Secret to Speaking English | Word Stress #ELSA

if you want to know one key secret to speaking english more fluently more native-like and more intelligibly so others can understand you then this english speaking lesson is for you hi i'm gabby from gonaturalenglish.com and today in the next 10 minutes you're going to learn a skill that will help you to improve from basic or kind of intermediate english level to a more advanced and fluent english speaking level at the end of this lesson i want to tell you about a revolutionary way that you can use a.i technology to improve your english speaking especially your pronunciation your accent and to speak more native like from anywhere anytime with an app that uses artificial intelligence it's super interesting i'll tell you all about it at the end so keep watching now why is it not obvious this one trick will help you so much but in english classroom we don't spend too much time on it not directly anyway and i know because i spent years and years teaching english in the classroom before i created gonaturalenglish.com so what is this secret this trick it's word stress oh what is word stress it's not like stress when you feel anxious it is the powerful part of the word put simply for example powerful of the word so words have stress when they are more than one syllable so in other words a word cannot have word stress it can have phrase level stress but it cannot have word stress if it's just one syllable like word or parts we need more than one syllable like pow were full we have three syllables the word breaks into three beats so to speak powerful so we have to always ask ourselves which of these syllables is the stressed one in english in order to really sound natural when we're speaking to have a good fluency and flow see the problem is not only is see the problem is not only is word stress not really taught in most english classes it's also confusing if you speak a language that has some cognates that are close but not the same false cognates to english um for example a word that is a false cognate means that it has a different meaning like embarrassed or in spanish is embarassada not only are the meanings very different but the word stress is different let's listen again embarrassed embarrassed in english you can hear that the stress is on the second syllable in spanish embarassada so if you are a spanish speaker you might see the word embarrassed in english and think that the stress is later in the word like embarrassed i'm not sure but that is not exactly how we want to pronounce it to sound native-like i'm not sure if that's how you would pronounce it but maybe that would feel more natural to you if you're coming from a spanish-speaking background now if you have cognates in english and your first language for example let's look at spanish again like animal and animal so you you might think in english that the stress should be on the last syllable but in english we don't say animal with the stress on the last syllable we put the stress on the first syllable animal and in english the stress is often on the first syllable or in the front of the word but of course there are exceptions like when we borrow words from other languages like french and words like entrepreneur get the stress at the end of the word because of those french roots or auctioneer a person who auctions items or mountaineer these are all words that come from french a person who scales mountains is a mountaineer and there are many other examples where we borrow words from other languages and so the stress falls in a way that is not so typical in english but in english the stress doesn't always fall on the first syllable either we can have stress on the second syllable or the third syllable it is just quite common to have it on the first syllable with many words another example that's a a cognate would be cellular and in spanish it's a difficult one for me because of the else so the stress is on the end in spanish but in the beginning in english so what about in your language do you speak spanish do you speak another language are there words that are similar in english and in your language but maybe the stress is different have you noticed this i would love to see your examples in the comments so what we have to remember here is that the stress in a word is quite important for you to be understood this is what native speakers are naturally listening for they're listening for the word stress because that's the part of the word that is always easiest to hear because it's loudest it's longest it's most powerful so even if we don't really say the rest of the word and many english speakers don't for example let's take the word animal again some english speakers who are not pronouncing super carefully maybe they have a strong accent or they're speaking quickly they might not say all of the word very clearly you might hear animal animal there's three syllables there and mo but you really only hear the first one or two right animal you're an animal but it is the way that english flows it's the way that we speak and you have to imitate this if you want to sound more native like so really focus on those stressed syllables and you will be a much better english speaker the next time that you have a speaking test or an interview or you just want to talk with people on the street they will understand you much better so my recommendation is to start marking your vocabulary words where the stress falls so if you have a vocabulary notebook which i hope you do make sure that when you write down a new word you put a little mark or underline where the stress is in the words so that when you practice saying these words you're really stressing that stressed syllable and when you practice saying the words really emphasize really stress that stressed syllable so that you get in the habit of saying it in a very powerful way so for example animal i wouldn't always say animal but it helps me to get used to the stress in this word so you see what i'm saying practice will help you to then in the real world say it in a natural way animal okay so what words do you have questions about are there certain words in english that you're just not sure where the stress should be i can certainly help you with that if you want to write them in the comments i mentioned in the beginning that there is a revolutionary app that uses ai technology to help you improve your english speaking your accent your pronunciation and it is amazing because you can practice with elsa speaks that's the name of the app from anywhere anytime it's like having an english teacher in your pocket on your smartphone and you can download the app for free there are paid plans and if you want to join the paid plan then you as a go natural english viewer can get a special discount elsa speaks is giving us a promotional price on their plans and you can see more information about that discount if you open the description below the video or go to gonaturalenglish.com elsa that's e-l-s-a now what is elsa speaks well it is an awesome app that i really had fun playing with that you can use to practice your pronunciation so for example they give you more challenging words than i've given you here and you repeat them after the way you hear them and then the app measures how native like you sound and gives you a percentage score so it's very easy to see how well you're doing there's no more questioning well maybe that's kind of right and the really cool thing is you don't really need to have another person with you to practice your pronunciation anymore you can simply use the app so i highly recommend that you at least give it a try download the free version to see what it's all about and have some fun testing your english speaking i'm going to show you how it works right now with a clip of me practicing so let's check it out environment that's great now what if i put the stress on the wrong syllable let's see what happens environment okay great let's try another one i'll try it the wrong way first companies okay great so it caught me let me try the right way companies cool all right love it elsa speaks is a super fun app and it's going to help you to rapidly improve your english speaking skills so i recommend that you download it today try it out and see what you think let me know come back here and tell me in the comments if you've tried it out remember you can find it at gonaturalenglish.com elsa that's e-l-s-a and i highly encourage you to keep practicing your word stress with every new word that you learn and it's a great way for you to practice using some fun methods like the app that i mentioned elsa speaks and of course you can always practice on your own with your notebook and speaking out loud but it's nice to have some way to measure your actual pronunciation skills so try it out and again let me know if you have questions about any words where the word stress is but remember this is extremely important to get the stress right and really stress that stress syllable and reduce the syllables that are not stressed you are doing an amazing job with your english and each day i know you're improving little by little it might feel like improvement is not coming fast enough but i want to encourage you don't give up keep going you've got this learning another language like english is a process it's a journey it's an ongoing adventure that you can enjoy throughout your life and i want to thank you for making go natural english part of your english learning journey i'm so happy to help you speak more to speak better to express yourself your thoughts and opinions with the world we need them we need you and we need to know about what you think and we want to know you so thank you again for watching thank you for subscribing to go natural english and i'll see you here again next week for another english speaking and listening lesson thanks so much bye for now

Channel: Go Natural English

Views: 42,629

Keywords: American Accent Training, American Accent, Go Natural English, Gabby Wallace

Id: BXptsv10mB8

Length: 12min 56sec (776 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 02 2021