5 Speaking Mistakes to AVOID in English

127,245 views ・ 2023-05-30

Rachel's English


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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Today we’re going to go over 5 speaking mistakes  to avoid to have clearer communication in English.
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Number one: avoid choppiness, go for smoothness.  What do I mean by this? Well, let’s take that  
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phrase: “What do I mean by this?”. 6 words,  but each word connects to the next word. No  
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breaks. As if this whole phrase is one big  word. We really hear this connection and this  
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smoothness when we slow it down. Here, I already  recorded the sentence. Let me play it for you.
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What do I mean by this?
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Now let’s slow it down.
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What do I mean by this?
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You really hear how smooth it is. It doesn’t  feel like 6 separate words. Sometimes my  
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students want each word to feel separate and  clear, but that choppiness and separateness  
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is not a characteristic of natural spoken  English, so it can actually make things more  
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difficult to understand, especially  if some of the sounds are mixed up.
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So in the phrase, “What do I mean by this?”,  there are no breaks, the flow is constantly moving  
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forward. Sometimes I tell students to think of the  sound as a tube of toothpaste. Think of it coming  
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out, equal pressure, one big line, one big long  tube. Let’s look just at the first three words.
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What do I. What do I.
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The first is stressed, and the other two aren’t.  What do I. Move your arm with me like that,
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What do I. What do I.
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Feel that smoothness. It’s just like  a 3-syllable word with first syllable  
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stress. It’s the same feeling. What do I,  harmony, pacify, happily, what do I, what do I.
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We link words in American English, so  always look for the connection and how  
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they link when you imitate native  speakers. We’re not saying ‘what’  
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‘do’. We actually drop the T and  connect to the D: wha-do. What-do.
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Then the OO vowel of do, that links right into  AI. do-ai, What-do-I. This is a vowel to vowel  
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link. This is the label for any word that ends  with a vowel or diphthong linking into any word  
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that begins with a vowel or diphthong. These  can feel the most sloppy, sometimes students  
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say they feel drunk or lazy when they do this  kind of link. But that smoothness is what we’re  
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going for. Remember the tube of toothpaste. What  do I. What do I mean by this. Three more words,  
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Again, the first one is stressed. Mean by this.  Mean by. N right into B with no stop, break,  
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or separation. This is a consonant to consonant  link. N-by. Mean-by. Mean by this. And finally,  
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right into the word ‘this’ with no break. Mean by  this. Can you try this now? Feel the connection.
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Mean by this.
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So connection, forward flow, tube of toothpaste.
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Be sure to download my sounds of  American English Cheat Sheet. It’s free,  
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it’s an illustrated reference guide for you,  for all the American English sounds including  
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the phonetic symbols you need to know.  Link here and in the video description.
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Another thing to avoid is speaking too fast.  Now, I know what you’re thinking, “But Rachel,  
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Americans speak very fast.” That’s true.  But there’s a particular way we do it. In  
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the phrase “what do I mean by this,” two of the  words were still long. The stressed words. One  
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thing that can make people hard to understand is  when they don’t lean into their longer stressed  
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syllables. I have noticed this with some of  my Spanish-speaking students especially. Give  
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them length. Think of English as looking like  morse code. Except not flat. Long and short,  
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with your long having a pitch change,  usually up and down, sometimes down and up,  
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more like a mountain, sometimes like a valley.  So the syllables look like this. Short and long,  
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with the short leading up to the stressed syllable  or falling away from it.
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What do I mean by this.
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It’s different than ‘what do I mean  by this’ - where they are all short.
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So, avoid choppiness, and give us long stressed  syllables compared to short unstressed syllables.
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Next, don’t let your pitch be too flat. We  want variation, that’s where we get clarity.
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If I say everything on the  same pitch it’s less clear.
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That variation really gives us some clarity.  Of course, most of my students don’t say  
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everything on the same pitch, but there  isn’t enough variation. We don’t want to  
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see pitch changes like this. We want pitch  changes like this. That is clear speaking.
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A lot of my students feel silly when I ask for  more pitch variation. It just feels like too  
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much. It feels fake, clownish, and that’s very  uncomfortable. But, depending on your habits,  
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this might be the very thing you need to add to  be more clear speaking English. I was working  
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with a student in a live class once, and I  was understanding everything until she got  
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to the phrase ‘data analytics’. And I realized  I didn’t understand right away for two reasons:  
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One, I needed longer stressed syllables,  and two, I needed more pitch variation.
