Hey everyone, I'm Andrea your RealLife English fluency coach
and today's lesson is really going to help you with those pains you have
about learning English.
I'm going to give you the best
tips and tricks that you can start learning and
using so that you can speak English faster but also
understand natives better even when we speak fast.
So we have six main tips and tricks for you today
and it's important to note that although you think that we do speak English fast
it's more about the way that we speak rather than the speed.
Before we get into the lesson I want to let you know
that we are here to guide you beyond the classroom
to live and learn and speak your english in the real world so be sure to hit that
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Now let's get into today's lesson.
So my first tip today is to learn and use contractions.
Now you probably know what contractions are so
instead of saying "I am" for example we would shorten that to "I'm"
and instead of saying "I have" we could say "I've"
and instead of saying "do not" we would say "don't"
okay so those are just a few examples but what I tend to find is that
learners think that contractions are an informal way of speaking
which actually is not true and for this reason they're afraid to use them
but I'm here to tell you that you should use them
contractions are part of everyday native speaking
and they really help to make your speaking more efficient
and more importantly more natural so it's
really important to learn them because natives use them all the time
so if you're aware of them you can understand us better
but also when you're speaking you can use them and this way
your english speaking will be more natural and also
a little bit faster.
Contractions are useful and you can use them in the
workplace, when you're speaking with your colleagues,
you can also use them when you're giving a presentation
the only time where I might say be wary of how
often you're using contractions is if you are writing a
formal piece of writing for university or for your work, for example.
So just be cautious in that scenario.
In my teaching experience I've also noticed
that when reading students tend to ignore the contraction
and actually say the full version of the words so for
example if they're reading instead of saying "don't" they will read
it as do not and i think this is just
something that tends to happen because people think that you shouldn't use
contractions and it is more informal.
So now we're
going to take a look at a couple of contractions that students tend to find
difficult to pronounce.
Okay so the first one is "we're."
Now I find that students find this one a little bit difficult because it's very
similar to "were" and "we're" here means
"we are" so for example instead of saying "we are going to the supermarket" you
would say "we're going to the supermarket" but
because it's so similar to "were," the only difference is that apostrophe
I tend to find that students find this one a little bit more difficult to pronounce.
Another tricky one is "I'd" now
this one isn't as difficult to pronounce but
it could mean either "I would" or "I had" so sometimes that tends to give
a bit of confusion for example I could say
and instead
instead of saying
"I had better call my mom back" because she called me earlier for example I
could say "I'd better call my mum back" so sometimes
there's confusion there as to which contraction that really is because
it could be two options.
Do you find contractions difficult?
If you do give us a like down below so that we know and that way
we'll make a lesson for you explaining how you can master them so
my next tip for you today is to use connected speech.
Now this is the way that natives speak in a very natural way
and in fact it's a way that natives of any accent speak
we don't pronounce all the sounds in words and we actually
tend to connect words together so whilst you might think that we are
actually speaking fast it's more that we are shortening the words or we're
connecting words together which makes it sound like we are
speaking fast English.
The more you study this listen to it and
even speak in this way the better you will
understand natives and you will start to speak English faster too.
You don't have to speak in this way if
you don't want to but you will have to learn it if you
want to understand natives better and also if you want to
understand your favorite tv shows and movies
because this is the way that natives speak and is much more natural
to us and so for you to understand natives better and also your favorite
media I highly recommend that you learn connected speech.
A great way to do this is with our other YouTube channel
Learn English with TV Series where we have so many lessons where you
can learn connected speech, vocabulary pronunciation,
and much much more all with your favorite TV series movies
and even songs so you can click the link up here or in the description box below
to check it out straight after this lesson.
So i'm not going to go fully into the mechanics of connected speech because
this would be a lesson in itself if you do want this and you would like
to see a lesson on this in particular let me know below in the comments and we
will try and do that for you.
So i am going to give you some examples
of connected speech and one thing that Americans tend to do
a lot more but Brits also do in English is to
reduce verbs so instead of saying going to
we'll say gonna instead of saying want to we'll say wanna so
it's really important to learn these so that
when you're speaking or listening to native English speakers
you can understand what they are saying.
Another type of connected speech
is the American T or the glottal T so an American T is also called a
tap T and that's like for example instead of
saying "got to" they reduce the verb so they say
gotta but that's with a true T they would actually say
[go-da] so what that is is my tongue is just tapping the roof of my mouth that's
why it's called a tap T and it's a different sound so instead of
saying gotta they say [go-da] and a glottal T for
example in British English is where you don't hear the T so instead
of saying water I might say [wa-er]
and what's happening there is the flow of air is being stopped and then
released so you don't hear the T sound but there
is a sound there the stopping of the releasing of the air
so we hear it in words such as water, I would say [wa-er]
and you can hear it in other words such as butter
you might say [bu-er] and that's a glottal T.
Another example of connected speech is the reduction of the
h sound at the beginning of words and this is very common in British
English, specifically in the north of England as
well as in more cockney English in London which
is more of the East side of London.
