Hey, naturals at your favorite American English teacher here to help you with some tips on what not to do if you want to
Become fluent in English this is gonna. Be especially helpful if you want to have a more native-like
accent so if you're curious about
What you're doing wrong?
Why your accent is not quite as clear or as native-like as you would like it to be then keep watching?
The number one reason that I've found as a teacher of English as a second language that my adult students
Do not have a clear accent or a native like accent
I have a very heavy accent from their native language is
Because they don't let go of their native
Language when they're learning English now let me be clear
I don't mean to stop speaking your native language of course not it is such an
Amazing skill to be bilingual or trilingual or more what I mean is
You have to learn English with an open mind as if you were a baby
But you actually have the advantage of knowing a lot of things about the world and about language already what you need to do is
To let go of this
Learning that you already have that lets say a certain letter
equals a certain sound for example in English R is a
but maybe in portuguese it could be like pet it could be an age sound or
In Japanese it could sound more like an L nee
Okay, so let me read a sentence to you with my best
Portuguese accent and Japanese accent, but in English to give you an idea an example of what I mean
And I don't mean for this to be offensive
I just want to give you an example to illustrate, so I said don't let go of how you read and
in your native language
so if I was a native portuguese speaker, I might bring my
Portuguese knowledge into my pronunciation of English and I might say don't you let go of are you?
Huger and
listen in your
native language, and if I was a need of japanese speaker, I might say something like
Don't do that to go of it. How you?
need oh and the listener
in your native language
Oh my gosh, that was hard so again
This is what I mean by carrying your native language into English
So how do you overcome this as an adult English learner you might think that learning English is more difficult?
But actually you have some advantages
you know a lot about the world and you know a lot about language you know about grammar you know how to
read in your native language
So how do you overcome this I have three tips for you first of all you need to listen to a lot of English?
Immerse yourself because your brain is an amazing thing, and it's capable of recognizing
patterns
So it will start to recognize that certain sounds are the way. They are in English. This is also
really helpful if you can listen and read at the same time so for example if you are watching this video put on the
subtitles
So that you can listen and read and connect the sounds to the letters
Next it's super important to stop thinking that a letter equals a sound
x equals y in your native language
But x equals z in English you have to start thinking in sounds or phonemes
And not just in letters because letters and English can be deceiving
Finally if you're up for a challenge try learning the international phonetic alphabet or IPA
For shorts this will really help you discover what the sounds and phonemes are in
English words now an easier
Lazier way of doing the same thing that I highly recommend is when you learn words in English
Just write down or make a note of how they sound to you
So whatever makes sense to you. How you think the word should be spelled write that down write down?
How the word is spelled and how it sounds to you?
So just to close. I want to tell you that even native English speakers have trouble with how to pronounce words
We're constantly
mispronouncing
Difficult words and even some common words, too
So don't be ashamed if you mispronounce a word
it's much better to
Speak and learn as you go so don't be shy get out there speak English and we're improving
Every day together so thank you so much for watching this video. I hope it was helpful
For you and go out there with an open mind and have fun with English learning
Thanks so much, and I'll see you again soon. What bye for now