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Data analytics. That was the first phrase  that I had to really think about that I  
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didn’t immediately understand where my mind went  wait, what did she say? and I figured it out but  
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um, it wasn’t immediate. And, it was sort of  because, okay well a couple of things. I think  
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we could use a little bit more ahuhahuhahuh.  This structure helps us understand it . It was  
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a little bit data analytics. Tatatatata. All a  little bit staccato and short. And in American  
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English, we have like almost we have very little  staccato, we have a lot of like if I was taking  
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a paintbrush it would be like valalalalah instead  of tatatata. So, data analytics would become data  
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analytics. Data analytics and there’s more pitch  change so data is sort of flat and I went daaata.  
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I’ve sometimes just uh, any old random  piece of audio from a native speaker.  
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And when I slow it down to like 25 percent,  10 percent, it is crazy how slidey
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it is. There’s just no jumpers,  skip, it’s so connected. So,  
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let’s do that with the word data and we’re  going to do it in slow motion. Data. You do it.
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Data.
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Okay, good. Here’s what I got.  Day, I want daaay. So you gave  
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me this much pitch range. I want  that much. Start lower. Daaaata.
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Daaaata.
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Yeah. Let’s do this. Duh, you copy me. Duh.
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Duh.
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I’m trying to take your pitch down.
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Duuh.
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Daay.
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Yes.
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Daay.
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I did this thing when I compared Chinese to  American by taking it into a program that analyzes  
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pitch and I haven’t done it with Hungarian but I  noticed for Chinese, the pitch range was smaller  
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and higher like this is where most Chinese was and  this is where most of the American English was. We  
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had a lot more lower pitches. It wasn’t that we  had a lot more higher pitches. So you might want  
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to think about that. Your pitch range is here and  what I actually want is not this but what I want  
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is this. I want you to bring in more lower pitches  so instead of data, it’s daaata. Of course I’m  
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exaggerating right now but like let’s feel that.  Duh, duh. Let me hear you do that really low.
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Duh.
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Day.
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Data.
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That’s right. Data. And of course we’re  slowing it down, we’re exaggerating but  
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we have to do that to get away from data.  You know, it helps to slow things down and  
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to exaggerate them and usually my students, it  feels so different and weird that they never uh,  
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go all the way to the exaggeration right. It  feels too silly, too strange. But the more  
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we can pull in that direction, the more  comfortable we get with it in general.
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My fourth tip is mouth movement. I was listening  to the audio book “Inside voice” by voiceover  
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artist Lake Bell and she talks about studying the  shape of mouths. She has done so much research  
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and collected so much knowledge on how to  imitate people and create characters with  
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accents. And I heard her talking about the shape  of mouths and I was like ‘Yes!’ This is something  
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I talk about with my students a lot. I see really  minimal mouth movements. But in American English,  
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we have quite a lot of movement. More jaw  drop, more lip rounding than my students  
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sometimes want to do. When you speak  English with minimal mouth movements,  
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it can be really mumbly and hard to understand.  But just like pitch variation, this is something  
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that students sometimes shy away from, because  their native language doesn’t require as much  
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movement. So to really move that jaw feels  uncomfortable and, again, clownish. But study  
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the mouth movement of native speakers. Imitate it,  even if it feels exaggerated in your own mouth.
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I was working on this once with  a Russian student, and I said,  
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have you ever seen an American speaking Russian  with a thick American accent? And she thought,  
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“Oh my gosh, yes I have, and it was so  funny how much their mouths moved. That  
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is your clue. That movement is what you  need when you speak American English.
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The last tip is to lower your pitch. I’ve found  that many students, when they speak English,  
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their pitch is just a little bit high. And I  don’t notice it when I’m hearing them, but I  
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do notice it when I imitate them. And I’ve found  that when students lower their pitch a little bit,  
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it helps them sound more natural and capture that  American sound with their own voice. And that can,  
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mixed with other factors, make them easier to  understand. This is a clip of me working with  
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a student in a live class on lowering pitch.  Follow along and play with lowering yours.
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So I wanted to work on smoothness but I think  I actually want to work on your pitch. Monday,  
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I wake up at seven. And there is nothing  honestly, it takes me a while to figure  
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out that’s part of what feels strange because  Americans were so used to other people speaking  
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American English with that higher pitch that I  think a lot of us don’t really notice it. But  
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then if I sit down and I really start imitating  students I’m like “wait, hold on that is so high.”  
