I understand English when I READ, but NOT when I LISTEN — How to FINALLY Understand!

"It's also quite dangerous. The Mandrake's cry is fatal to anyone who hears it".

Excellent! Ten points to Gryffindor.

Now, as our Mandrakes are still only seedlings, their cries won’t kill yet.

But they can knock you out for several hours which is why I've given each of you a pair or earmuffs for auditory protection.

So could you please put them on right away?

Quickly!

So I'm sure that you've been in this situation where you were watching a TV series, or listening to a podcast,

or taking part in a conversation in English and you could NOT understand everything the person was saying.

But then, the moment you turned the subtitles on or looked at the transcription, the phrase was so OBVIOUS!

You realized you knew every single word and were able to perfectly understand the meaning of the sentence.

Pronunciation is about making yourself understood, it isn't about copying anybody's accent.

Simply that you embrace pronunciation

as a thing of joy when you're learning English or teaching English.

Don't be scared of it. Make it your own, and live it.

Because it belongs to you.

Today English pronunciation specialist, Mark Hancock, will share all about the importance that connected speech,

pronunciation, and accents have on your English language journey.

So if you watch until the end, you will no longer feel frustrated because you need subtitles or feel the need to turn on the CCs.

It's totally fine if you can't understand 100% of what you listen to,

but learning about connected speech is a helpful and convenient way to depend less and less on subtitles.

So without further ado, Mark, welcome to the show!

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for inviting me.

I'm so happy to have Mark on the show because here at RealLife English

we bring the world’s most influential online teachers and experts so you can go beyond the classroom.

We want to guide you on your learning journey with lessons that take you from feeling like a lost

and insecure English LEARNER to being a confident and natural English SPEAKER, just like Max!

Does that sound like what you want for your English? Then join our community by hitting that subscribe button and the bell down below.

CONNECTED SPEECH is a big part of most fluent English speakers whether you are a native speaker or not,

yet so many schools fail to teach it. . Just to give you an example, look at how Anna uses a lot of connected speech features here:

Let's take a look at what Mark, who has published 26 books on pronunciation,

says about the importance of learning (and teaching) connected speech.

Here we have to distinguish between productive and receptive pronunciation.

Because we often assume that pronunciation is about speaking.

Productive. Productive skill.

But, as I just implied a few moments ago, it's also a receptive skill. A listening skill.

So this connected speech that you're talking about, these features of connected speech...

They're really important for listening, because a lot of speakers of English use features of connected speech.

So you need to be able to understand connected speech. But for your productive pronunciation, not necessarily.

Features of connected speech are all about making it easier for a lazy mouth to produce.

It's a streamlining, to use a term from Richard Cauldwell.

Think of the shape of a vehicle, a car. A car has that shape, which is a kind of smooth rounded shape.

It doesn't look like a brick. It looks smooth and rounded

in order that the air will pass over it more easily, so that it can speed along without causing much resistance to the air flow.

Speech is like that. Connected speech is knocking the edges off,

so that it's easier for your tongue, and your jaw and your mouth to get it out without too much effort.

So it's not about intelligibility. Connected speech is not about intelligibility.

It's not about making yourself understood. It's about just having an easier life.

If you're in the business of trying to make yourself understood, and making yourself understood is paramount,

you don't need to worry about using connected speech. Actually it doesn't make you any more intelligible,

it may actually make you less intelligible.

Just because it's pricipally for listening.

Sometimes you might teach it. You might even drill it productively.

But the idea is not for them to speak that way, but saying it is sometimes the best way of hearing it, strangely enough.

Sometimes you get a real "aha" moment when a student says it.

And then they can hear it for the first time

and that's how that happens too.

But yes, connected speech is important for listening.

Absolutely fascinating. Could you give us an example?

One thing I like, for example, with "walked".

"Walked" is, uh, put it in a short phrase like

Walked up the hill.

You can just go round and around in a micro loop.

Walked up the hill. Walked up the hill. Walked up the hill.

If you say it over, and over, and over again, and your students join in in a kind of chant,

it starts to sound really ood.

The meaning disappears and you are left with simply the sound substance.

And then you're going "does it really sounds like that? Wow, it sounds weird",

and that's a good "aha"learning moment.

When the student starts to find it weird.

"Really? It sounds like that? I never noticed that before".

Eureka! That is it.

That's the moment.

So, let's try this quick exercise.

First, read this sentence at a normal speed without connected speech.

Saying word by word. It probably sounded something like this, right?

Now let's try connected speech.

Wasn't that fun? The more you practice, the easier it gets.

So why not practice it in real conversations with the RealLife App?

With the RealLife English App, you can also speak in English anytime, anywhere with someone in another part of the world!

It's a lot like traveling without leaving the comfort of your own home,

and Mark himself highlights the role of pronunciation in this experience.

Because English after all is a global language now.

It's a global lingua franca.

And, uh, there are...

many English speakers, many voices around the world.

Who's to say...

which one you're going to end up talking to?

Let's say you're a person from Spain, and you have a Spanish accent in English.

You may end up speaking to an RP speaker from the Southeast of England.

You may, but you'll probably not. You'll probably end up speaking to somebody

from Slovenia or some other part of the world.

Who in turn will have their own accent.

Does that mean that you're going to have to learn Slovenian accent in English in order to speak to them?

It does not mean that at all, of course it doesn't mean that. It means that everybody,

everybody simply has to be a little bit more tolerant of accent variation.

Because that's the world. That's the world, it's a global community.

We have to, um...

We speak locally, we understand globally.

That means our tolerance as listeners has to be much bigger than our capability as speakers.

But, wait, that's not all of it. If you are learning from Mark's insights on pronunciation,

he also emphasized that pronunciation should be fun, and even shared a few examples and resources to help with that.

You can listen to the full interview for FREE and follow along with an interactive transcript.

If connected speech and pronunciation are topics that you enjoy, make sure to like this video

so that Youtube can recommend more videos about this topic for you.

In the meantime, make sure to check out this lesson Andrea made

to help you better understand the different features of connected speech. Let's take a look at a clip from that!