3 Tongue Twisters to Improve Your American English | Accent Reduction Practice | Rachel's English

Seventy-seven Benevolent Elephants

I can’t do this one. Why practice tongue  twisters? My students who have problems  

with some of the sounds in American English  need to train their mind to guide their mouth,  

to effortlessly go through the positions for these sounds. Tongue twisters can help with  

this. they can help build the brain connection:  This is a T-H thhhh so that your body can do it  

on its own, without thinking of it, without the  mind having to guide the tongue through the position. And  

that’s what we want of course. We want the habit.  We want to take the sounds that are hardest,  

and make them effortless. So today we’re going  to go over some tongue twisters to untwist  

your tongue and help you master some of the  trickiest consonant sounds of American English.  

As always, if you like this video or you learn something new, please give it a thumbs  

up and subscribe with notifications, and  come join us Tuesdays for new videos.

Today we’re training 3 super-tricky tongue  twisters. First, Seventy-seven benevolent  

elephants. This is going to help with your V. My  students from India and Germany tend to sometimes  

switch V and W, and these can be tricky  sounds for other language groups as well.  

Mastering this tongue twister will help  your brain really get that V is vvv.

We’re also to do “which wristwatches are Swiss  wristwatches?” Hitting the W hard, also the  

R. That’s because the W is silent in the word  ‘wrist’. Look out, this one is really tricky.

And I’m not going to forget  that ever important TH.  

“He threw three free throws” – you’ll  get to work on R with that one too.  

What other tongue twisters do you know?  Put them in the comments below.

Let’s look at our first one, seventy-seven  benevolent elephants. That’s a lot of elephants.  

Benevolent means kind, expressing goodwill,  helping others. You usually don’t think of  

an elephant as being benevolent, but it does make a  good tongue twister. This one is tricky. Too fast,  

and it even native speakers mess it up. This  is my friend Ginny and her daughter Natalie.

Seventy-seven Benevolent Elephants

And this is my sister-in-law Audrey.

Seventy-seven Benevolent Elephants

We’ll focus on the word ‘benevolent’. First,  

it helps so much with a longer words to focus  on stress. The second syllable here is stressed,  

let’s practice just that. Nev. Nev. It’s like  a hill. Nev. Nev. It has our tricky V sound. V,  

not a W, no lip rounding. Nev, vvv. Next,  unstressed. The first syllable is just ‘be,be’.  

Very simple, very fast. Let’s put it  with the stressed syllable. Benev. Benev.  

Remember, these two syllables should feel totally  different. One is stressed, one is unstressed.  

The first one is very fast, the second one is  longer, it has that hill shape. Benev. Benev.  

Our other two syllables, -olent, -olent.  

All three of our unstressed syllables here  have the schwa, pronounced like this ‘uh’.  

Can you believe that? Almost no jaw drop, totally  relaxed face. It almost doesn’t even look like  

I’m not even talking. -olent, -olent,  -olent. Benev - -olent. Benevolent.  

Put them together but don’t slow down  those fast syllables. Keep them fast, keep  

it simple. Benevolent. Seventy-seven benevolent  elephants, Seventy-seven benevolent elephants.

The next word, elephants,that first syllable has  the hill shape, the stress. Practice with me. El-.  

El-. The other two syllables, schwas, said more  quickly. Ephant. Ephant. Ephant. Put it together,  

elephant. The PH makes an F sound. Did you know F  and V have the same mouth position? F is unvoiced,  

meaning just air makes the sound, ffff, and V  Is voiced, meaning your vocal cords are engaged,  

making a sound. Vvvv. I’ll alternate. See that  nothing in my mouth changes. Ff, vv, ff, vv.  

Let’s put the two words together. It’s going  to be common to make the ending T a stop T.  

Stop the air in your throat, but don’t  release tt, the T sound. Benevolent,  

benevolent. Benevolent elephants. Move your arm on  those stressed syllables. Benevolent, benevolent,  

benevolent elephants. Okay, move your arm  on those stressed syllables. Benevolent  

elephants, Benevolent elephants. Benevolent  elephants. Do it as slowly as you need to,  

to make sure you’re doing it correctly. Remember,  we want to train the right positions.

Seventy-seven. This is going to help us  train that V sound some more. Both parts  

of the word have first syllable stress.  Seventy-seven. Seventy-seven. Notice I’m  

making that T more of a D, or a Flap T sound.  This is an exception. Usually after N it’s  

either dropped or a True T. But here it’s  a Flap T. Seventy-seven (flap). Seventy.  

Seventy-seven. Seventy-seven. Okay I’m going to  try it now. Seventy-seven benevolent elephants.  

Seventy-seven benevolent elephants.  If V is at all tricky sound for you,  

do this over and over. Slowly. Get it down  good. This will help. Don’t go so fast that  

you’re doing it incorrectly. You want to practice  doing it right, then you can speed it up.

Our second tongue twister today is “which  wristwatches are swiss wristwatches”.  

This one is so hard.

“which wristwatches are swiss wristwatches”.

I cannot do it quickly at all. Look at all these  W and R sounds. W are in red, R in blue.  

Beginning R and W actually look a lot a  like from the outside. Watch: rrrrrr, wwwww.  

