5 Speaking Mistakes to AVOID in English

Today we’re going to go over 5 speaking mistakes  to avoid to have clearer communication in English.

Number one: avoid choppiness, go for smoothness.  What do I mean by this? Well, let’s take that  

phrase: “What do I mean by this?”. 6 words,  but each word connects to the next word. No  

breaks. As if this whole phrase is one big  word. We really hear this connection and this  

smoothness when we slow it down. Here, I already  recorded the sentence. Let me play it for you.

What do I mean by this?

Now let’s slow it down.

What do I mean by this?

You really hear how smooth it is. It doesn’t  feel like 6 separate words. Sometimes my  

students want each word to feel separate and  clear, but that choppiness and separateness  

is not a characteristic of natural spoken  English, so it can actually make things more  

difficult to understand, especially  if some of the sounds are mixed up.

So in the phrase, “What do I mean by this?”,  there are no breaks, the flow is constantly moving  

forward. Sometimes I tell students to think of the  sound as a tube of toothpaste. Think of it coming  

out, equal pressure, one big line, one big long  tube. Let’s look just at the first three words.

What do I. What do I.

The first is stressed, and the other two aren’t.  What do I. Move your arm with me like that,

What do I. What do I.

Feel that smoothness. It’s just like  a 3-syllable word with first syllable  

stress. It’s the same feeling. What do I,  harmony, pacify, happily, what do I, what do I.

We link words in American English, so  always look for the connection and how  

they link when you imitate native  speakers. We’re not saying ‘what’  

‘do’. We actually drop the T and  connect to the D: wha-do. What-do.

Then the OO vowel of do, that links right into  AI. do-ai, What-do-I. This is a vowel to vowel  

link. This is the label for any word that ends  with a vowel or diphthong linking into any word  

that begins with a vowel or diphthong. These  can feel the most sloppy, sometimes students  

say they feel drunk or lazy when they do this  kind of link. But that smoothness is what we’re  

going for. Remember the tube of toothpaste. What  do I. What do I mean by this. Three more words,  

Again, the first one is stressed. Mean by this.  Mean by. N right into B with no stop, break,  

or separation. This is a consonant to consonant  link. N-by. Mean-by. Mean by this. And finally,  

right into the word ‘this’ with no break. Mean by  this. Can you try this now? Feel the connection.

Mean by this.

So connection, forward flow, tube of toothpaste.

Be sure to download my sounds of  American English Cheat Sheet. It’s free,  

it’s an illustrated reference guide for you,  for all the American English sounds including  

the phonetic symbols you need to know.  Link here and in the video description.

Another thing to avoid is speaking too fast.  Now, I know what you’re thinking, “But Rachel,  

Americans speak very fast.” That’s true.  But there’s a particular way we do it. In  

the phrase “what do I mean by this,” two of the  words were still long. The stressed words. One  

thing that can make people hard to understand is  when they don’t lean into their longer stressed  

syllables. I have noticed this with some of  my Spanish-speaking students especially. Give  

them length. Think of English as looking like  morse code. Except not flat. Long and short,  

with your long having a pitch change,  usually up and down, sometimes down and up,  

more like a mountain, sometimes like a valley.  So the syllables look like this. Short and long,  

with the short leading up to the stressed syllable  or falling away from it.

What do I mean by this.

It’s different than ‘what do I mean  by this’ - where they are all short.

So, avoid choppiness, and give us long stressed  syllables compared to short unstressed syllables.

Next, don’t let your pitch be too flat. We  want variation, that’s where we get clarity.

If I say everything on the  same pitch it’s less clear.

That variation really gives us some clarity.  Of course, most of my students don’t say  

everything on the same pitch, but there  isn’t enough variation. We don’t want to  

see pitch changes like this. We want pitch  changes like this. That is clear speaking.

A lot of my students feel silly when I ask for  more pitch variation. It just feels like too  

much. It feels fake, clownish, and that’s very  uncomfortable. But, depending on your habits,  

this might be the very thing you need to add to  be more clear speaking English. I was working  

with a student in a live class once, and I  was understanding everything until she got  

to the phrase ‘data analytics’. And I realized  I didn’t understand right away for two reasons:  

One, I needed longer stressed syllables,  and two, I needed more pitch variation.

