I'll teach YOU American English! ❤️

I love helping people communicate in  English, and I want to help you, yes,  

you, on the other side of the screen.  It’s been too long since I’ve seen you,  

since I’ve heard from you. So  let’s do this, let’s work together.

Back in 2020, do you remember that year?  Or have you let yourself completely forget it? Back  

in 2020 I collected videos from you  and I used them to create two big  

teaching videos. This one on placement is  probably my favorite video I’ve ever made.  

Let’s do it again. I’m going to give you  something to record. You make me a video,  

and send it to me, then I will give  feedback right here through YouTube.

This is what I want you to record.

Hurry up! We’re going to be late.

Sorry! I just have to go the  bathroom and then I’ll be ready.

Alright. I’m going to wait in the car.

Just a few lines. It helps if you record  this way rather than this way. Try to be  

in a quiet place if possible so we can get  the best audio. Upload it to YouTube, it can  

be unlisted and email the link with “Hurry up” in  the subject. Email that to [email protected]

Please be sure to include your  name, your native language,  

and definitely if you’re a member of Rachel’s  English Academy, be sure to include that too.

Please record and send me your video by May 15th

Once I get them, I’ll start organizing and  working with them. Now, depending on how  

many I get, I might not be able to put all  of them in my teaching video. And please,  

only send a video if you’re okay with me  putting that video in my video on YouTube,  

Facebook, Instagram. You sending  it to me will be your consent.

So here again is what I want you to record.

Hurry up! We’re going to be late.

Sorry! I just have to go the  bathroom and then I’ll be ready.

Alright. I’m going to wait in the car.

I’ll put the text of this  conversation in the video description.

Now, to give you an idea of how I’ll use  your videos, I want to show you a little  

bit of the video I made last time from all your  videos. The full video, if you want to see it,  

will be linked in the video description.  Before I play you this, I want to be clear,  

there is nothing wrong with an accent, and  everyone has things that work well with their  

voices speaking English and things that could  be improved if their goal is to sound native  

speaking English. When I have learned languages in  the past, I’ve always loved trying to embody the  

sound of the language completely, and that’s  what I’m coaching towards in this video.

Now the next phrase, “What do you want to do  tonight?” is so interesting in American English.  

We have a lot of different reductions  that we will do with this. For example,  

‘What do you want to’ will become from  many speakers ‘What do you wanna’. What  

do you wanna. So we drop the T in what,  links right into the d of do. What do,  

and then we reduce the vowel of do  and you. What do you. And then ‘want  

to’ becomes ‘wanna’. What do you wanna, what  do you wanna. What do you wanna do tonight?

Very linked together those reductions,  everything is super smooth. So now,  

we’re going to take just ‘what do you  want to’ and we’re going to listen to  

some students who did a really nice job  with the reductions and linking of that  

phrase. The first two native languages  are Portuguese and then we have Urdu.

What do you want to--

Again, that smoothness, the reduction,  what the, the tongue just flaps there.  

It’s just a flap between those vowels.  What do you want to, what do you want to.

What do you want to--

Great. Now, as you hear just that phrase in  isolation, are you thinking this is crazy?  

Are you thinking this is so sloppy and unclear?  It is! That’s what we do in American English. We  

link everything together and we smooth it out  and we reduce some words. So ‘what do you want  

to’ becomes ‘what do you wanna?’ Now, we listen to  some students who missed some of the reductions.

What do you want to--

Want to, to, to, to, to. The word  t-o, we almost never pronounce it to,  

to, to. We almost always will make that a  reduction to, want to. And of course with want,  

it’s very often to combine those into wanna  with no T whatsoever but the to reduction is  

important. It’s almost always done in American  English. Her native language is Russian. Now,  

we’re going to watch a native student  whose native language is Thai.

What do you want to--

What do you want to, what do you want to. What  do you, do you, do you. So those are two words  

that it’s not quite as strong as to where that  is just 99% of the time reduced. Do and you,  

it’s not as common but it’s still something  that you’ll hear and notice a lot and when  

you do it especially with a phrase and a casual  conversation like this. What do you want to do,  

what do you want, what do you wanna  sounds better with schwas than do you,  

do you. That sounds a little bit too full. What do  you do, do you, do you, what do you, what do you.

What do you want to--

What do you wanna. Now, in a lot of ways, this  was great. I’m just pointing out that she made  

a stop T, what do you wanna. When she could  have just even dropped that T. When the word  

what is followed by a word that begins with  a D it’s not uncommon to just drop the T and  

link ‘wha’ on the next word, what do, what  do, what do you. What do you. Now, the word,  

‘tonight’. What do you want to do tonight? Okay,  there are two different pronunciations but first,  

the first thing I want to say about  it is the beginning of the word t-o,  

if you look the word up, the pronunciation in  a dictionary that is not to, it’s to. There  

is a schwa in that word, lots of people  like to say tonight, today, tomorrow.  

That is not the pronunciation, we say to, to,  tonight, today, tomorrow. So watch that vowel.

Tonight.

So there, I just isolated the word tonight,  tonight, tonight. Her native language is  

Russian and I hear her saying to, to, to, to,  to, tonight. But it’s to, to, tonight, tonight.

Tonight.

I love his placement but I definitely heard  tonight, tonight, to, to, to, instead of to, to,  

to. Now, the other pronunciation of this word.  It can be a flap T. Do tonight, do to [flap].  

