Today we’re going over 5 speaking mistakes to avoid in English. This is the SOUNDS
edition. Making these tweaks will make you easier to understand when speaking English,
you’ll hear less “what?’ a little bit less and you’ll feel more confident.
I’m Rachel and I’ve been teaching the American accent and English listening skills to
non-native speakers for over 15 years. Check out Rachelsenglish.com to learn more about me.
First, the OH diphthong. The main thing I work with my students here is round the lips. Make
that movement so you get a second sound. It’s not ‘o’, that’s a single sound. It’s OH. Lips
start more relaxed, and move in. Oh. So the sound changes. I think it also helps to think
of the music of English with diphthongs, the up-down melody of a stressed syllable,
making the whole thing last a little longer. Oh. Know. I know. We don’t want no, no. No
movement or no, no-, not much lip rounding. We want ‘nooo’. Let’s gooooo. Let’s go.
Here, I’m working with a student on this sound in a live class. Watch the lips.
This is the first word.
Don’t.
Hmmhmm. So this has an o diphthong and when I’m hearing you say it,
I’m hearing more dunt, duh, and I want to hear ou. So let me hear you try to do that ou.
Ou.
Yes exactly. Dou
Dou, don’t.
Now, I’m going to switch to a different word that I also
hear you say that also has this dipthong. Phone.
Phone.
Okay hold on. Phone not oh but ou, phone.
Phone.
Yes. You know it’s weird, it’s like, I was tring to think when I was imitating you,
what was different about it. Fo iinstead of fou,
I guess just a little bit more lip rounding from the beginning,
a little bit more of this shape like your mouth is a speaker like a megaphone. Phone.
Phone.
Better. Phone.
Phone.
Okay, hold on. Phone, I want to hear phone. I
want the second part where the lips round even more. Exactly.
If I was going to do it in slow motion it would look like this.
Phone.
So I have to use my tongue also?
Well, I would say don’t worry about the tongue. The lips are
going to get you what you want. Phone.
Phone.
Okay, I didn’t see much lip rounding. Fou-, we’re going to exaggerate it a little bit
Fou-
Yes.
Phone.
Right! That is the lip rounding.
Open more--
Okay. That makes sense.
Phon versus phone. When you’re dropping your jaw more and rounding your lips more,
it’s giving me that sound that I want. So that, lip rounding you gave me at
the end was perfect. It probably was did include more space in the mouth. Fo-.
Fo-
Okay, even more rounding. Phone.
Phone.
Hmmhm. I’m going to give you a couple more words here.
Home.
Okay, watch your lips. Yeah, that’s better.
Home.
Exactly. Yes. It’s even going to be a little bit more than you think you want to do it like,
because you’re used to doing it less,
it’s going to feel weird to do more but we want it, we want the more.
So, OH diphthong, lip rounding, ooohhhhh. Let’s look at a few words
up close and in slow motion with this diphthong. Road and load.
Road
So much lip rounding.
Road
Load
Look at that lip rounding.
Load
Rose and lows.
Rose
Again, lots of lip rounding.
Rose
Lows
Watch yourself in a mirror and make sure you’re getting this much lip rounding.
Lows
Number two. The second speaking mistake to avoid: True T’s. There are three different pronunciations
of T, and sometimes it’s dropped, so actually 4, but in the dictionary you’ll only see one,
and it’s this, tt, the True T. But we just don’t use the True T all that much,
less than half the time you see T in a dictionary, tt, should it be pronounced that way? tt. We also
have a Flap T like in ‘pretty’ or a stop T like in ‘fitness’, fitness. And sometimes we drop it like
in ‘interview.’ So a speaking mistake to avoid is saying every T you see, tt, as a True T. That
will start to sound too formal. I pronounced all those T’s, it wasn’t quite natural English. That
will start to sound too formal. I did a study once of a Ted Talk to see how many T’s were True T’s,
how many were Flap Ts, how many were stops, and how many were dropped. Check it out,
it’s a great way to understand all the ways we use different T pronunciations to smooth
out our speech in American English. I’ll put a link to that video in the video description.
Number 3, the S sound. It’s not always S. In fact, in a lot of common words,
the letter S does NOT make the s sound, it makes a z: husband, business, busy. But here’s the thing:
The Z is considered a weak consonant. S, its unvoiced pair, is strong. So the ending S has
more energy in it than an ending Z. It’s stronger, it’s a little longer. Bus. Buzz. Bus. Buzz. So the
ending Z, being weak, is actually a lot like an S, but without much length and the energy
and the air. Bus, clear S. Buzz. Weak. Sort of a mix between s and z. My students who speak
Spanish often make a strong S everytime they see the letter S. But no, in many cases that should
be a Z. Husband, not hussssband. Cousin, not cousssin. Bizness. Not Bissness.
