How do you know that it's time for you to work on your pronunciation in English?
Before we begin, I wanna share with you a personal story.
When I first started teaching pronunciation about 15 years ago – now, I
don't live in an English speaking country – I used to call up companies offering
my services as a pronunciation coach.
"Hi, would you like me to teach you pronunciation?"
And the response I would get was always sheer surprise: "Pronunciation?
Who needs pronunciation?
We don't need pronunciation.
We need grammar, we need business English, we need vocabulary.
We don't need to improve our accent.
That doesn't matter."
15 years later, I know that pronunciation is so much more
than just sounding American.
It's so much more than just making it easy for others to understand.
And in this episode, I'm actually going to share with you the signs
for you to know if it's time for you to work on your pronunciation
to reach your goals in English.
In this episode, I'm going to talk about why pronunciation is important
even earlier on, and why it's important for your fluency and confidence.
And at the end of the video I'm also going to share with you how
you can train and practice your pronunciation with me for free.
We have a special event coming up, so make sure you watch all the way to the end.
If you're new to my channel, then hi, my name is Hadar.
I'm a speech and pronunciation coach.
I'm a non-native speaker of English.
And I'm here to teach you everything that I have learned
myself about speaking English with clarity, confidence, and freedom.
So here are six signs for you to know that it's time for you to
start working on your pronunciation.
The first sign is that you don't feel comfortable with your voice,
you resent your voice in English, and you avoid listening to it.
Why is that a sign that you need to work on your pronunciation?
Because pronunciation can help you with that.
One of the reasons why you feel that is because you might hear that there is a
gap between the English that you hear in your head and the English that comes
out of your mouth, and you avoid it.
And because you avoid it, you just don't like hearing yourself speaking.
If you don't like hearing yourself speaking when you're on your own, how
would you give yourself permission to speak when there are others around?
It's going to be really, really hard.
So pronunciation work can help you with minimizing that gap between the English
that you hear in your head and the English that comes out of your mouth.
Also, it will confront you with your voice because when you practice
pronunciation, you record yourself and you listen back to it, and you
normalize listening to your voice, and you'll even start liking your voice.
And that is going to help you become more confident with
expressing your voice in public.
The second sign is that you avoid using specific words.
And here I talk about words that you know, but you don't use.
And here's the reason.
A lot of times, we know certain words because we were exposed to
them, but we haven't used them.
So you might feel self-conscious about how to pronounce that word,
maybe you've never pronounced it so you don't know how to pronounce it.
Or maybe it has a certain sound that you struggle with.
Maybe words with R, you try to avoid words with R, or words with TH.
And if you find yourself searching for other words, because you don't wanna use
a specific word, it's time for you to work on your pronunciation because it's going
to help you use all the words and all the sounds effortlessly and spontaneously.
Because when you avoid using words, think about all the extra work that
your brain has to do looking for other words where retrieving any
words could be challenging anyway.
The next sign is when you feel that people may not fully understand you.
Now, it is not your fault.
If you weren't born into English, you probably use sounds, intonation,
and rhythm of your first language.
And sometimes it's not aligned, and sometimes what you say is
not what people expect to hear.
How would you know that you're not understood?
First of all, people may ask you to repeat yourself, okay?
That's a sign that you weren't fully understood.
Another sign is that you might be seeing like this questioning look
or an expression that says, I didn't really understand what you just said.
We all know that expression, we can experience it in
our first language as well.
So if you feel that that is something that you see often, this is a sign.
You might also see that people respond to you, but they're responding to
something else and not something that you asked or that you said.
So that means that they didn't fully understand what
it is that you were saying.
And it could be because of pronunciation, but it could also be because of stress
or rhythm or maybe even tone of voice.
So as you can see, for you to be able to communicate what you need
to say and for you to get what you want, you want to be understood.
And pronunciation work, prosody – which is intonation, rhythm, and stress – are
definitely going to help you with that.
Another sign is when you feel tired or exhausted or drained
after speaking English.
And the reason why that usually happens is because you are investing
a lot more energy than you need.
When we are using sounds that we don't have in our first language,
sometimes we use a lot more muscles to produce those sounds.
And that creates a lot of effort, and you don't need to invest all that effort.
When you learn pronunciation, you learn what muscles you actually
need to use to produce each sound and what muscles to let go of.
And you'll see that when you start understanding that and practice
pronunciation efficiently, you will be investing a lot less energy into your
speaking, and you'll feel more effortless and more at ease when communicating.
Another sign is that you simply don't have enough speaking practice.
Now, speaking is essential to improve your fluency, communication, and
flow, and of course confidence.
But sometimes, especially if you don't live in an English speaking country, you
may not have a lot of speaking practice.
So while you have to increase the time of you communicating with others,
pronunciation work can help you bridge that gap between the English that you
know and the English that you use.
Because when you practice pronunciation, you use your
voice, you produce the language.
Unlike working on grammar or learning vocabulary that when a lot
of times it's just in your head, pronunciation has to be vocal.
You use your voice actively, you practice speaking, even if it's on your own.
And that helps you bridge that gap between what you know and how you use it.
So even if you don't have a lot of opportunities to speak, pronunciation
work can definitely help you with that, even if it's not real speaking.
And another sign, and that's my favorite one, you're just drawn to it.
You love listening to the differences between the sounds in
your first language and in English.
You enjoy understanding the different nuances in someone else's speech.
And if you enjoy that, there is no reason why you shouldn't incorporate that into
your English practice and into your work.
You don't have to wait until you are at a certain level to practice pronunciation.
You can start learning pronunciation from day one.
Because it is a part of learning a language and using a language.
And especially if you enjoy it – I mean, learning English is meant to be
fun – it's definitely a sign that you need to work on your pronunciation.
All right, so these are the signs for you to know if it's time for
you to work on your pronunciation.
So if any of the things that I talked about resonated with you,
then it might be a good time for you to immerse yourself into
pronunciation work, if you haven't yet.
And now, this is the best part where I tell you how you
can do that with me for free.
Because on March 6th we are starting a 7-day Pronunciation Challenge.
Where I will be teaching pronunciation, the key sounds, how to understand
what you need to focus on, how to practice effectively, and how to use
the right sounds when you're speaking.
We're gonna teach you all these different techniques.
You're gonna practice with me and my coaches, and all
of that is absolutely free.
So that is happening March 6th, and you can sign up today to start
working on your pronunciation.
So now you know if you need to work on your pronunciation, and you also
know how to do it with us inside of the Pronunciation Challenge.
All right, that's it.
If you like this video, make sure to like it and subscribe.
You can also follow me at @hadar.accentsway on Instagram and
my other social media accounts.
And you can also check out my website at hadarshemesh.com for more free stuff.
If you're gonna join us, let me know in the comments below.
I really hope to see you there.
In the meantime, have a great day, and I'll see you next week in the next video.
Bye.