English Conversation Practice: How to Speak American English Like a Native Speaker

In this English lesson, we’re going to study real  

English conversation as I bake  cookies with my friend Laura.

Wow, must be good guys!

I’m Rachel, and I’ve been teaching English  and the American accent on YouTube for over  

15 years. Get my free course, the Top  3 Ways to Master the American Accent,  

at RachelsEnglish.com/free or follow  the link in the video description.

The first thing we do is gather and prep, that’s  short for prepare. Prep our ingredients.

So here, yes. I wrote out double out  for everything because otherwise,

We forget.

Yes. Okay.

So we’re doubling the recipe and I wrote out  ‘double the amount of ingredients that we would need.

If we were going to make less cookies, we  might want to halve the recipe. That is,  

cut it in half. Even though that word is  spelled with an L, halve, it’s pronounced  

just like the word ‘have’. I’m going to double  the recipe, I’m going to halve the recipe.

Oh also, it says that we want to sift.

Do you have a sifter?

No.

Okay, do you have one of those..

I use a call a very fine,

Fine mesh seeve. Sift, seeve, I don’t even  know. Sift, seeve, could be either one.

I don’t say it enough to  bother with figuring it out.

You know what? Let’s look it up,  let’s get the official pronunciation.

So I looked this up, I only  found one pronunciation,  

it’s IH like SIT. So it’s a  SIV, not a SEEVE. Sieve.

Okay, flour. Two and three quarters  cup plus one tablespoon.

Flour. Just like halve sounds like have,  flour sounds like flower. The two words  

have the same exact pronunciation  even though they are two different  

words with different spellings and  different meanings. Words like this  

in English are called homophones. I have a  long video that goes over a list of many,  

many common homophones in English, I will  link that in the video description.

Okay, I said two and three-quarter cups.  Do you guys buy your flour in bulk?

No. We could at the co-op but we don’t.

I buy these 50-pound bags  from webrestaurantstore.com.

50 pounds?

Yeah. And even though I keep it in the garage in  a bin, even though it’s like sort of pricey to  

have it shipped, the overall cost is like half  buying 5-pound bags at the grocery store.

Pricey is another way to say “kind of  expensive” or “a little expensive”.

Okay, I did two cups, now  I’m doing a three-quarter  

cup and then I’m going to do one tablespoon.

I’m going to go ahead and say,  let’s skip the sifting because  

it’s not even flour. It’s just the  baking soda and the baking powder.

We’re going to skip the sifting.  We’re going to not do it. Leave  

that step out. Do you ever get a little  lazy like this when baking or cooking? If  

you love to bake as much as I do, put your  favorite thing to bake in the comments.

Okay, soda. We need so many different sizes.

So, one, wait this is powder.  So powder I need one and a half.

Ooh, good thing I caught that.

Oooh!

Almost messed that up.

Okay, soda.

Since we’ve measured all our dry ingredients,  

now we need to get the wet ingredients.  Butter, peanut butter, vanilla.

Peanut butter is my favorite food.

Oh my God, that’s so good.  That’s a good brand too.

That’s not that full Laura.

It’s two-thirds cup, you  want it like bulging over?

I’m just, I’m seeing that rim there.

So this is me being very particular about the  measurements. I said, I see that rim there,  

which to me says, it’s not full enough.  Laura asks if I want it bulging. Bulging  

is when something is too big for its  container. I don’t really want it to  

be bulging over, I just want it to be  perfectly lined up with the top.

Right.

Bulging over. So many good vocab words.

How’s that? Does that meet your standards.

Yeah, I feel better about that. I mean,  we just said it’s our favorite food like,

True.

Let’s not skimp.

Skimp means the same thing as scrimp, which  means to use sparingly. To be restrictive.  

Not to use much. If you love peanut butter,  you don’t want to skimp on peanut butter.

Seventy-five grams of egg white.

I think I’m going to cack one egg white  for like five grams and then we’ll just  

put it in with the other egg and  we’ll fry it up for a kid.

Fry up is a phrasal verb that just means  the same thing as fry. Let’s fry up some  

potatoes for dinner, that’s the same thing as  let’s fry some potatoes for dinner. Fry up.

Seventy-five exactly.

Did you notice how I said ‘exactly’? You’ll almost  

always hear that word with no  T sound. Exac—-ly. Exactly.

Seventy-five exactly.

Are you kidding me?

No. This is perfect!

That never happens.

Okay, then it actually went up to  seventy-six right after I said that.

Are your parents big bakers slash cookers slash.

Totally not. Neither of them likes  to do either of those things.

Neither and either, these words have two different  pronunciations in American English. Neither,  

neither and either, either. Both  pronunciations are common.

Totally not. Neither of them likes  to do either of those things.

So they eat a lot of like take out or.

Yeah. They also eat a lot of um, cheese and  crackers and hummus and veggies like snacky meals.

Now, we’re working on the buttercream filling.

And then we’re going to sprinkle it  with three tablespoons of water so yeah,  

it’ll be a cup total of content.

Ughh, one over. Forty-three.

This is something that just happens  when I’m with Laura. Random rhythms,  

made up songs, dancing: they just happen.

Spontaneous, dance party.  Hmm-hmmhmm, Hmm-hmmhmm, Hmm-hmmhmm.

We measure the dough to make sure we’ve rolled it out at  

just the exact right thickness. We cut  our circles. Then it’s time to pipe.

What are you doing?

No, I just meant like,

What’s that?

Oh, we’re filling the bag  with the frosting. I just  

meant like give me a yeah, give me a something.

Oh, just got on your shirt.

No, just use your finger  and get a little flip off.

Good, right?

Peanut butter frosting.

Let’s fill these babies. Let’s use the  piping bag and pipe in our frosting.

Pipe is a noun: something you smoke out  of, or a cylinder for moving water, gas,  

steam. As a verb, it has lots of meanings,  one of them is what we’re doing here,  

forcing dough or frosting through a pastry bag.

Ooh, that’s satisfying.

Putting them on.

Okay. David, please try it  and tell me what you think.

Wow. That’s special.

So special right?

I’m doing mine after Stoney.

Okay Sawyer, have a bite.

This is my first bite of the cookie. Now, Laura,

I already had a little nibble.

She started.

Oops.

Wow. It must be good guys.

It’s really peanut butter.

The cookie is less crispy  than I thought it would be.

It’s a little crumbly.

Hmmhm.

The frosting though. And the flavor of the cookie.

Yeah. And like the peanut pieces in there.

Yeah. That’s nice.

Yum.

Hmm.

Wow. What fun it is to get together with Laura  every year and try new recipes. We’ve been doing  

this for 10 years, and we’ve made a bunch of  videos that we turned into English lessons here  

on my channel. Check out this video from a couple  of years ago where we made a delicious apple pie.  

Keep your learning going now with this video, and  don’t forget to subscribe with notifications on,  

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