Shadowing Practice: Episode 1: Fluent Pronunciation Training - Learn English Speaking with Video

Hey, what's up? Stefanie the English coach here  from EnglishFullTime.com. Today I want to share one of my fluent pronunciation trainings  with you. This is training number one.

Usually with these trainings, these are like  two-minute videos. They're designed for listen and repeat style learning. But in this video, I'm  actually going to break everything down. I'm going to show you. I'm going to analyze it with you.  I'm going to teach you. And then at the end I will give you the listen and repeat version so that you  can also train your pronunciation with this video.

Now if you discover that you like learning like  this, I want to invite you to join my English Life community because my students there get a training  like this every single week. And if you join right now, that's even better because all of our  members are going to be invited to do our Fluency Breakthrough challenge for free. And the challenge  starts on July 8th. So for more information, check out the links below. and I will see you  there. Okay. So, here we go. Fluent pronunciation training number one. Listen, internalize,  practice, repeat. So, the way we learn with this material, like I said, usually these videos  are listen and repeat style videos. They're just a couple minutes long. I say everything and then  my students repeat after me and they practice copying what I say exactly the way that I say  it. So, listening is the first part. You have to listen very closely and sometimes you have  to listen to these videos several times before your ears can really even hear the differences  in the sounds that we're working on or nuances that are hiding inside of some of the long words  or phrases, connected speech, stuff like that.

Then you have to internalize it. You have to  sort of just let it become a part of you. And I know that sounds strange, but the more you  do it, the more you internalize it actually.

Then you practice, right? you practice out loud.  Okay? But the practicing, notice that it is the third step. It's not like I want you to start  copying immediately. Train your ears first.

Okay? Listen to the video a few times. Train your  ears and then practice out loud so that your ears are ready to give you feedback on what you say and  how you say it. And then finally, the fourth step here is repeat. Just repeat the process. After you  practice out loud for a while, maybe it's time to listen again. To focus on listening and really  training your ears to hear sounds correctly, to hear how words are joined together so casually  and effortlessly and fluently and smoothly. Okay?

What's actually happening there? Train your ears  to recognize it. Okay? Internalize it. Let that rhythm of the language and the intonation patterns  become a part of you. Then practice out loud. It's just a cyclical process, okay? It's a cycle.  You just have to do it again and again and it will start to get easier. The first time is always  going to be the hardest. Okay? So, now let's dig in. We're going to compare some sounds. Okay. I  want us to compare the O sound and the Oh sound. O Oh. O Oh. O Oh. Now, the Oh is a diphthong.  Hopefully, you're already familiar with this sound. The O sound is a sound I have never heard  anyone else teach in English. I speak American English, by the way. I'm from California, born and  raised, so I have a West Coast Californian accent.

And in all the material out there for the American  accent, I've never heard anybody talk about this sound. Yet, this is a sound that I have found  I consistently use in my accent. So, I decided I use it. I'm going to teach it to my students.  I'm not going to wait for dictionaries to catch up with modern language. I'm just going to teach  it. So, here we go. This is the O sound. And it's very similar to the O in Spanish. Okay? Or if  you speak a language that uses a sound like this, listen to these words. Goal. Okay. Goal. Okay.  It goes from the G to the O to the dark L. Okay, goal. Like he scored a goal, right? We're all  talking about goals right now with the World Cup going on. Anyways, goal. Now, let's compare it to  go. Go. Go. Now, we have told. Told. He told me.

He told me he wouldn't be here today. He told  me. Told. Told. Told. Now, I see a lot of people teaching this like, "Oh, told, told." But I don't  know who speaks like that. Maybe they speak like that in the UK, but over here where I live, you're  going to hear people say told, "Told. Told. Told.

He told me." Now, let's compare it to. Toad.  There was a toad in the road. That rhymes.

Toad. Toad. Told. Toad. Now we have hole.  Like there is a hole in the ground. Hole.

Hone. I need to hone my skills. Hone. Hone. Now  I'm gonna read them all together. Goal. Go. Told toad. hole hone. Goal told hole. Go toad hone. So,  in this type of training, the way that I structure the words that we compare and contrast or lists  of words, there's always something that I'm doing in the background when I'm creating  a lesson like this that allows your brain, whether you realize it or not, it allows your  brain to pick up on some aspect of the language that maybe you didn't realize before. And this  is where the internalization part comes in.

You might start noticing things in the language  that you didn't even notice before simply because I'm putting the right words next to each other to  help you make these realizations. Next, we have rhyming words. So, all of these words rhyme. The  only difference is the initial sound. Here we go.

Very, bury, cherry hairy Dairy Scary. Marry again.  Very, bury, cherry, hairy, dairy, scary, merry.