Data analytics. That was the first phrase  that I had to really think about that I  

didn’t immediately understand where my mind went  wait, what did she say? and I figured it out but  

um, it wasn’t immediate. And, it was sort of  because, okay well a couple of things. I think  

we could use a little bit more ahuhahuhahuh.  This structure helps us understand it . It was  

a little bit data analytics. Tatatatata. All a  little bit staccato and short. And in American  

English, we have like almost we have very little  staccato, we have a lot of like if I was taking  

a paintbrush it would be like valalalalah instead  of tatatata. So, data analytics would become data  

analytics. Data analytics and there’s more pitch  change so data is sort of flat and I went daaata.  

I’ve sometimes just uh, any old random  piece of audio from a native speaker.  

And when I slow it down to like 25 percent,  10 percent, it is crazy how slidey

it is. There’s just no jumpers,  skip, it’s so connected. So,  

let’s do that with the word data and we’re  going to do it in slow motion. Data. You do it.

Data.

Okay, good. Here’s what I got.  Day, I want daaay. So you gave  

me this much pitch range. I want  that much. Start lower. Daaaata.

Daaaata.

Yeah. Let’s do this. Duh, you copy me. Duh.

Duh.

I’m trying to take your pitch down.

Duuh.

Daay.

Yes.

Daay.

I did this thing when I compared Chinese to  American by taking it into a program that analyzes  

pitch and I haven’t done it with Hungarian but I  noticed for Chinese, the pitch range was smaller  

and higher like this is where most Chinese was and  this is where most of the American English was. We  

had a lot more lower pitches. It wasn’t that we  had a lot more higher pitches. So you might want  

to think about that. Your pitch range is here and  what I actually want is not this but what I want  

is this. I want you to bring in more lower pitches  so instead of data, it’s daaata. Of course I’m  

exaggerating right now but like let’s feel that.  Duh, duh. Let me hear you do that really low.

Duh.

Day.

Data.

That’s right. Data. And of course we’re  slowing it down, we’re exaggerating but  

we have to do that to get away from data.  You know, it helps to slow things down and  

to exaggerate them and usually my students, it  feels so different and weird that they never uh,  

go all the way to the exaggeration right. It  feels too silly, too strange. But the more  

we can pull in that direction, the more  comfortable we get with it in general.

My fourth tip is mouth movement. I was listening  to the audio book “Inside voice” by voiceover  

artist Lake Bell and she talks about studying the  shape of mouths. She has done so much research  

and collected so much knowledge on how to  imitate people and create characters with  

accents. And I heard her talking about the shape  of mouths and I was like ‘Yes!’ This is something  

I talk about with my students a lot. I see really  minimal mouth movements. But in American English,  

we have quite a lot of movement. More jaw  drop, more lip rounding than my students  

sometimes want to do. When you speak  English with minimal mouth movements,  

it can be really mumbly and hard to understand.  But just like pitch variation, this is something  

that students sometimes shy away from, because  their native language doesn’t require as much  

movement. So to really move that jaw feels  uncomfortable and, again, clownish. But study  

the mouth movement of native speakers. Imitate it,  even if it feels exaggerated in your own mouth.

I was working on this once with  a Russian student, and I said,  

have you ever seen an American speaking Russian  with a thick American accent? And she thought,  

“Oh my gosh, yes I have, and it was so  funny how much their mouths moved. That  

is your clue. That movement is what you  need when you speak American English.

The last tip is to lower your pitch. I’ve found  that many students, when they speak English,  

their pitch is just a little bit high. And I  don’t notice it when I’m hearing them, but I  

do notice it when I imitate them. And I’ve found  that when students lower their pitch a little bit,  

it helps them sound more natural and capture that  American sound with their own voice. And that can,  

mixed with other factors, make them easier to  understand. This is a clip of me working with  

a student in a live class on lowering pitch.  Follow along and play with lowering yours.

So I wanted to work on smoothness but I think  I actually want to work on your pitch. Monday,  

I wake up at seven. And there is nothing  honestly, it takes me a while to figure  

out that’s part of what feels strange because  Americans were so used to other people speaking  

American English with that higher pitch that I  think a lot of us don’t really notice it. But  

then if I sit down and I really start imitating  students I’m like “wait, hold on that is so high.”  