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Um, for me so, Monday, I wake up at  seven. Monday, let’s bring it down.
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Monday
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Right. And part of I think bringing it  down is sort of thinking of like a wide  
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open heaviness to the body, to the neck,  to the throat. It’s going to help bring  
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that down and have that more natural  feeling. Monday I wake up at seven.
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Monday I wake up at seven.
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Okay, hold on. Monday, Monday.  That’s not bad. Monday but Monday,  
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Monday. Can we bring it down a little  bit? Monday. Monday I wake up at seven.
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Yeah. Monday I wake up at seven.
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Let’s do the whole phrase without a break. Instead  
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of Monday, we’re just going to  do ‘Monday I wake up at seven.’
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Monday I wake up at seven.
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Yeah, good. Now, hold on. Monday I wake  up at, wake up at. Wake up at. Wake up at.
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Wake up at. Okay. Monday I wake up at seven.
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Okay, that was good. I still would  say ‘wake up at’ I like that. I liked  
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the sounds you gave them but I would  like them even faster so wake up at.
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Wake up at.
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Wake up at becomes wake-up-at. It’s so funny,  it sounds like way, I’m just going to type it  
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so other people can think about it this way.  kuh-pit'. Right, it’s like that linking,  
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makes it feel like the ending consonant is  beginning the next uhm, syllable way-kuh-pit.
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way-kuh-pit. Uhmm.
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Wake up at seven.
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Hmmhm, exactly. Let’s get a little  bit more volume, wake up at seven.
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Wake up at seven. Hmmhm.
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Okay, I’m lowering my voice again.
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Wake up at seven.
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Yeah, good. And I can see how lowering  your voice is going to make you lower  
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your volume too, try not to do that.  Try do find a place where you can  
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bring your pitch down a little bit but  now bring your volume all the way back.
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I’m going to put in another clip from  my lesson with the first student you  
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saw. Earlier in this video you saw  us working on ‘data’. Now we’ll work  
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on ‘analytics’. And you’ll see us talking  about many of these 5 factors: smoothness,  
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mouth movement, pitch variation, longer stressed  syllables. They just make such a difference.
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So now we’re going to take the next word. So, data  has first syllable stress. Now we’re going to do  
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‘Analytics’. So it’s okay for ‘ana’ to be  flap but I don’t want ana. I want ana, ana.
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Ana, ana.
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Right. Smooth. Ana
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Right. Now let’s do ‘analy’
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Analy
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Right, right.
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Analy
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A little bit more space between to tongue, ih, ih.
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Analy, ih, ih, analy.
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So I see that your teeth are not parting  at all. Analy, I think I want analy, ih.
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Analy, ih
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Yeah. There’s just a little bit more space.
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Hmhm, that’s it
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Analy
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Hmmhm. And now we’re going  to have a flap T, analytics.
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Analytics.
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Okay, that was a true T. Analytics. Also  true Ts feel more staccato and this is one  
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of the reasons on my YouTube channel  in a couple of weeks I’m posting how  
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uncommon the true T is. It’s like one third of  the time, the other times we’re doing flaps,  
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we’re doing stops that feel a little  bit less staccato so analytics,  
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that tttt fits right into tatatata. But the flap  T, that fits right into uhuhuh. So analytics.
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Analytics.
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Okay, it’s a little bit uhl,  analytics, ih, ih. I’m just  
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going to take the last two syllable, lytics.
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Lytics.
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Yeah, lytics. Okay.
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Lytics.
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Yes, exactly. So the flap doesn’t stop the  feeling of forward motion of connection at  
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all and I think that you know, to change  your mind from the dadada to the uhuhhuh,  
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just the constant flow forward. I think just that  one mind change is going to make things clearer  
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and then adding in this more pitch modulation  is also going to make things way clearer.
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Five things to try: avoid choppiness, longer  stressed syllables, more pitch variation,  
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more mouth movement, lower overall  pitch. Which of these five do you  
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think will help you the most? Let me know  in the comments. Pick just one topic to  
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work on. Maybe starting your phrases  lower, and see where that gets you.
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Please be sure to subscribe with notifications  on, and check out my channel which already has  
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hundreds of videos to help you speak clearer,  more natural English. Also, to watch all the  
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live classes I’ve had with students like  here, or to volunteer to be a student,  
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check out Rachel’s English Academy. That’s it  and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English
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