So they all end with airy, airy, airy,  airy. That is the sound that repeats. And I love teaching pronunciation through rhyming  words because the spelling in English lies, okay? You look at the spelling and you think, "Oh,  the word should be pronounced like this." but it's actually not pronounced like that. And you can  clearly see that and hear that when you have words that rhyme next to each other. It makes you  go, "Oh my goodness, I didn't even realize I was saying this incorrectly." Now, native speakers,  they just know what words rhyme and what words don't. And we almost don't even care about the  spelling. We treat the spelling system of English and the spoken system of English as two separate  systems. Unfortunately for learners, you almost always learn the spelling system before the spoken  system. You learn how to spell words and how to read words even before you learn how to pronounce  words or how to pronounce those specific sounds in English. And then as an adult, you have to learn  how to undo all of that. And it can be so hard, but it's not impossible. And of course, that is  what I'm here to help with. Now we have skill practice. And here we're going to practice  the silent L. So in all of these words here, the L is silent. Do not pronounce it. Here we go.  Would, should, could, walk, talk, half, chalk, salmon. Again, would, should, could walk. Talk  half chalk salmon. Okay. Now, were any of these words surprising for you? Because I have worked  with so many English language learners around the world and these are the words that they almost  always mess up because of the silent L. Okay, so let us know in the comments which word were  you shocked to realize actually has a silent L.

Next, we have long words. And I'm just going to  read through this list a few times. sometimes a little bit slowly, sometimes faster. And I want  you to start feeling the sounds of the words.

I want you to start noticing what syllables  are reduced, what syllables sound stronger, more prominent, more clear in the word. Okay? And  remember, we often use the schwa, the uh sound uh uh uh when we reduce a syllable. So you might see  the letter O or the letter A or something like that, but you might be hearing uh uh uh. Okay. So  here we go. Photograph. Photograph. Photograph.

Photograph. Occasion. Occasion. Occasion.  Occasion. Necessary. Necessary. Necessary.

Necessary. Artificial. Artificial. Notice that T.  Artificial. Artificial. Scrumptious. Scrumptious.

Scrumptious. Scrumptious. Again, all of them.  Photograph. Occasion. Necessary. artificial, scrumptious. Okay, next we have something related  to culture. This time we have entertainers. These are famous people. I'm sure you've heard of them.  But what you'll notice is that when it comes to culture, when it comes to people, names, places,  proper nouns, there's a way that you pronounce it in your native language that sounds almost  nothing like what it sounds like in English. So, it's a real challenge learning how to say  something you've been saying all your life one way and then to say it another way. But that's okay  because here we are working on pronunciation in English. I'll show you how all of these names are  pronounced in English and then I challenge you to practice them and they might sound funny  in your mouth. They might sound weird or they might even sound wrong. I totally get it.  But for fun and for the sake of pronunciation, let's practice. Here we go. We have Frank  Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Freddy Mercury, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Whitney Houston,  Shakira, Beyonce. Okay, now I really want you to exaggerate the sounds. Okay. You might be trying  to pronounce them in English and you don't even realize that you're still using sounds from your  native language. For example, Spanish speakers, I don't want to hear Shakira. Okay. Shakira.  Shakira. Shakira. No. Madona. Okay. We're going to say Madonna. Madonna. Let's start over. Let's  start the list again. Here we go. Frank Sinatra.

Elvis Presley, Freddy Mercury, Michael Jackson,  Madonna, Whitney Houston, Shakira, Beyonce.

Okay. Next, we have some fixed phrases with food.  Now, when we say fixed phrases, we mean that the phrase exists like this and it doesn't change. So,  for example, salt and pepper. We don't say pepper and salt. We don't say, "Oh, can you please pass  the pepper and salt?" Like, that sounds so weird.

So, the phrases exist like this, and we don't  change it. Now, I'm going to read through this list, but one thing I want you to pay attention to  is the word and. We're going to shrink this down until it's almost non-existent. So, here we have  salt and pepper. Salt and pepper. Salt and pepper.

Okay. Salt. Salt. Also notice I am not releasing  the T. I am not saying salt. Salt and salt.

No. Salt. Salt. Okay. Salt and pepper. Salt and  pepper. Would you please pass the salt and pepper?

Bread and butter. Bread and butter. Bread  and butter. Bread and butter. Fish and chips.

Fish and chips. Fish and chips. Fish and  chips. Meat and potatoes. Meat and potatoes.

Meat and potatoes. Meat and potatoes. Peanut  butter and jelly. Peanut butter and jelly.

Would you like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?  Peanut butter and jelly. Peanut butter and jelly.

And finally, we have sentences. And  here we're focusing on contractions where the is becomes a 's. Okay. Listen, pizza's  ready. Pizza's ready. Gloria's coming over later.

