LEARN ENGLISH PODCAST: HERE'S HOW TO DRAMATICALLY IMPROVE YOUR PRONUNCIATION

i believe that most english learners aren't  doing enough nowhere near enough to improve their  

pronunciation and that if they did then they would  speak with more accuracy fluency and confidence  

and that is why in this lesson i'm going to  outline what you can do in a very practical  

way on your own to improve your english  pronunciation and the way that you speak  

english so be sure to listen to this lesson  or watch this lesson on youtube until the end  

because i'm going to highlight and give you the  exact step-by-step plan so that you can become a  

more confident speaker by working on this area of  english but before we get into all of that my name  

is jack from to fluency be sure to check out the  description because i'll have some great resources  

for you including my book the five step plan for  english fluency all right let's get started like i  

said at the beginning of this lesson most learners  don't focus enough attention and study time to  

work in on the way they speak english working  on their pronunciation and this is true as well  

for most language courses most language schools  and i think this is the case because most people  

need to do this on their own and really focus on  it and it's hard for a teacher with 30 students  

or even six students to work individually  with each student to make sure that they're  

saying the right vowel sounds the right consonant  sounds using word stress and intonation but there  

are so many benefits when you work on your english  pronunciation because what you're going to do if  

you improve this area firstly you'll speak more  accurately because you'll be using the right  

vowel sounds the right consonant sounds and  people will be able to understand you better  

but you're also going to speak more  fluently because you won't need to focus  

on how to speak instead you can just speak  naturally and use the right sounds in a  

natural way without thinking about what you  need to do with your mouth what you need to  

do in order to make those sounds so it's going to  allow you to speak more accurately but also more  

fluently and this will lead to confidence  and it will also lead to you speaking  

where you just flow everything just flows which  means it just happens naturally it's effortless  

you don't need to put lots of effort into this so  today we're going to look at how you can do this  

the the step-by-step process in which that  you can dramatically improve the way you speak  

and then i'll also give you some very practical  tips at the end so that you can take action and  

get started with all of this but first i want to  talk about golf golf the sport of golf the one  

where you have your clubs and a ball and you swing  the golf clubs so that the ball goes in the hole  

and the reason i'm talking about this is because  it's going to help you think about the way to  

improve your pronunciation by using this analogy  okay so let's say that you start playing golf  

the first thing you need to do after buying your  golf clubs is to learn how to swing a club learn  

how to swing a club so learn how to hit the ball  properly with your golf club and you need to think  

about and learn all about your hand position  where do your hands go on the club how do you  

stand what's the correct stance do you lean  forward are your legs narrow or are they wide  

then you need to think about what you need to do  with your hands and your elbows and your shoulders  

and your hips when you bring the club above  you and then you need to think about and learn  

what you need to do next to then hit the ball  and follow through so that the ball goes straight  

and most people here will watch youtube videos so  they can learn how to swing a golf club properly  

or they'll buy a book or they will take  private lessons and this part is important  

for later so you might learn from youtube or  by having a private teacher who's going to say  

do this with your hands stand like this lean back  head straight back straight okay what you need to  

do next is this etc so once you learn how to swing  a golf club the next thing you do is you practice  

this skill you're not playing a game of golf  instead you are practicing how to swing the golf  

club properly so you are practicing this skill  you have learned how to do it and now it's time  

to try it so you swing your golf club and you  hit the ball the next thing you get is feedback  

feedback and you can do this in a few ways  you can give yourself feedback in terms of  

what happens to the ball if you hit the ball well  then that's good feedback if the ball trickles  

which means goes slowly along the ground  then you know you need to make some changes  

but you can also get feedback by  having a teacher a golf instructor  

watching you and telling you what you need to  do to change so they might say okay next time  

keep your elbows straight or next time keep your  head down or next time keep your back straight and  

then the other way to get feedback is to record  yourself swinging a golf club and then comparing  

