5 Speaking Mistakes to AVOID in American English

Today we’re going over 5 speaking mistakes  to avoid in English. This is the SOUNDS  

edition. Making these tweaks will make you  easier to understand when speaking English,  

you’ll hear less “what?’ a little bit  less and you’ll feel more confident.

I’m Rachel and I’ve been teaching the American  accent and English listening skills to  

non-native speakers for over 15 years. Check out  Rachelsenglish.com to learn more about me.

First, the OH diphthong. The main thing I work  with my students here is round the lips. Make  

that movement so you get a second sound. It’s  not ‘o’, that’s a single sound. It’s OH. Lips  

start more relaxed, and move in. Oh. So the  sound changes. I think it also helps to think  

of the music of English with diphthongs,  the up-down melody of a stressed syllable,  

making the whole thing last a little longer.  Oh. Know. I know. We don’t want no, no. No  

movement or no, no-, not much lip rounding.  We want ‘nooo’. Let’s gooooo. Let’s go.

Here, I’m working with a student on this  sound in a live class. Watch the lips.

This is the first word.

Don’t.

Hmmhmm. So this has an o diphthong  and when I’m hearing you say it,  

I’m hearing more dunt, duh, and I want to hear  ou. So let me hear you try to do that ou.

Ou.

Yes exactly. Dou

Dou, don’t.

Now, I’m going to switch to  a different word that I also  

hear you say that also has this dipthong. Phone.

Phone.

Okay hold on. Phone not oh but ou, phone.

Phone.

Yes. You know it’s weird, it’s like, I was  tring to think when I was imitating you,  

what was different about it. Fo iinstead of fou,  

I guess just a little bit more  lip rounding from the beginning,  

a little bit more of this shape like your  mouth is a speaker like a megaphone. Phone.

Phone.

Better. Phone.

Phone.

Okay, hold on. Phone, I want to hear phone. I  

want the second part where the  lips round even more. Exactly.

If I was going to do it in slow  motion it would look like this.

Phone.

So I have to use my tongue also?

Well, I would say don’t worry  about the tongue. The lips are  

going to get you what you want. Phone.

Phone.

Okay, I didn’t see much lip rounding. Fou-,  we’re going to exaggerate it a little bit

Fou-

Yes.

Phone.

Right! That is the lip rounding.

Open more--

Okay. That makes sense.

Phon versus phone. When you’re dropping  your jaw more and rounding your lips more,  

it’s giving me that sound that I want.  So that, lip rounding you gave me at  

the end was perfect. It probably was did  include more space in the mouth. Fo-.

Fo-

Okay, even more rounding. Phone.

Phone.

Hmmhm. I’m going to give you  a couple more words here.

Home.

Okay, watch your lips. Yeah, that’s better.

Home.

Exactly. Yes. It’s even going to be a little  bit more than you think you want to do it like,  

because you’re used to doing it less,  

it’s going to feel weird to do more  but we want it, we want the more.

So, OH diphthong, lip rounding,  ooohhhhh. Let’s look at a few words  

up close and in slow motion with  this diphthong. Road and load.

Road

So much lip rounding.

Road

Load

Look at that lip rounding.

Load

Rose and lows.

Rose

Again, lots of lip rounding.

Rose

Lows

Watch yourself in a mirror and make sure  you’re getting this much lip rounding.

Lows

Number two. The second speaking mistake to avoid:  True T’s. There are three different pronunciations  

of T, and sometimes it’s dropped, so actually  4, but in the dictionary you’ll only see one,  

and it’s this, tt, the True T. But we  just don’t use the True T all that much,  

less than half the time you see T in a dictionary,  tt, should it be pronounced that way? tt. We also  

have a Flap T like in ‘pretty’ or a stop T like in  ‘fitness’, fitness. And sometimes we drop it like  

in ‘interview.’ So a speaking mistake to avoid  is saying every T you see, tt, as a True T. That  

will start to sound too formal. I pronounced all  those T’s, it wasn’t quite natural English. That  

will start to sound too formal. I did a study once  of a Ted Talk to see how many T’s were True T’s,  

how many were Flap Ts, how many were stops,  and how many were dropped. Check it out,  

it’s a great way to understand all the ways  we use different T pronunciations to smooth  

out our speech in American English. I’ll put a  link to that video in the video description.

Number 3, the S sound. It’s not always  S. In fact, in a lot of common words,  

the letter S does NOT make the s sound, it makes a  z: husband, business, busy. But here’s the thing:  

The Z is considered a weak consonant. S, its  unvoiced pair, is strong. So the ending S has  

more energy in it than an ending Z. It’s stronger,  it’s a little longer. Bus. Buzz. Bus. Buzz. So the  

ending Z, being weak, is actually a lot like  an S, but without much length and the energy  

and the air. Bus, clear S. Buzz. Weak. Sort of  a mix between s and z. My students who speak  

Spanish often make a strong S everytime they see  the letter S. But no, in many cases that should  

be a Z. Husband, not hussssband. Cousin,  not cousssin. Bizness. Not Bissness.

