5 Mistakes Keeping You From Natural Sounding English | Clear English Corner

in this lesson you'll discover five common mistakes you might be making that can keep you from sounding fluent and natural in your spoken English we'll also discuss how to fix these mistakes be sure you stay tuned all the way till the end of the lesson because I think the final mistake I'll share with you is going to surprise you this is the clear English corner and I'm Keenan your clear English coach it's my mission to help you develop your articulation your porosity and your voice so that you can be clear confident and compelling in English alright so five mistakes that can keep you from sounding fluent and natural in English mistake number one saying each word one at a time when we look at English on a page the written word we can see distinct white space between the words but in spoken English there is no white space Instead The Voice flows from word to word as sounds combined together between words within phrases the key to achieving this sound that underlying hum in spoken English is keeping the vocal tract open and relaxed as we speak a great way to practice this sensation is to sing your words how are you how are you how are you when we sing our vocal tract remains open and our voice continues to vibrate as we move from word to word I have several things I need to do I have several things I need to do singing your words can help your body familiarize itself with what it feels like to keep that vocal tract open and keep the voice vibrating this doesn't mean you have to be a great singer to practice English you want to just play with the words play with the words play with the words and play with your voice so that you can become familiar with what that continuity feels like in the body and then you can apply it to your everyday speech mistake number two is speaking in a monotone and not varying your pitch engaging and magnetic speakers of English incorporate a lot of vocal variety or musicality in their voice if you listen closely to a speaker that you admire you'll notice there's rise and fall there are changes in Pitch as the person moves through words and phrases it may be challenging for you to hear these changes in pitch and to imitate them in your own speech here's what you can do choose a speaker that you admire and listen to them speak in short phrases or one sentence at a time then try to imitate the underlying Melody that you hear not the words but just the melody you can do this by humming or using so for example with the phrase good morning I could hum and what I'm doing is I'm allowing my ears and my brain to bring focused attention to the underlying Melody of the words the underlying Melody of the words by consciously drawing a attention to that underlying Melody you can then go back to the same phrase and imitate it incorporating that melody in your own words we have to be able to hear and recognize that underlying musicality and vocal Variety in other speakers before we can begin to integrate it into our own speech mistake number three giving equal emphasis to all words and syllables in English certain words and syllables are going to stand out and be emphasized more than others others are going to be quicker and quieter it's this contrast between what is emphasized and stressed versus what's not that creates the natural sounding rhythm in spoken English again it may be challenging at first to hear this contrastive rhythm in Spoke in English but you can train your ears to detect it here's a great way to practice again choose a speaker that you enjoy listening to that has a speech or presentation with a corresponding transcript for example if there's a certain podcaster that you enjoy listening to and they have transcripts that accompany their episodes another great resource are TED Talks at ted.com where you can listen to a variety of interesting speakers on endless endless interesting topics and each of the speeches has a downloadable transcript what you want to do is listen to these speakers just short chunks at a time short phrases and sentences and see if you can underline the words that are more distinct you might need to listen to the phrases or sentences a couple of times but your ear will start to pick out the sounds and words that are more prominent when you do this type of listening exercise repeatedly your ears begin to hear that contrastive Rhythm More naturally and again when you begin to be able to hear the contrastive Rhythm you can then begin to integrate that into your own speech mistake number four not moving or opening the mouth a lot of my clients and students will come to me speaking like this without really moving them off very much but you'll notice again engaging and magnetic speakers open and move the mouth it's the only way to release a full and resonant sound it can't happen with your mouth like this you may not be aware that you're not moving your mouth much so a great way to practice is to use a mirror as you practice speaking English if you're feeling really Brave you can also use video record yourself speaking and watch the mouth is it moving is it opening does it look relaxed before you begin your speaking practice you can massage your jaw massage the neck muscles loosen up the shoulders we want to make sure that our species speech musculature is very relaxed which makes it easier to move the mouth mistake number five here's that final mistake that I think may surprise you and that is speaking too fast there's a common misconception that in order to sound fluent and natural in English we need to speak really fast that if we speak too slow our listeners will stop listening in reality the opposite is true when we speak too fast our listeners have to work too hard to understand the words and as a result when their listener has to work too hard they stop listening so you want to slow your speech in a very natural sounding way this doesn't mean we speak one word at a time in a weird way no rather what this means is embracing the power of a pause using pauses in between phrases this allows your listener to process the words that you've just shared it also allows you time to formulate what you're going to say next not just what you're going to say but how you want to say it also emphasizing your most important words lingering a bit longer on those words and integrating that natural rhythmic contrast that we talked about earlier can also help you slow your speech in a very natural sounding way so there you have it five common mistakes that may be keeping you from sounding fluent and natural in spoken English I'm curious are you making any of these mistakes let me know by sharing the number of the mistake in the comments below number one saying one word at a time number two using a monotone number three using equal emphasis on all our words and syllables number four not moving the mouth and number five speaking too fast if you found the lesson helpful be sure to give it a like And subscribe to the channel so that you don't miss any of our coming lessons in the meantime come on over to the clear English Corner website for more free pronunciation practice resources as always thanks so much for tuning in and I'll see you next time [Music] thank you

Channel: Clear English Corner with Keenyn Rhodes

Views: 22,433

Keywords: clear english corner, keenyn, american english pronunciation, english pronunciation, help improving english accent, english accent training, accent reduction, improve your english

Id: 0RVs5gOqbV0

Length: 10min 24sec (624 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 03 2023