your swing to the way you are learning which  might be a youtube video and then you can look at  

what you need to do and what changes you need to  make so that you get better at this skill and this  

is a constant loop it's a cycle you  learn what to do you practice you get  

feedback and you make changes so with the  feedback you're learning more and more  

with the practice you're trying it you're trying  the skill and then with the feedback you're making  

changes and then there are two more steps here  the next step is to get repetition when you can  

do the things correctly so let's say that you are  correctly holding the club and you're using your  

hands in the right way getting repetition  gives you muscle memory and it makes it  

effortless and i'm sure you've heard other  people say repetition is the key to everything  

by repeating something you learn how to do it  effortlessly and you gain that muscle memory  

but playing golf would be boring if you didn't  play golf so you have a game of golf you go around  

a golf course this is fun this is why  people practice golf but it's also a way to  

do two more things which is to perform under  pressure to perform under pressure to be able to  

hit the right swing or use the right swing when  you're playing a game and also learn more about  

where you need to improve so maybe you need to  improve your putting you need to improve your  

drives or maybe your short game but the game  of golf is where you are enjoying yourself  

you're having fun but you're also learning how to  perform under pressure and learning what you need  

to do to improve some more now this podcast isn't  about golf but this analogy really helps because  

learning english pronunciation and being able to  speak english is exactly the same as what i have  

just described where you learn how to do  something you practice it you get feedback  

you get repetition and then you use it in a more  natural way you perform under pressure let's take  

two sounds in english as an example these two  sounds are minimal pairs the v sound and the  

f sound they're two similar sounds but there's a  big difference here and to be able to make these  

sounds correctly you need to know what to do with  your mouth in order to to get this right you need  

to know what to do with your throat and your teeth  and your lips and your tongue in order to get  

these sounds correct so let's just practice  this a little bit the v sound is where your top  

teeth touch your bottom lip behind inside  your mouth and you make the v sound very  

very and there's a key part to this your throat  vibrates it's a voiced sound one where your  

throat vibrates so very practice after me very  very good now the f sound is similar because  

your mouth does the same thing but your throat  does not vibrate it's an unvoiced sound so f

fun fun let's say two words that are similar  now to practice with v and f very very very  

very very very very very very fairy now if you  can notice the difference between those two  

sounds that is great but the key here now is to  think okay how can i master this how can i really  

learn these two sounds in a way where i can just  say them effortlessly well again learn what to do  

learn about your teeth and your lips and the  vibration like i just explained then practice  

practice these sounds but the key part as well  here is that you need feedback so after practicing  

you need feedback to know if you're doing it  correctly or not and this is where i believe  

most learners should really put a lot of  attention on and it's this to record yourself  

record yourself saying these two words and  record yourself when you practice pronunciation  

and speaking in general now you can have  somebody evaluate you so you can have somebody  

evaluate your your english and the way you  speak and i'll talk about more how i can help  

you with that soon but recording yourself is  so powerful because when you record yourself  

you can listen to the way you speak in a much  more meaningful way when you're just speaking  

and you're not recording yourself it's very  difficult to notice any mistakes you make  

or any changes you need to make but when you  record yourself it's more observant it's more  

obvious to notice what you need to do to change so  learn how to say these sounds as of this example  

practice yourself saying them and then record  yourself and make changes think about the changes  

you need to make in order to say these sounds  correctly and then once you can do that  

get repetition so repeat the sounds over and over  again in a smart way so you're not just repeating  

it a thousand times today but you're repeating  it a few times today a few times tomorrow  

once or twice in four days etc that's the type of  repetition that is really efficient okay so so far  

what we're doing is we're thinking about the  best way to master the sounds of english and  

master english pronunciation step one is knowing  what to do with your mouth to make the sounds  

step two is practicing step three is  recording yourself step four is making changes  

and then this is a loop a cycle okay maybe i need  to do this with my teeth let's learn what to do  

