Play It, Say It: Better than AI? [HINT: YES]

I've worked with speech recognition software when  it comes to Accent training. It can help you with  

maybe half of your issues if you're struggling  to speak English with full confidence. Is that  

good enough? Is half good enough? What would  it mean to you to have a trained American  

accent teacher coach you on your English? Think how quickly you'd improve and how  

much more confidence you'd have  to know you were doing it right. 

Not an app, not AI, a person at the top of  their field giving you easy to understand  

focused feedback. Okay, but apps and AI are a  lot less expensive than real people than the  

time of experts. True. But when you do most of the  training on your own with the right method, then  

you come to your coach for 5 minutes of intense  focused personal feedback, then you're hacking  

the system. You're getting an expert's advice but  you're not paying for an hour of an expert's time. 

I've set up Rachel's English Academy for  this exactly. It's expert accent training  

but for a fraction of the price of private  sessions with a coach. It comes with Coach  

time but more importantly, it gives you all  the materials to work with between checking  

in with your coaches so you can nail it, get  that sound get that rhythm into your body. 

For the first time ever, I'm offering a  lifetime option for purchasing the academy.  

No subscription, no recurring payments you pay  once, you have access forever and you work on it  

when you can. No stress over keeping a schedule  and wondering every month if you're really using  

it enough. Get instant access to every course:  American vowels, rhythm, conversation practice.  

We have 23 courses. Subscriptions also come with  access to our community where you can meet online  

with our teachers and get personal feedback  at no additional cost. It's all included. 

Lifetime access is on sale for this  week only, Save $598. If you prefer  

a subscription and ongoing access to the live  classes and teacher feedback in our community,  

then right now for this week only you can pay just  $5 for your first month of subscription access. 

Two options: One lifetime payment  and one smaller subscription payment,  

your first month for just $5. Probably the most special thing about Rachel's  

English Academy is the exclusive community that  comes with it. You can post to the community  

and get feedback from one of our teachers. Watch this. This is Josh helping a student  

find a great R sound after listening to  a recording of him practicing. He makes a  

video and the student can watch it over and over  again. He shares about the r sound and how to  

feel that in the chest instead of the mouth. Hey how's it going? Nice job here with the  

last practice our consonant sound is  a really deep inside the body sound,  

so you can really tell what's happening with a  person's placement by the way that sound. So if  

we listen to this here uh, this first couple  of sentences, let's check out this R sound. 

I've not been here before. Alright, so if you listen here, here,  

here, you can hear that's a mouth sound right?  It's not here, here, rrr, right? I don't hear  

that chest resonance. You know, as much as you  probably would expect for most native speakers. 

It makes such a difference to see and hear  a teacher imitating you and going back  

and forth between what they hear and what sounds  more natural. And this community comes with your  

Academy subscription at no extra charge.  Now the student can go to the R soundboard  

in the Academy and use the Play it, Say it  method to make that a habit and really anchor  

the sound in the body so it becomes effortless. Here, let me show you. We go to the right course,  

we find the chapter and we have our choice of  lessons. I can use the soundboard to practice each  

word 10 times in a row with our repetition method. across 

Some students do even more. This is the same  method used for adults in speech therapy when  

they suffer a stroke and need to relearn how  to speak English. Or if it works better for me  

I can download the soundboard audio in a single  file with the repetition built in. I can practice  

in the car, I can practice anywhere. We need to  make it super easy to practice speaking out loud  

because that's what's going to change your habit. So, as you move through the daily plan,  

you'll see each module has a focus. You'll  work on it, you'll watch the videos,  

you'll work with the audio and at the end you'll  post a challenge for Teacher feedback. This way  

you're able to get really focused feedback  on each aspect of the American accent. 

Sometimes people just want general advice on what  to focus on. Our teacher, Rachel Stokes gave great  

advice recently to a new student from Iran. Hi Muhammad, welcome to the Academy, thank  

you for taking time to introduce yourself. So, my  big piece of advice to everyone who's new in the  

Academy is to take advantage of the slow motion  on the soundboards. So when you go to practice,  

start with play it say it in slow motion not the  regular speed. Start at half speed because you're  

wanting to train your ears in a new way. You  want to change the way that you're perceiving  

and hearing the sounds of English. So if you're  going to repeat five or 10 times play it every  

time before you say it in slow motion, you will  do that and each repetition will bring you closer  

and closer to your target. Then you can go to  the regular speed with more play it say it but  

try this method, let us know how it works for  you and I hope that you'll post again soon. 

Every bit of feedback you'll get from a  teacher, you'll know where to go to find  

those lessons. You'll go to the module or find  the course, get the lesson and everything is  

there for you. Everything you could ever need.  All of our audio also has a slow motion version  

so you can get it into your body more easily if  the sounds are tricky for you at the beginning. 