You have to practice it with the word before but  when the word before ends with certain sounds,  

it’s pretty common to flap the T in tonight,  today, tomorrow and even together. What do you  

want to do tonight, do tonight, do tonight,  do tonight. It was a vowel before, pretty  

common to make that a flap T to smooth it out a  little bit more. What do you want to do tonight?

Do tonight --

Do tonight. Did you hear that? Do  to, do to, do to. He did the flap T,  

his native language is Fula and  that was perfect. Do tonight.

Do tonight --

Again, flap T, a nice way to smooth that out.  Do tonight. His native language is Serbian.

Do tonight --

Do tonight. Very clear flap T. Nice  job. Her native language is Spanish.  

What else about the word tonight? Okay the  final T. I don’t want that to be dropped.  

Tonigh. That’s different than how we would  do it. We might do it with a stop T, tonight,  

and that can sound like a dropped T but it’s not.  The stop of air is abrupt, the word kind of feels  

like it gets cut off, tonight. That’s different  from tonigh, when the pitch falls off and goes  

down and sort of tapers then it just sounds  dropped and we wouldn’t do that in American  

English. We could do a light true T release but  more common we would make a stop T, do tonight,  

do tonight. Let’s listen to a  couple students who dropped the T.

Do tonight --

She did the flap T in tonight, I  liked that but she didn’t put an  

ending consonant on. Do tonigh, do  tonigh. It needs to be do tonight,  

do tonight. Her native language is  Vietnamese. Let’s check out another student.

Do tonight --

I felt like the word ended before the T  was put on. I didn’t feel that abrupt stop,  

do tonight. And when I do that even  if it’s at the end of the thought,  

I might even lift my tongue up into position  for the T, not just cut it off, cut off the air  

and in the vocal cords and I saw that his mouth  stayed open, there was, there was no mouth movement  

for the T and I didn’t hear that abrupt stop so,  dropped T there. His native language is Burmese.

What do you want to do tonight? Okay, let’s  talk for a second about that most stressed  

word there. It’s very natural. What do you  want to do tonight? To bring the most stress  

to the verb tonight is an adverb so it’s also  a content word but you wouldn't really stress  

that unless you were really focusing on the  time. What do you want to do tomorrow, no,  

what do you want to do tonight. Then you  might stress it but otherwise it would be  

what do you want to do tonight? And do would be  our peak of stress for that sentence. So peak  

of stress meaning loudest meaning the highest  part of the pitch and I also like to describe  

it as it feels like the energy of the sentence  is going up to that peak, what do you want to  

do tonight? And then after that peak, it falls  away from it. What do you want to do tonight?

What do you want to do tonight?

Okay, she also dropped her T at the  end of tonight but the peak of stress  

do was very clear. What do you want to do  tonight? What do you want to do tonight?

What do you want to do tonight?

What do you want to do tonight? Do, do. Again very  clear peak of stress for that sentence. The more  

clear your most stressed word is in a sentence,  the better, I think. The feeling of everything  

linking together and that is just part of that  line is important, we talked about reductions,  

we talked about linking, taking ‘what do you  want to’ and turning it to ‘what do you wanna?’

One more example of that peak of stress  

and the smoothness of the phrase. This  student’s native language is Filipino.

What do you want to do tonight?

But now, let’s look at a few examples of some  students who didn’t quite have that smoothness,  

they had a little more of a choppy  feeling to the way they spoke.

What do you want to do tonight?

Her native language was Spanish and did you  feel how what do you want to do tonight. It  

felt more separate, [flap] instead  of [flap]. What do you want to do  

tonight? Really smooth and more rhythmic contrast. Her syllable,  

her syllables were a little bit more all the  same which would be natural for a Spanish  

speaker to do but in American English we  want those long versus short syllables.

What do you want to do tonight?

What do you want to do tonight?  [flap] Again, sort of a feeling  

of separateness between the words and  in American English, believe it or not,  

we don’t want separation of words. We want  the words to flow one right into the next.

A note about the beginning of the sentence.  The word ‘what’. That starts with a w sound.  

And I’ve noticed that some of my  students from India for example,  

Germany also can mix up W and V. And I noticed  one of my students here who submitted a video,  

native language Hindi, he made a V-shape with his  lip rather that a W, that’s what we want to see.

Hey, what --

Do you see his lip position here? It looks  like the bottom lip is coming up to touch  

the top front teeth. That’s V. What we  need to see for a W is Www, www, more  

lip rounding. What do you want, wha,  wha, what do you want to do tonight?

This student did a nice job with the lip  rounding. Her native language is Korean.

Hey, what --

Did you see that? More lip rounding. Wh,  wh, wh, wh, what do you want to do tonight?

The last thing I want to say about this sentence,  can you believe how many things there are to say  

about this sentence? I want to talk about the  intonation. This is a question but it’s not a  

yes no question. You can’t answer it with a yes  or no. And because it’s not a yes no question,  

we’ll make the pitch go down. What do you  want to do tonight? For a yes no question,  

we’ll probably make the pitch go up. Do you want  pizza tonight? That's a yes no question. This  

question should go down in pitch and I noticed  just a few students made it go up in pitch.

What do you want to do tonight?

tonight?

Tonight? Tonight? Do you notice  that pitch going up? We want it to  

go down. Tonight. Her native language was French.

What do you want to do tonight?

Do tonight?

Do tonight? Do tonight? Pitch going  down. His native language is Arabic.

I so look forward to seeing this next batch of  videos that come in from you. Please subscribe  

to my channel so you never miss a lesson, and  do turn notifications on. Then come back often,  

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