Hello, everybody, and welcome to this new video series from me
Jack from To Fluency. Now, this new video series is called
Ask Jack and this is where I'm going to answer your questions
about learning English and the English
language. Now, as you can probably tell
I am outside filming this and I'm going to try and
film this in different types of locations
But to make this series work to make it really successful
and to help you, I'm going to need your questions.
So, click the link on your screen or below this video
and it'll take you to a form where you can ask me questions
and you can ask me questions about anything
to do with learning English and also I want questions about the English
language too. So, if there's a tense or you know some type of grammar vocabulary
that you
don't understand please get in touch with me
and ask me the question. So, let's get straight into question one
from today. Anga from
Indonesia asks: What's the best accent to learn?
This is a great question Anga.
Now, from my accent you can probably tell that I'm from the UK
but I currently live in the US, so I'm very used to the different types of
accents and I've also
been traveling a lot to. So, when I listen to an accent and I can easily
understand what people are saying
erm, not for every accent in English but for the most part. Now, the
accent that you want to learn is the one that's going to benefit you the most.
There's also, you know, an argument saying that it's good to learn different
types of accidents
Now it's worth pointing out also that the accent
isn't going to be the only thing, because North American English
and British English are very different: it's the accent,
it's the pronunciation, the vocabulary, the grammar,
the phrases, you know, the slang that's used as well
So, when you actually learn a specific type of English then you going to be
learning
all those things. But, it's important to think about your situation
and think which accent am I going to need to understand the most.
This could be dictated by your job or by your future aspirations.
On the whole, there's no bad accent to learn
Some a more difficult than others but most people want
a standard British or American or Australian accent
also English from other countries too. So,
think about your situation and which accent is going to be best for you.
Asela from Sri Lanka asks: How do I know if I make mistakes when speaking?
Thanks for your question Asela. So, to know if
what you're saying is right or wrong it's all about getting feedback.
So, I really recommend working with someone
who is going to point out your mistakes so that you can actually learn from them.
Because if you keep saying the same things over and over again,
and you're saying the wrong things over and over again, then you going to
internalize this, and it's going to be very natural for you just to say
wrong English. Now, this is
on obvious because when I've talked students from Spain, for example,
then they're saying things that people from Spain say in an
incorrect way. For example, a lot people say
"people is stupid" instead of, "people are stupid"
because they haven't been corrected from an early age
and that's what a direct translation from Spanish into English
is. So, it's really important that someone does correct your mistakes when you
speak and when you write
and obviously, this is hard to get all the time,
but having someone who's going to really point out those major mistakes is going
to help,
and then from there, you can go and make corrections
and work on those mistakes so that you can improve your English
in that sense. Marcelo from Bazil asks:
Are there any tips on how to pronounce words that sound similar?
Thanks for the question Marcelo. Now, this
is a really important part of English and it's learning the different vowel sounds
Now, I can't remember from the top of my head
something over 20. So, they're over 20
different vowel sounds in English. Now,
different languages only have sometimes, you know, five vowel sounds
which means that
when you're learning English it's important to learn these different types and vowel
sounds.
So, when someone - again justing using an example from Spain -
uses certain kind of words and it sounds like different words because
they don't have the muscle memory in their mouth or know how to make the
correct sounds.
So, a big part of my teaching is
that I recommend working on the
different vowel sounds, and there are drills that you can do as well
so that you can practice between the two
like two confusing sounds. So,
look up - and there's a link below in the show notes that's gonna
give you a great resources where
you can learn exactly what to do with your mouth
so that you can produce the right type of sound
and this an important part of learning English it's not just about the vowel sounds, about the
consonants and everything else
But specifically, a lot of learners struggle with these different vowel sounds
because
they don't have them in their native language. Now it's time
for me to ask you a question. And the question for this video is this:
"What accent do you want to learn?"
So, what accent do you want to learn? Leave your answers below this video
click the link to ask me a question, and
thanks watching, see you next time!