again you practice again you record yourself  you think that's better but it's not perfect  

so you make some more changes until you are happy  with the way you say it and then step five is to  

get that repetition so that you build the muscle  memory you can build muscle memory in your mouth  

just like people build muscle memory playing golf  or playing soccer or working out anything really  

where it just becomes effortless and that's the  stage we want to reach now practically if you want  

to say okay over the next three months i really  want to focus on this area and i recommend you do  

i recommend exploring this area at least but  then focusing time each week maybe each day to  

to pronunciation then i think this is a really  good idea firstly learn the sounds of english  

learn the different sounds of english the  consonant sounds vowel sounds etc the schwa  

as well and use the method that i've talked about  in order to do this now this might take some time  

you're going to get frustrated sometimes it might  be a little bit boring but like i've talked about  

in the past try make it as fun as possible and be  motivated to know that by doing this it's really  

going to help the way that you speak english  now it also means working on things like stress  

and intonation stress and intonation and i'm  going to give a good example of this in a second  

and then finally it's working on things like  retractions and linking and working on these areas  

is not just going to improve the way that you  speak with accuracy and fluency but it's going to  

help your comprehension too because if you can say  these words and use retractions and use linking  

things like i could have done it i could have done  it which is a retraction of i could have done it  

we're also linking i could have done it i could  have done it then you'll better understand other  

people english speakers when they're using this  too and people use retractions and linking all  

the time it is so common so in order to understand  people this will be really useful for you so find  

a course or anything really just research this  area these areas of the sounds of english stress  

and intonation retractions and linking and go  through the different areas practice get feedback  

etc now i do want to say that i have a program  for this i'll leave a link in the description that  

goes through all these areas and then you can also  send in your recordings to me and i will evaluate  

these recordings for you and tell you what i think  you need to do to improve so i've worked with  

hundreds of students on this area and i know the  the common mistakes that people make and why they  

can't execute a certain sound or they can't use  retractions in a natural way and then like i say  

make this part of your study plan so really  commit to this because it's just going to make  

you become more confident more fluent and more  accurate when you speak english and then going  

back to the golf analogy we talked about having  a game of golf where you perform under pressure  

and you learn what you need to do to improve this  equivalent here is having conversations in english  

or talking to a teacher or having a language  exchange partner where you put everything together  

you have to be able to use the correct sounds  while speaking which is a much more complex task  

than just repeating phrases let's  say repeating the sounds of english  

that's going to help you just improve in general  it's fun to have conversations this is why people  

want to learn english and then also it's going to  give you a good indication of where you are and  

what you need to do to improve now i do want to  practice a phrase here because i'm going to look  

at retractions and linking but also stress and  intonation okay so the phrases i could have done  

it like i mentioned before now could have becomes  coulda i coulda i coulda i coulda and then done it  

done it done it becomes well there it is it links  together and we also use the the glottal stop  

done it done it done it and then all together  i could have done it i could have done it  

now i also want to just highlight some word stress  here because listen to this now i could have done  

it i could have done it now this is the stress  with the emphasis on i that's the most important  

part of the sentence because i'm stressing it like  that i could have done it i could have done it  

and then he listened to the intonation here  i could have done it i could have done it it  

goes a little bit high at the end too so there are  different things that you can do with stress and  

intonation with intonation there's the falling  intonation the rise in intonation and then the  

rise and fall intonation but all these things are  inside my program that's a fluency program or you  

can look them up individually or take a different  course on pronunciation the key though is to think  

about if this is an area you would benefit from if  you spent some time with it and then going through  

that cycle where you learn how to make the sounds  or how to use intonation or how to use the schwa  

then you practice it you get feedback you make  changes you keep learning you keep practicing you  

keep making changes and then you get the long-term  repetition so that it just builds into muscle  

memory so that you can speak english fluently and  accurately okay so there's quite a lot here i hope  

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