Number 4,the TH. You were probably waiting for this one. It’s truly one of the trickiest
sounds. Most languages don’t have a sound where the tongue tip comes out of the mouth,
through the teeth. But I have two tips that are going to make this sound easier for you.
First, your tongue and jaw need to be relaxed so the air flows freely. Th, th – You should not
be hearing that sound. Not a stop and release. It should be continuous – ttttttttthhhhhhhhhh.
Relaxed. So here, where the tongue attaches to the throat, ttthhhh, make sure it’s relaxed.
Thanks
Therapy
Thin
Thirty
Watch the the TH up close and in slow motion in the word ‘thirty’
Thirty
Second, there are actually quite a few cases where you shouldn’t bring the tongue tip all
the way through the teeth. There is a little shortcut that’s needed. We do this with words
that begin with voiced TH, that’s th instead of TH which is unvoiced. When you look in the
dictionary at the phonetic spelling, you’ll see this: /ð/ if the dictionary uses the international
phonetic alphabet. This is the symbol for voiced, th, and this is the symbol for unvoiced, θ.
So if the word is unstressed and starts with the voiced TH, we have a tongue shortcut. And there
are a lot of unstressed words that start with this: the, this, these, that, for example. The
shortcut is: don’t bring your tongue tip through the teeth so we can see the tip. Just touch it
quickly behind the teeth. I’m going to say ‘the’ over and over. You might see some of the tongue in
the gaps in my teeth, but I’m not bringing it all the way through like I do for the word ‘thanks’.
The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the.
Thanks,
the, the, the, the, the,
thanks.
One thing to avoid: Don’t make the tongue bounce on the roof of the mouth,
du, that sounds like a D, duh, duh, duh. It should be just straight forward. Du,
du, du, du, du. The best. The worst.
Fifth, the Dark L. Maybe you’ve never even heard of the Dark L before. This actually relates back
to number one, the OH diphthong. Sometimes students don’t say a dark L, they say an OH
diphthong. So ‘feel’ becomes ‘fee-oh’. Have you ever noticed that? I hear it in several
different language backgrounds, but right now I’m especially thinking of Vietnamese. With OH,
we wanted lip rounding, fee-oh. But with the Dark L, we want no lip rounding at all:
feelllll. We don’t want to make the sound with the front of our mouth, we make it with the back.
Fee—-uul. To make the Dark L, the tongue tip stays down. You might think, L, tongue tip up. But there
are actually two L sounds in American English, and tongue tip up is the light L. The Light L
comes before the vowel or diphthong in a syllable. Like, blast, like, dislike. The Dark L is all the
other L’s, where the L comes after the vowel or diphthong in a syllable. Feel. Felt. Called.
The light L is made like this, with the tongue tip lifting to the roof of the mouth,
or touching the bottoms of the top front teeth. The Dark L is made like this. Tongue tip down,
and the back of the tongue presses down and back a little bit. Uuuuuhhhl. Uhl,
no lip rounding. Let’s look upclose and in slow motion at the word bobble.
Ends in a dark L. You will not see the tongue tip go up.
Bobble
Now let’s look at a Light L, at the beginning of a word lake. The tongue tip does go up. I notice,
lake, I make it with the tongue pressing up on the bottom of the front top teeth. I’ve
noticed that as I study my mouth in this slow motion footage.
Lake
See the difference here. Light L, lake,
you see the tongue tip goes up. Dark L, bobble, the tongue tip stays down,
you can’t see it. We don’t need much jaw drop for the Dark L. Lips are relaxed.
Friends, I eat, sleep, and breathe American English sounds and American English accent.
It’s all I do, and it’s what I love to do. Right now, there are over 5000 students training with
me in this very specific and effective way in Rachel’s English Academy to improve their
accents to be more easily understood, but they’re also improving their listening
comprehension so they can understand other people speaking English easily. The focused lessons,
which include feedback from our team of teachers, are really what help our students excel. There is
no guessing what to work on or how to work on it, your accent training is laid out for you
for real results that you will feel in your body, and that your friends and coworkers
will notice. To find out more and join the Academy, visit Rachelsenglishacademy.com.
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I love being your English teacher. That’s it and thanks so much or using Rachel’s English.