Choosing English Accents, Getting Feedback, and Similar Vowel Sounds (Ask Jack from To Fluency #1)

Hello, everybody, and welcome to this new video series from me

Jack from To Fluency. Now, this new video series is called

Ask Jack and this is where I'm going to answer your questions

about learning English and the English

language. Now, as you can probably tell

I am outside filming this and I'm going to try and

film this in different types of locations

But to make this series work to make it really successful

and to help you, I'm going to need your questions.

So, click the link on your screen or below this video

and it'll take you to a form where you can ask me questions

and you can ask me questions about anything

to do with learning English and also I want questions about the English

language too. So, if there's a tense or you know some type of grammar vocabulary

that you

don't understand please get in touch with me

and ask me the question. So, let's get straight into question one

from today. Anga from

Indonesia asks: What's the best accent to learn?

This is a great question Anga.

Now, from my accent you can probably tell that I'm from the UK

but I currently live in the US, so I'm very used to the different types of

accents and I've also

been traveling a lot to. So, when I listen to an accent and I can easily

understand what people are saying

erm, not for every accent in English but for the most part. Now, the

accent that you want to learn is the one that's going to benefit you the most.

There's also, you know, an argument saying that it's good to learn different

types of accidents

Now it's worth pointing out also that the accent

isn't going to be the only thing, because North American English

and British English are very different: it's the accent,

it's the pronunciation, the vocabulary, the grammar,

the phrases, you know, the slang that's used as well

So, when you actually learn a specific type of English then you going to be

learning

all those things. But, it's important to think about your situation

and think which accent am I going to need to understand the most.

This could be dictated by your job or by your future aspirations.

On the whole, there's no bad accent to learn

Some a more difficult than others but most people want

a standard British or American or Australian accent

also English from other countries too. So,

think about your situation and which accent is going to be best for you.

Asela from Sri Lanka asks: How do I know if I make mistakes when speaking?

Thanks for your question Asela. So, to know if

what you're saying is right or wrong it's all about getting feedback.

So, I really recommend working with someone

who is going to point out your mistakes so that you can actually learn from them.

Because if you keep saying the same things over and over again,

and you're saying the wrong things over and over again, then you going to

internalize this, and it's going to be very natural for you just to say

wrong English. Now, this is

on obvious because when I've talked students from Spain, for example,

then they're saying things that people from Spain say in an

incorrect way. For example, a lot people say

"people is stupid" instead of, "people are stupid"

because they haven't been corrected from an early age

and that's what a direct translation from Spanish into English

is. So, it's really important that someone does correct your mistakes when you

speak and when you write

and obviously, this is hard to get all the time,

but having someone who's going to really point out those major mistakes is going

to help,

and then from there, you can go and make corrections

and work on those mistakes so that you can improve your English

in that sense. Marcelo from Bazil asks:

Are there any tips on how to pronounce words that sound similar?

Thanks for the question Marcelo. Now, this

is a really important part of English and it's learning the different vowel sounds

Now, I can't remember from the top of my head

something over 20. So, they're over 20

different vowel sounds in English. Now,

different languages only have sometimes, you know, five vowel sounds

which means that

when you're learning English it's important to learn these different types and vowel

sounds.

So, when someone - again justing using an example from Spain -

uses certain kind of words and it sounds like different words because

they don't have the muscle memory in their mouth or know how to make the

correct sounds.

So, a big part of my teaching is

that I recommend working on the

different vowel sounds, and there are drills that you can do as well

so that you can practice between the two

like two confusing sounds. So,

look up - and there's a link below in the show notes that's gonna

give you a great resources where

you can learn exactly what to do with your mouth

so that you can produce the right type of sound

and this an important part of learning English it's not just about the vowel sounds, about the

consonants and everything else

But specifically, a lot of learners struggle with these different vowel sounds

because

they don't have them in their native language. Now it's time

for me to ask you a question. And the question for this video is this:

"What accent do you want to learn?"

So, what accent do you want to learn? Leave your answers below this video

click the link to ask me a question, and

thanks watching, see you next time!