Lots of lip rounding. But what’s  happening inside is pretty different.

For R, the middle part of the tongue lifts towards  the roof of the mouth, the tip is back and up,  

not touching anything. For the W, the tongue  tip touches the back of the bottom front teeth,  

then the back stretches up, and we have a little  something extra in the throat. Wwww, just a little  

bit of a narrowing here. Wwww, Wwww wRrrrrist  wwwwwatch. If R is at all a problem for you, or W,  

then nailing the tongue twister, slowing it down,  getting it right, is going to help you out.

Let’s do just the first two words: which wrist,  which wrist. Both have the IH as in SIT vowel.  

Which wrist, and the both have that hill  shape, they’re both stressed. Which wrist,  

which wrist, which wrist, which  wrist. Do that with me slowly: which  

wrist, which wrist. Let’s put in the  second half of our compound word,  

‘watches’. IN a compound word, the first word  is stressed. So Watches is unstressed, watches,  

watches, watches. It doesn’t have that hill  shape, it’s flatter. Wrist watches. Wrist watches.  

Say that with me. Wrist watches, wrist watches.  Which wrist watches, which wristwatches.

By the way, this reminds me  

of another terribly hard tongue twister,  “I wish to wash my Irish wristwatch.”  

I made my nieces and my niece’s fiancée try that  one a couple of years ago, it was not pretty.

But this one, I think, is slightly easier. By  the way, I’ll put the link to that other tongue  

twister video in my video description.  Our next word is ‘are’. This word won’t  

be stressed. In fact in lots of sentences a  native speaker would just say ‘er’. “Where  

are the kids?” Where are, er, er, er. For example,  let’s try that. Just ‘er’ on the end of ‘watches.  

Which wrist watches are. Which wrist watches are.  Watches are, watches are, watches are. Reducing  

are. Next, Swiss, we have another W.  Lip rounding. Swiss, swiss. This is also  

stressed with that hill shape. A little bit  longer. Swiss. Which wrist watches are Swiss.  

Do it slowly and accurately. Which wristwatches  are Swiss. Notice even when I’m going slowly,  

I’m still connecting all the words in that  line. We want that. No breaks, no separation.  

All smoothly linked. That’s something we just  love in English. Which wristwatches are Swiss.  

Now all we need is ‘wristwatches’ again.  Which wristwatches are Swiss wrist watches?  

Which wristwatches are Swiss wristwatches? Have  you got that? Take your time, do it daily.

Okay, our third and final tongue  twister that we’re practicing today  

is pretty tough. My sister-in-law  and niece could not get it.

He threw three free throws.

He threw three free throws.  Natalie couldn’t get it either.

He threw three free throws.

Not quite. Julia, nope.

He threw three free throws.

Let’s give Ginny a try.

He threw three free throws.

(lauging) I’m so sorry.

She says no, she can’t do it. But you can  do it. We can do it if we slow it down,  

get it good, and then speed  up. And if you master this,  

your TH is going to be a lot clearer  and THR would be way less intimidating.

This one is extra tough because  we’re dealing not just with TH and F,  

but with clusters with R. THREE, FREE.  A lot of little kids can’t even say TH  

actually. They say F instead. I  remember when my son Stoney did that.

Marf..

So you’re going Marf. You’re using your  lip but we want to use your tongue.

No almost. Bring your tongue.

He wasn’t very interested in learning that day.  Was he? To make the unvoiced TH like threw,  

three, and throws, your tongue tip  has to come through the teeth. Th, th,  

just air. No tension, no holding, no stopping,  

th. Easy sound. Let’s alternate between three and free.  I’ll zoom in.

Three, free, three, free,  

three, free. You can do it. It takes practice,  but you can get it. He threw. Let’s just do that.  

Threw is stressed. He threw, he threw. Three is  also stressed, another THR cluster. So for the  

THR, you go from the tongue tip being out, th to  being pulled back and up a little bit. Thr, thr.  

Slow it down, feel that movement  at the tip of your tongue.  

Thr

He threw three. He threw three. He  threw three. Free is also stressed.  

Here you do want to use your bottom lip.  Th, th, three. And then throws, unstressed.  

Free throws, free throws, free throws. Do that  with me slowly. Free throws. You can hold out  

the consonant, really make sure you’re getting the  right mouth position. He threw three free throws.  

Practicing slowly gives your mind time to guide  your tongue into the right position. And once your  

brain does that enough, you won’t have to think  about it anymore. The habit will be made.

Our three tongue twisters today are all  training problem consonant sounds in English  

for non-native speakers. Take your time. Get  it right. Form the right pathway in the brain.  

You can do it. Seventy-seven benevolent elephants.  Which wrist watches are Swiss wristwatches?  

He threw three free throws. And as you get more  comfortable, you can increase your speed. Tongue  

twisters are actually kind of fun, aren’t they?  Huge thanks to my friends and family for helping  

me out with this video, they’re not afraid of  a few tongue twisters! Audrey, Emily, Molly,  

Taylor, Ginny, Natalie, and Julia, thank you.  Keep your learning going now with this video,  

and don’t forget to subscribe. I make new  videos every Tuesday and I love being  

your English teacher. That’s it, and thanks  so much for using Rachel’s English.