Number 4,the TH. You were probably waiting  for this one. It’s truly one of the trickiest  

sounds. Most languages don’t have a sound  where the tongue tip comes out of the mouth,  

through the teeth. But I have two tips that are  going to make this sound easier for you.

First, your tongue and jaw need to be relaxed so  the air flows freely. Th, th – You should not  

be hearing that sound. Not a stop and release.  It should be continuous – ttttttttthhhhhhhhhh.  

Relaxed. So here, where the tongue attaches to  the throat, ttthhhh, make sure it’s relaxed.

Thanks

Therapy

Thin

Thirty

Watch the the TH up close and in  slow motion in the word ‘thirty’

Thirty

Second, there are actually quite a few cases  where you shouldn’t bring the tongue tip all  

the way through the teeth. There is a little  shortcut that’s needed. We do this with words  

that begin with voiced TH, that’s th instead  of TH which is unvoiced. When you look in the  

dictionary at the phonetic spelling, you’ll see  this: /ð/ if the dictionary uses the international  

phonetic alphabet. This is the symbol for voiced,  th, and this is the symbol for unvoiced, θ.

So if the word is unstressed and starts with the  voiced TH, we have a tongue shortcut. And there  

are a lot of unstressed words that start with  this: the, this, these, that, for example. The  

shortcut is: don’t bring your tongue tip through  the teeth so we can see the tip. Just touch it  

quickly behind the teeth. I’m going to say ‘the’  over and over. You might see some of the tongue in  

the gaps in my teeth, but I’m not bringing it all  the way through like I do for the word ‘thanks’.

The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the.

Thanks,

the, the, the, the, the,

thanks.

One thing to avoid: Don’t make the  tongue bounce on the roof of the mouth,  

du, that sounds like a D, duh, duh, duh.  It should be just straight forward. Du,  

du, du, du, du. The best. The worst.

Fifth, the Dark L. Maybe you’ve never even heard  of the Dark L before. This actually relates back  

to number one, the OH diphthong. Sometimes  students don’t say a dark L, they say an OH  

diphthong. So ‘feel’ becomes ‘fee-oh’. Have  you ever noticed that? I hear it in several  

different language backgrounds, but right now  I’m especially thinking of Vietnamese. With OH,  

we wanted lip rounding, fee-oh. But with  the Dark L, we want no lip rounding at all:  

feelllll. We don’t want to make the sound with  the front of our mouth, we make it with the back.  

Fee—-uul. To make the Dark L, the tongue tip stays  down. You might think, L, tongue tip up. But there  

are actually two L sounds in American English,  and tongue tip up is the light L. The Light L  

comes before the vowel or diphthong in a syllable.  Like, blast, like, dislike. The Dark L is all the  

other L’s, where the L comes after the vowel or  diphthong in a syllable. Feel. Felt. Called.

The light L is made like this, with the  tongue tip lifting to the roof of the mouth,  

or touching the bottoms of the top front teeth.  The Dark L is made like this. Tongue tip down,  

and the back of the tongue presses down  and back a little bit. Uuuuuhhhl. Uhl,  

no lip rounding. Let’s look upclose  and in slow motion at the word bobble.  

Ends in a dark L. You will not  see the tongue tip go up.

Bobble

Now let’s look at a Light L, at the beginning of  a word lake. The tongue tip does go up. I notice,  

lake, I make it with the tongue pressing up  on the bottom of the front top teeth. I’ve  

noticed that as I study my mouth  in this slow motion footage.

Lake

See the difference here. Light L, lake,  

you see the tongue tip goes up. Dark  L, bobble, the tongue tip stays down,  

you can’t see it. We don’t need much jaw drop  for the Dark L. Lips are relaxed.

Friends, I eat, sleep, and breathe American  English sounds and American English accent.  

It’s all I do, and it’s what I love to do. Right  now, there are over 5000 students training with  

me in this very specific and effective way  in Rachel’s English Academy to improve their  

accents to be more easily understood, but  they’re also improving their listening  

comprehension so they can understand other people  speaking English easily. The focused lessons,  

which include feedback from our team of teachers,  are really what help our students excel. There is  

no guessing what to work on or how to work on  it, your accent training is laid out for you  

for real results that you will feel in your  body, and that your friends and coworkers  

will notice. To find out more and join the  Academy, visit Rachelsenglishacademy.com.

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