Um, for me so, Monday, I wake up at  seven. Monday, let’s bring it down.

Monday

Right. And part of I think bringing it  down is sort of thinking of like a wide  

open heaviness to the body, to the neck,  to the throat. It’s going to help bring  

that down and have that more natural  feeling. Monday I wake up at seven.

Monday I wake up at seven.

Okay, hold on. Monday, Monday.  That’s not bad. Monday but Monday,  

Monday. Can we bring it down a little  bit? Monday. Monday I wake up at seven.

Yeah. Monday I wake up at seven.

Let’s do the whole phrase without a break. Instead  

of Monday, we’re just going to  do ‘Monday I wake up at seven.’

Monday I wake up at seven.

Yeah, good. Now, hold on. Monday I wake  up at, wake up at. Wake up at. Wake up at.

Wake up at. Okay. Monday I wake up at seven.

Okay, that was good. I still would  say ‘wake up at’ I like that. I liked  

the sounds you gave them but I would  like them even faster so wake up at.

Wake up at.

Wake up at becomes wake-up-at. It’s so funny,  it sounds like way, I’m just going to type it  

so other people can think about it this way.  kuh-pit'. Right, it’s like that linking,  

makes it feel like the ending consonant is  beginning the next uhm, syllable way-kuh-pit.

way-kuh-pit. Uhmm.

Wake up at seven.

Hmmhm, exactly. Let’s get a little  bit more volume, wake up at seven.

Wake up at seven. Hmmhm.

Okay, I’m lowering my voice again.

Wake up at seven.

Yeah, good. And I can see how lowering  your voice is going to make you lower  

your volume too, try not to do that.  Try do find a place where you can  

bring your pitch down a little bit but  now bring your volume all the way back.

I’m going to put in another clip from  my lesson with the first student you  

saw. Earlier in this video you saw  us working on ‘data’. Now we’ll work  

on ‘analytics’. And you’ll see us talking  about many of these 5 factors: smoothness,  

mouth movement, pitch variation, longer stressed  syllables. They just make such a difference.

So now we’re going to take the next word. So, data  has first syllable stress. Now we’re going to do  

‘Analytics’. So it’s okay for ‘ana’ to be  flap but I don’t want ana. I want ana, ana.

Ana, ana.

Right. Smooth. Ana

Right. Now let’s do ‘analy’

Analy

Right, right.

Analy

A little bit more space between to tongue, ih, ih.

Analy, ih, ih, analy.

So I see that your teeth are not parting  at all. Analy, I think I want analy, ih.

Analy, ih

Yeah. There’s just a little bit more space.

Hmhm, that’s it

Analy

Hmmhm. And now we’re going  to have a flap T, analytics.

Analytics.

Okay, that was a true T. Analytics. Also  true Ts feel more staccato and this is one  

of the reasons on my YouTube channel  in a couple of weeks I’m posting how  

uncommon the true T is. It’s like one third of  the time, the other times we’re doing flaps,  

we’re doing stops that feel a little  bit less staccato so analytics,  

that tttt fits right into tatatata. But the flap  T, that fits right into uhuhuh. So analytics.

Analytics.

Okay, it’s a little bit uhl,  analytics, ih, ih. I’m just  

going to take the last two syllable, lytics.

Lytics.

Yeah, lytics. Okay.

Lytics.

Yes, exactly. So the flap doesn’t stop the  feeling of forward motion of connection at  

all and I think that you know, to change  your mind from the dadada to the uhuhhuh,  

just the constant flow forward. I think just that  one mind change is going to make things clearer  

and then adding in this more pitch modulation  is also going to make things way clearer.

Five things to try: avoid choppiness, longer  stressed syllables, more pitch variation,  

more mouth movement, lower overall  pitch. Which of these five do you  

think will help you the most? Let me know  in the comments. Pick just one topic to  

work on. Maybe starting your phrases  lower, and see where that gets you.

Please be sure to subscribe with notifications  on, and check out my channel which already has  

hundreds of videos to help you speak clearer,  more natural English. Also, to watch all the  

live classes I’ve had with students like  here, or to volunteer to be a student,  

check out Rachel’s English Academy. That’s it  and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English