I'm about to give you a piece of advice that may seem a little hypocritical, but I'd like
for you to hear me out.
Today I'm going to encourage you to slow down when speaking English.
In this video, we're going to talk about why it's important to slow down if you're a non-native
English speaker, and I'm also going to give you specific examples of how slowing down
can help you refine and improve your accent when speaking English.
Now, let's talk about the elephant in the room.
I know I speak English quickly, but remember I'm a native English speaker
and I speak very clearly and expressively.
It's pretty easy to follow me once you get used to my natural speed.
Many people give me feedback that once they start to understand me,
it helps them understand other Americans.
However, if you're a non-native speaker, speaking more quickly can actually enhance your accent,
make it more obvious and make it more challenging for native English speakers
to understand you.
I'll give you an example from my experience speaking Spanish.
As you may know, I speak Spanish fluently and I've spent about five years living and
traveling in South America.
Because I speak Spanish fluently, I'm excited to share my ideas.
I want to connect to in conversation, and I want to just share my ideas
as quickly as possible.
However, this enhances my accent when speaking Spanish.
Last year, I received some feedback from a native Spanish speaker that if I would just
slow down and give my mouth time to fully form the words, fully pronounce the sounds,
fully produce the vowels, I would actually speak Spanish with less of an accent and I
would also speak more clearly.
So in the future I think I'm going to take this advice and I'm going to try to slow down
my thoughts in order to speak Spanish more slowly so that I can reduce my accent and
sound a little more natural.
I want to encourage you to do the same.
When you are a non-native English speaker, speeding up can actually reduce the ability
for other people to understand you.
When I start working with my clients on accent reduction, the first thing that I notice is
that they're very often fluent in English, which means they speak quickly and confidently
and comfortably on a wide variety of topics.
However, this also means that they've gained speed in their speaking,
and this is enhancing their accents.
It's making their accents more obvious.
In order to start reducing your accent, you're going to need to slow down.
You're going to need to pay more attention to the different elements of your accent that
you can reduce by giving your mouth a little more time to participate as well.
When you're nervous or even excited about a topic, it's very common that you speed up
because you want to get through your ideas more quickly, because you want to continue
to have a deeper conversation, or because you just want to be finished talking.
However, if you're a non-native speaker, this nervousness or this excitement can actually
make it harder for people to understand you.
I want to remind you that accents are a fact of life.
There is no problem with having an accent.
However, speaking more clearly and being understood is a goal you really should have in order
to succeed when speaking English, especially in professional and academic situations.
If you really want to start focusing on being understood when speaking English, you're going
to need to slow down and then you're going to need to slow down even more.
Let's talk about the specific aspects of your accent that slowing down
can actually help you with.
We're going to talk about word stress, vowel shaping, pitch variations, intonation and
consonant clusters.
Slowing down can help you be more easily understood and speak more clearly because it gives you
time to fully form these different sounds and these different changes
in the position of your mouth.
To start, let's talk about word stress.
If you're not familiar with word stress, please be sure to join my free email course, Sound
More Natural in Just Five Days at soundmorenatural.com.
If you've watched any of my videos on word stress, you know that word stress is when
you make one syllable longer, louder and higher in pitch.
If you're speaking quickly, you're not giving yourself enough time to
fully produce this stressed syllable.
Like I said, you need to make the syllable longer.
When you slow down, you really make it clear that you're making the syllable longer.
So let's talk about the word today.
Many non-native speakers rush through the word today because it's only two syllables,
you say it all the time, and it's really easy to understand: today, today.
But if you really want to make sure you're creating the right stress pattern on this
word, you want to lengthen the syllable day: today, today, today.
When you stress the syllable "day" and you make it longer, louder and higher in pitch,
it's easier for a native English speaker to understand you: toDAY, toDAY.
If you notice, when I really slow down and exaggerate that word, my mouth is moving more
because I'm creating the vowel shaping: today, today.
This stressed syllable "day" has a long vowel "a": today.
And I'm also creating a pitch variation with my mouth - today - and closing my mouth down
when I finish.
Opening: today; closing down when I finish.
When you slow down, you're enabling your mouth to create all of these different variations
in shaping and in the pitch that's coming out of your mouth, and that's going to help
you sound more natural: today, today.
Most of my clients, when they start working with me, don't fully create all of these different
sounds: the longer, the louder, the higher in pitch, and also the shaping, the up and
down shaping on the vowels, that enable them to sound natural.
Today, today.
If you slow down, you're giving your mouth time to fully produce this sound.
It can be hard.
And you may be asking, "Well, Kim, when you say 'today,' you say it fairly quickly."
But I'm a native English speaker.
I naturally create that pitch variation with my mouth.
It's something that I don't need to practice because I grew up speaking that way.
But you need to practice that: today, today.
And slowing down is going to enable you to fully produce all of those different sounds
on that one syllable.
Obviously, this can help you with all of the different words you're going to use
when speaking English.
Today is just one example.
Like I just explained, pitch variation is really important to creating the natural sound
of English.
Pitch is extremely important when we start talking about intonation.
For some examples of intonation on short words, you probably want to check out my videos on
how to pronounce "how are you" and how to use the word "really" in order to express
different emotions and attitudes.
I'll include the links below the video.
Let's take a look at the word "really."
"Really" can express a wide variety of different attitudes.
Really, really, really, really - all of those different tones express
different emotions and attitudes.
And you need to have more time to move your pitch up and down in order to show these different
tones.
Give yourself time to move your mouth and move your pitch.
Slowing down and enables you to create more variation in your tone, which is going to
help you express yourself more clearly.
Remember, intonation is key to speaking English like a native English speaker.
We communicate a lot of meaning through our tone.
Slowing down will enable you to create those same sounds.
Last but not least, slowing down will also enable you to get through those
tricky consonant clusters.
Many non-native speakers struggle with producing words like tree because you have to move
between these different sounds.
Or green or three.
That's a lot of different sounds that were moving between.
A lot of times we speed up because we don't want people to hear that
we can't quite get them fully.
But if you slow down, you're going to give your mouth time to move between
those different shapes.
Let's say with the word "green," m mouth is moving more than it would if I were just saying
something like "do": green, green.
I'm moving from G to R to the EE and to then closing to the N. One syllable, green, but
I'm moving through all of these different shapes.
Green, green.
I'm exaggerating for the purpose of this video, but you really notice that if you slow down,
you're giving your mouth time to move between those different sounds.
As you can see, slowing down is going to give your mouth the time it needs in order to produce
all of the different sounds and shapes that give English it's character.
If you want to sound more natural, you're going to need to slow down in order to give
your mouth time to do this.
Slowing down also enables other people to understand the key points in your message.
I talk more about this in my video on how to use your voice and breath to sound more
professional when speaking English.
I hope this video has helped you understand how slowing down can help you speak more clearly
and be more easily understood by native English speakers.
If you have any questions, please leave a comment below the video.
Once again, I'm Kim from englishwithkim.com.
I'm your guide to the essential conversation skills you need to sound more natural in English.
If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and share it with a friend.
Have a good one!
Goodbye.