese people is  using r instead of L and vice versa so it's their  

top priority to practice words like right and  light long and wrong lead and read one of the  

most difficult sounds in English is t h and it  could be substituted with t Team theme fate Faith  

or D day they do though which is very typical  for Spanish speakers for Russian speakers it is  

very common to replace DH with with s gross growth  worse Worth or Z breee breathe Zen then the word  

pairs you just saw are called minimal pairs there  are also a lot of different tongue twisters and  

fanatic drills that can help you fix this habitual  way of pronouncing certain words I personally  

worked a lot on the way I pronounce the letter T  by using this YouTube channel Rachel's English to  

be honest it took me a few weeks to start hearing  ing the difference between how Americans say this  

sound how British people say this sound and to  actually be able to produce the sound myself  

every single time kind of nail this sound every  single time so don't worry if at first you don't  

hear the difference between the sounds because  it comes with time hopefully I can encourage you  

and make you feel better because practicing those  tricky sounds and tricky words is those 20% that  

will lead you to 80 % of all your results once you  gain more clarity and confidence in your English  

you can work on something like this connected  speech what are you like I met your friend or  

red do sounds a couple of some of them while these  are cool to learn and if you want to of course you  

can they're not as crucial as correcting your  mispronunciations getting your words completely  

wrong can make communication more difficult and it  can also make you feel self-conscious and make you  

afraid to speak English to others that's why it's  always easier to fix pronunciation mistakes with  

a teacher if you're looking for a platform where  you can find a native speaking teacher I highly  

recommend life XP and they are kindly sponsoring  today's video life XP is a language learning  

platform where you can take classes with native  speakers and improve your speaking skills this  

way there are over 30 languages to choose from  and if you ask me I highly recommend my Spanish  

and English teacher Eric who always make sure that  our lessons are informative and a lot of fun live  

XP has a wide range of plans for you guys and you  will definitely find the one that works best for  

you once you create an account it's very easy  to check the schedule track your progress and  

book new classes one of my favorite features of  Life XP is their not taking feature that allows  

me to take notes during classes and then use them  later to refresh my vocabulary and then learn of  

this new vocabulary with a word trainer that is  is built on the space repetition algorithm and I  

love the space repetition technology you guys  know because I talk about it all the time it's  

definitely one of those things that I absolutely  cannot imagine my language learning without and  

only for you guys watching this video if you  use the link in my description you'll be able  

to try life XP with a 30% discount so make sure  to check out the link in the description and the  

pin comment number two play your your own music  another thing that I'm super excited to talk about  

is the melody or intonation quite an underrated  aspect of English but extremely helpful in terms  

of becoming a better Communicator in any language  all right guys here's a fun one you have probably  

heard that listening to classical music or any  other types of music can boost your productivity  

millions of people study better when they have low  girl chill beats in the background and what's the  

connection between music and pronunciation you  ask think think of a language as a music piece  

it's got Melody it's got rhythm and beat in  linguistics word equals beat do you like your  

Beats when you stress a single word in a sentence  your brain is dancing and releasing energy kind of  

like those spikes on the audio track to transmit  your emotions and what's important to you you have  

to play with stress and stretching words ready  for a quick exercise let's read the sentence on  

the screen I love learning English now let's tress  different words to see how it impacts our message  

I not my buddy beside me love learning English  I love definitely not hate learning English I  

love learning enjoy the whole process English I  love learning English not German sorry my German  

friends so there you have it guys for the most  part it's to you what words to stress but usually  

we stress content words so words that convey  the most meaning verbs nouns and adjectives and  

function words like and to of at in are unstressed  and reduced but you guys don't really need all of  

that theory because you won't think about it  while speaking spontaneously right that's why  

you practice pronunciation by listening to real  people as much as possible shadowing people is  

one of the most most crucial exercises I can  think of over time you will get the sense of  

The Melody of the language and it will naturally  rub off onto you but not only stressing words can  

make you sound fun and engaging it's also the tone  you use to deliver your idea number three explore  

your tone of voice if people can't quite catch  your emotions Sometimes you seem uninterested and  

even rude while speaking English maybe it's time  to give your tone of voice a little exploration  

English has a unique intonation pattern and your  tone of voice plays a very important role in how  

you're perceived for example the rising tone is  responsible for the friendly and polite manner of  

speaking when we say hi could you please help me  do you know where it is your voice goes up at the  

end the falling tone is used in statements special  questions or when giving orders or instructions  

I'm from Boston when you have a moment send it to  me how long how long have you been living here in  

your first language your flat intonation might be  a natural part of your speech and believe me guys  

it's something I struggle with a lot because  usually in Russian when I speak my intonation  

is pretty flat but in English it's a little bit  different so I really had to teach myself a lot  

of new things when I decided to learn English but  at the same time I feel like it's hard to listen  

to a person who doesn't play with their voice  and who sounds monotonous right to be an engaging  

speaker and express a wide range of your emotions  you can explore different pitch levels we won't  

go into the nitty greedy theory in this video but  we'll do a quick test I don't know I don't know I  

don't know I don't know see what I did here I was  playing with my high and low pitch to transmit my  

emotions number four your mindset in English  forget about everything I said before those  

things won't matter even if you're you're super  advanced in English if you feel unconfident shy  

embarrassed and afraid to speak up and yes you  heard me right even Advanced speakers might be  

too hard on themselves and judge themselves all  the time it was me a while back a few years ago  

my English was pretty good but I was so freaking  embarrassed to speak the language I did not feel  

confident at all but what helped me is practicing  pronunciation because it is surprisingly the best  

and most effective way to become more confident  in a language and it's especially interesting  

because the majority of us never even studied  pronunciation you know it's not something that  

we're taught in schools universities normally  normally we kind of just glance over pronunciation  

rules and we're like studied so let's talk about  a few practical tips and exercises to improve your  

mindset about English be more aware of your  negative selft talk when you catch yourself  

saying something negative about yourself stop and  immediately change all of those negative beliefs  

into positive affirmations the mind doesn't know  right or wrong it believes what we tell it instead  

of saying this is awful I'm getting stuck all the  time say every next try gets me closer to sounding  

more fluent instead of saying I'm overwhelmed say  I'm going to figure this out instead of saying  

it's so hard say I know how to do hard things I've  done it before instead of saying it's impossible  

say I just need to learn the right strategies and  build healthy learning habits and there you have  

it folks remember to play your realm music explore  your tone of voice get some feedback and most  

importantly nurture a positive mindset because  as Buddha wisely said the mind is everything  

what you think you become if you want to learn  more about why we have an accent in a foreign  

language you can watch this video right here  if you use the link in my description you'll be  

able to try life XE with a 30% discount feel free  to continue watching my videos by clicking here