How to practice English pronunciation | Canguro English

um so it's about 10:30 at night I have just finished teaching it's been a very long day and now I'm going home but as you know I ride a motorbike to to work and now it's raining a lot so this is what I wear every day when I ride to work now I'm ready to go home and and yes I know that I look like an idiot [Music] hello and welcome to kangaroo English I'm Christian and today I am going to teach you how to practice your pronunciation but before we start the class I want to say two things the first thing is that you will never lose your accent and that's not a bad thing you shouldn't try to lose your accent your accent is part of your identity you should be proud of your accent losing your accent is really really difficult it's almost impossible when Hollywood actors want to do a different accent maybe an Irish accent or an Australian accent they have a special accent coach who helps them for week and months they practice everyday but even then they still don't have the accent perfect the the most famous example is Meryl Streep one of the greatest actresses of our generation had a terrible Australian accent in the film evil angels maybe the dingo ate your baby the second thing I want to say is that pronunciation is a physical activity okay it's not something that you can study in a book or think about okay you have to have the physical aspects correct and then the sounds will also be correct and I'm going to prove this to you today now if you wanted to practice pronunciation you could buy a book like this you know a technical book with lots of activities but I recommend this book one fish two fish red fish blue fish this book was written by the American author dr. Seuss and this book is specially designed to help children correctly pronounce English so every page is full of the most important sounds in English and I use this book with all of my students children adults and it's also very funny like for example here we have this animal this is a GOx okay and he he likes to books he's boxing with with the boy and the boy has yellow socks so they are yellow box box socks he's boxing in yellow box box socks I think you get the idea so the first thing I want to talk about is the difference between unvoiced and voiced consonants okay so for example we have a [Music] Attie ener-d okay so a tea is unvoiced no voice and a d' is voiced we have to activate the voice so to practice activating your voice you have to imagine that you are meditating okay like this and this sound okay this sound that you make when you're meditating hmm this is you activating the voice so let's look at this despair T&D okay so they have the same mouth position exactly the same the only difference is this is unvoiced and this is voiced so the the now I want to show you the physical aspect of the pronunciation okay so when we say the T its explosive we need to produce a lot of air but here with the D we need the air to vibrate the vocal cords so it's not explosive and you can visualize the difference with with a piece of paper okay so if you hold the paper in front of your mouth when you say the D with the voice the paper doesn't move the but when I say the T which is unvoiced which is an explosion the paper should move do you see so only with a piece of paper you can practice your explosive sounds okay let's look at another pair um okay so here is another pair okay so P unvoiced be voiced same mouth position bah-bah-bah but-but-but okay we're activating the voice and again with the paper I can't be but with the be the paper doesn't move but the birth okay now for the next part I want to show you how important the mouth position is now nobody wants to look at my mouth when I'm speaking so I have asked the beautiful Sarah to come in and help me with this part of the class what we are going to do okay you and me together is we are going to read cyrus lips let's have a look at the first combination which is this thin mint in okay so the difference between the two is that with the the th in english we have to stick out our time exactly okay exactly if I don't see your tongue it's not correct okay then the more time see perfect okay so now I want you to say one of these words silently and then we we will guess what words she's saying okay so ah sin yes did you see did you see her tongue come out sin okay very good Zahra the next combination is best and west so here what's important about this sound about the V the DOS leads me know that Abby Abby is with the little Club okay we listen and T exactly lips and teeth okay so we have the lid perfect perfect okay so this but this one here is is well this is w so it's like a u n au sounds like mmm like a kiss mmm exactly exactly so there's a big difference invert them the rule so now you you choose a word okay and we're going to guess which word she's pronouncing okay okay ah West definitely okay and the other one perfect okay did you see did you see the the difference in the mouth position so now let's try a vowel okay so we're going to look at the difference between this one and this one okay so this is e yeah you see look at the tension on yet see you're really and smiling E and it's quite it's long e if I see all your teeth and your yeah your mouth is a little bit open helping okay but this one here is e e so there's a less tension is not all the way back it's less and it's shorter okay beautiful so let's go e sorry e okay so now she's going to choose one word and we'll see if you can tell which word it is okay oh I think this one very good because it was a big smile as was very long okay and this one now did you see the difference a big difference okay the next sounds we're going to look at are the difference between these two vowels like ain't bad and bird bad and bird yes you can see that bad is very healthy mouth it's very open exactly a bad and okay but this one here this is the zombie sound exactly so it's like you you have no brain like a zombie so everything is relaxed your face is relaxed and you're just like exactly bird and this one bad bad okay so let's see now if you can see the difference between these two so far do you want to do one of these yes well that's definitely bad that was easy and this one okay okay so what I'm trying to show you is that it's really important to have the correct physical features okay and yes it will affect your pronunciation Thank You Farah for for tightness for everything so the final way that you can practice your pronunciation is using tongue twisters tongue twisters are little sentences with combinations of sounds that are very difficult most languages have tongue twisters probably in your language you have some sentences that are very difficult to to say and they are great for practicing transitioning between mouth positions and practicing the more difficult sounds okay so the first one is three free-throws and this is difficult because we have to do the serve we have to stick out the time for some and then for the free we have to do the F we have to have the labiodental the lips and the teeth so three free-throws okay three free-throws three free-throws three threes good okay you practices the next one is Zig and zebras zag and this is difficult because with the Zed okay we have to activate our voice at the beginning of every word zebras Zig and zebras zag okay so it's not Sarah or Sarah or it's zebra activating that voice okay you try the next one is especially important if you are from a Southeast Asian country if you are Chinese or Korean or Malaysian probably you have difficulty with the letter L in English okay and this is because in most Southeast Asian languages the L doesn't really exist not the same as a true English L okay the important thing here is that your tongue has to touch the top of your mouth okay not at the front in the middle okay and if you're pronouncing it correctly I can see your tongue okay so for example 11 hours licked 11 little lollipops can you see my tongue and when you are saying this make sure that you feel your tongue touching the top 11 hours licked 11 little lollipops the next one is really good to practice your final consonants okay you cannot eliminate your final consonants your final consonants are really important in English and we're going to practice the explosive okay like when we have um black black okay and the quiet like big big where we activate the vibration okay so we're going a big black dog bit a big black dog on his big black nose okay so we're just really emphasizing the final consonant voiced/unvoiced explosives now faster a big black bug bit a big black dog on his big black nose so this is fantastic for practicing those explosives and those voiced final consonants the next one is she sells seashells by the seashore it's the difference between that and then Shh and look at the difference in the mouth position okay my tongue is touching okay here and the air is escaping like like if I have a football and I and a good okay but the other one there's more air my tongue is flat Shh and look at how my mouth changes shh shh okay so she sells seashells by the seashore she sells seashells by the seashore it's in this and the final one is to practice a sound which a lot of people have problems with which is the W okay but just remember that the W is not a consonant it's a vowel it's the same as ooh it's to use ooh so it's like a kiss okay so if two witches were watching two watches which which was watching which watch so you can see that my mouth is very the whole time okay if two witches were watching two watches which which would watch which watch they are some activities to help you to practice your pronunciation at home I hope that these activities are useful for you okay so try some of them and tell me what you think in the comments I almost forgot to say don't forget to look in the description box I have put lots of fun and interesting activities in there for you to experiment with okay if you would like to see any more videos about the English language then don't forget to subscribe I'm Christian this is kangaroo English I'll see you in class [Music]

Channel: Canguro English

Views: 93,553

Keywords: canguro, pronunciation, how to practice pronunciation, english pronunciation, english pronunciation activities

Id: Nc_dFCyboE4

Length: 18min 1sec (1081 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 17 2017