Had you met her before.

I don't know. 

I hope you're seeing how much our teachers care  about our students. Each teacher you'll see in  

this video has been on my team for years.  They care about you. This is amazing. You  

get personalized video feedback from a  teacher but what if you want to actually  

talk with a teacher live? Get live feedback on the  particularly tricky word or sound in the moment. 

We have drop in hours throughout the month where  you can join one of our teachers in our online  

classroom and ask your questions directly in  real time. Get coaching and feedback in the  

moment. For example, here a student is struggling  with uh, a very open and relaxed American vowel  

in English. This is the uh as in the word  cup, cup, cop. And I know these two vowel  

sounds distinguishing them is so tricky. Getting  a clear uh helps you sound more natural and here  

our teacher Laura helps the student find it. And I think you can use a little more breath. 

Uh, uh, uh.

Yeah. And make sure it's not tightening.  

Make sure it still feels soft and natural.

Uh 

That's the sound! That's it! You found it. That's  the sound that we're looking for. That's really  

American sounding accent there.

Here, the students  confused about these two words: hear and here. 

Can I hear you try it? I would start with the  E, so with the lips softly open, tongue wide  

in the middle of the mouth, e, e, and then I move  into the er, so my tongue will lift for that er. 

Here

That's it. Here. 

Right. So what's the difference with the word  hear like to hear something?

It's the same sound.  

It's just spelled differently. H-e-a-r versus  h-e-r-e, like I hear a sound here in my room. 

Oh, alright.

Yeah. So it will, there also,  we were talking about homophones earlier,  

words that sound the same but are spelled  differently, and have different meaning and  

this is another example of those. Alright, thank you. 

Yep. Here and hear, it's a good  one. It's a good one to know. 

I also love how students connect with other  students in the community. They find practice  

partners to work with on their own speaking  English and practicing their conversation  

skills. They also come to our conversation meetups  which are led by teachers. We practice by doing. 

Here another one of our teachers  has listened to a student and is  

giving feedback. This is our teacher Katie. Hey Victor, it's Katie here with some feedback  

for you. Awesome job working on this conversation  and overall I'm really hearing that linking,  

it sounds smooth and connected. The placement is  also sounding low so fantastic work over overall.  

I want to talk a little bit about um, stress  and intonation, I feel like there could be a  

little bit more pitch variety, um, so on those  stressed words I feel like the pitch could go  

a little bit even higher, let's take a listen. First of all, I don't appreciate stomping in my— 

Yeah, so like first of all I don't appreciate,  appreciate, I feel like the pitch could go a  

little bit higher on that stressed syllable.  Appreciate, appreciate. Um, just to get a  

little bit more of that stressed contrast. Okay this student has just gotten some  

valuable detailed feedback, they can go to  our courses and find a lesson where they  

can put this feedback into their own practice.

I don't appreciate you stomping into my office. 

Lean into the stressed syllables,  even more pitch variation. 

As valuable as our teachers are, I don't want  to undersell the audio training. Over 10 years  

ago I was working with a student from China  who couldn't hear the difference between IH,  

sit and EE, seat. I recorded some audio for her  comparing a lot of similar words, these are called  

minimal pairs, she listens to it several times a  day for a week and the next week, not only could  

she hear the difference but she sounded native on  both sounds, just by working with the materials.  

No feedback from me. The listening practice then  the speaking practice works. It makes the sounds  

that are hard effortless. But when you've  done the practice and you're still not sure  

that's where this community is invaluable. Here's one of our teachers Alicia helping a  

student with UH and AH. She's just listened  to the student she turns on her camera and  

right away she's giving feedback that  that student can watch over and over. 

Above

Cousin 

Done

So you're close. What  

I'm hearing is just a little different. You're  saying above, cousin, done versus above, cousin,  

done. UH, AH. UH is further forward and you can  find it by doing an mmm, with a gentle press  

downwards. Mmm. And you can also try one with  won with a w-o-n, bring the lips forward and that  

will set up your tongue for the 's and butter.  Won. Won, won, won. Above, cousin, done, that  

will bring your sound to the front of the mouth  and help you find that UH as in butter sound. 

block

doctor 

hop

Really nice AHs and  

father sound in all three words.

Today is Sunday. The Academy  

sale ends on Monday, in one day. Go to  rachelsenglishacademy.com right now to sign up. 

Any questions, yes, I want to hear them. Put  them in the comments. Keep your learning going  

now with this video and don't forget to  subscribe with notifications on, as always  

I love being your English teacher. That's it  and thanks so much for using Rachel's English.