So instead of saying "I have to go to the supermarket"
Some people might say "I [av] to go to the supermarket."
Or instead of saying "I had a great time at the party"
Someone might say "I [ad] a great time at the party"
So there's also the reduction of the H
which is a form of connected speech and it's really important to learn these
and to understand them to understand natives better.
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Now, let's get back to today's lesson!
My next tip for you today is to decide which accent you want to adopt.
Now some learners choose not to even
think about this or they don't even realize
and they just want to learn English whereas some
students actually really think about it and think about the type of accent that
they want to have now you don't have to do this so you
have a choice you absolutely don't have to change your accent.
Many students like to have their own
natural accent when speaking English and it does tend
to sound more exotic too which isn't a bad thing it's
actually really really nice for example Sofia Vergara speaks amazing English but
she does have a strong accent and also Arnold Schwarzenegger is a
great example because he speaks English really really well but he does
have a strong accent also.
However if you do have aspirations to
adopt an American or a British or even another English
accent I do recommend that you make that
decision quite early on and that you're consistent with it
because that's really going to help you you'll be able to know where to find
your resources as well, and once you start with it and you're
consistent with it it's really going to help you
to speak English the way that you want to.
We made a great lesson on this over on our channel Learn English with TV Series
where we looked at the accent of the famous bollywood actress Deepika Padukone.
and she speaks amazing English but she
does have a strong Indian accent so this is a great lesson to check out
you can click up here or in the description box below to watch
it straight after this lesson.
So my next tip for you is to pay attention to stress.
now this is really important and a way
of looking at it is looking at content words versus
function words so content words tend to be
nouns, adjectives and verbs those are words that really have a
meaning that are really important in a sentence
and function words are auxiliary verbs or prepositions and some
others that link those other words together to complete the sentence.
So what natives tend to do when we speak is you really hear those content words
so you will hear those words we stress them they are more prominent in the
sentence and those function words tend to be lost
or sometimes we say them very quickly or
they're connected to other parts of the sentence
so they are not stressed as much as the content words.
For example in the sentence "I'm going to the shops"
what do you think the content words are there
So there the content words are "going" and "shops" I articulated them, I stress
them a little bit more than the other words the function words
which if you sometimes you can forget what they were but "I'm going to the shops"
So "I'm," "to," "the" those are the function
words they help to put the sentence together
but they are not stressed what we can also do
aside from content and function words is if we really want
to emphasize a word we might just say it louder.
So there's an example for you when we speak
we tend to stress certain words that we really want to emphasize
and that's important to note as well.
So my next tip
is to learn and ignore discourse markers or fillers is another way of calling them.
So these are the words that natives use
when they are thinking about what they're going to say next and they don't
really add any meaning to the sentence or what they are saying
some examples could be "anyway," "basically," "so," "in fact," and there are many
many others too so by learning these what you can do is just ignore them
but also you can use them when you're speaking because they're a great way
of giving you some time to think about what you want to say
next they're a great tool in speaking more naturally
because rather than saying "um..." or just spending a lot of time thinking or
not really knowing what to say it's a great way to speak more naturally,
to speak a bit faster, and also a great way to understand natives.
So my final tip for you today is to learn English slang expressions,
idioms and phrasal verbs this is a great way to get to know the culture better
but it's also important to know that sometimes
these things can be different whether it's in the UK
or in America or even other English-speaking countries also
we do use them a lot so it's important to learn them
and once you get more comfortable with them you will start to understand
natives better and then you can also start to use them
when you're speaking too.
A tip within a tip for this one
is not to overuse them however it's great if you learn them and you start to
use them within your speaking but a danger is that learners tend to
overuse them so if you're using them a lot your
English will not sound as natural as you want it to be this can
be quite a daunting one because there's so much vocabulary there are so many
expressions to learn so what I would advise you to do is to
start off small and start off slowly you can set
yourself small targets such as learning one or
two a day or a few a week and then grow from there.
Once you do start to learn more of these expressions and this slang vocabulary
then you're going to understand natives better
and you will start to speak English faster too.
If you want to learn these things in a fun natural and convenient way
then i highly recommend that you check out our podcast
because we have a lot of episodes where we actually talk about this
and Ethan and I look at the difference between British and American English
slang expressions and many other things so it's a great place to start
you can find the link in the description box below so you can check that out later.
So there you have it those are our six
tips and tricks to speak English more fluently
and understand natives better I hope you enjoyed today's lesson
and if you want a more in-depth lesson on one of these
tips today let us know in the comments below and we'll make that lesson for you
to help you achieve your English speaking goals.
What's up guys? I'm Ethan your RealLife English fluency coach
and maybe like yourself I am an introvert
but learning languages over the last 12 years has helped me
a ton and being able to overcome the paralyzing shyness
that I felt when I was younger so let me tell you
that if you are shy or you believe that maybe you're an introvert
that this does not need to be a barrier to being able to speak English fluently
and confidently.