My phone's charging in the kitchen. Something's  wrong with my computer. Okay, this is very natural English. This is what you're going to hear native  speakers say. This is how we talk. We drop words.

We connect words all the time. So, if I'm cooking  and you're at my house and I'm making a pizza, I'm not going to announce the pizza is ready.  I'm going to drop the "The" Okay, pizza's ready.

All right, everybody. Pizza's ready. Then we have  Oh, hey, guess what? Gloria's coming over later.

Gloria's Gloria is Gloria's. Gloria's coming  over later. My phone's charging in the kitchen.

Something's wrong with my computer. Okay, so  that is it. Now, let's go through everything at a faster pace. And we're going to go through  the whole lesson. So, you can do the listen and repeat part, but I'm not going to give you a  ton of time to repeat. If you need more time, just get ready to pause the video as I go through  everything and focus mostly on the listening because you actually want to listen, listen,  listen, listen so that your ears can give you that feedback to let you know when you're doing  something wrong. Okay? Then focus on repeating, copying, etc. Here we go. Fluent pronunciation  training number one. Listen, internalize.

Practice. Repeat. Sounds o oh o oh o oh Goal Go told toad. hole hone. Goal told hole go toad. Hone. Rhyming words. Very bury cherry  hairy dairy scary Marry. Again very bury cherry hairy dairy scary Marry. Skill practice  silent L. Do not pronounce the L. Here we go.

Would should could walk. Talk half chalk salmon.  Long words. Photograph. Occasion. Necessary.

Artificial. Scrumptious. Again. Photograph.  Occasion. Necessary. Artificial. Scrumptious.

Culture entertainers. Frank Sinatra, Elvis  Presley, Freddy Mercury, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Whitney Houston, Shakira, Beyonce. Again,  Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Freddy Mercury, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Whitney Houston,  Shakira, Beyonce. Fixed phrases with food.

Salt and pepper. Bread and butter. Fish and  chips. Meat and potatoes. Peanut butter and jelly.

Again, salt and pepper. Bread and butter. Fish and  chips. Meat and potatoes. Peanut butter and jelly.

Sentences contractions. The is becomes 's. Here  we go. Pizza's ready. Gloria's coming over later.

My phone's charging in the kitchen.  Something's wrong with my computer.

One more time. Pizza's ready. Gloria's coming  over later. My phone's charging in the kitchen.

Something's wrong with my computer. Okay, and that  is it. So, tell me what did you think? Did you learn something new? And did you notice something?  Share something that you noticed about how words are connected or sounds or something. Share  it with us in the comments. That way we can all learn from your observations. Okay. And before I  wrap up this video, I just want to say a big thank you to everyone who has subscribed here and who  has been subscribed here. I know many of you have been subscribed for years and I simply have been  completely inconsistent with my posting schedule.

And it's honestly I am so sorry. It's because  I'm just not superwoman. I cannot do it all.

God knows that I try but I've really been focused  on my kids. So, I had my first son, Arlo, in 2020, my second son, Rocco, in 2022. That has been  crazy. And I've just been focused on working with our students in our courses and our programs  because I had so many things that I wanted to dig into there and research and figure out. And  I was testing a lot of my ideas around learning with students, with real people. And I just think  that that's awesome because now when I come here and teach on YouTube, I'm not really just going to  be saying, "Oh, I think this is the best way. Yes, I'm a language learner. Yes, I can share  from my perspective what worked for me." But one of the craziest experiences I had in  all of this is realizing that what worked for me didn't always work for other people. And what  works for other people doesn't always work for me.

So now I just feel like I have a much much broader  understanding of language learning in general now that I've actually run courses and help  people get results by taking very specific actions and I want to talk about everything  that I learned through doing that because by the I don't know if I said this already but the  courses are complete now. I've basically created almost everything that I'm going to create as far  as course creation goes. And so now I have more time and more mental space to focus back on social  media and YouTube. I'm super excited about that because the courses while they are structured  learning experiences with lots of training, lots of information and just different things.  Believe it or not, there are things that I never got a chance to teach, like related to grammar,  for example, because my courses are not focused on grammar. And there are just other things about  language learning that I didn't really get to talk about all this time, and I just cannot wait to  share. So, that's it. A little bit long-winded.

I apologize, but I hope you enjoyed the lesson.  I hope you learned something, and I will see you soon in another video. Remember, if you want  to learn with me regularly, every single day, come check out our English Life community, you  are going to love it. It is like a playground for your English, but also so much more. You'll get  lessons. You'll get tasks and projects and things that you can do to improve your English skills.  You'll get to be part of an amazing community.

You'll get to practice your English whenever  you want. You'll get real speaking practice.

Also, we have some incredible bonuses that I've  just added. Um, so yeah, go check it out and I will hopefully see you on the inside. That's  all and I'll see you in another video. Bye.