Look Who's Talking

Do people think you’re crazy? If the answer is ‘no,’ then I know you haven’t been doing your homework!

Yes, this is one of those posts where I’m checking up on you. Are you talking to your plant? Here is what will happen if you do:

• You can practice new sounds
• You will gain confidence
• Your mouth muscles get exercise
• You can test new vocabulary
• Plants grow better when you talk to them
• The plant won't laugh at you

Of course, you can talk to your dog or cat too, they’ll also love it. Way back in ‘92 when I didn’t know how to speak Spanish, one of my roommates had a couple of parakeets. I asked him what they were called and he said ‘buitritros.’ Whew, that was a hard word for me to pronounce so I practiced and practiced and every day I said good morning to the buitritros and every evening I wished them a good night. And every time I said it my roommates laughed. I thought it was because I was pronouncing it so badly. I found out later that a buitrito is a little vulture. LOL!

In any case, talking to those birds really helped me get my mouth around new sounds and did wonders to boost my confidence.

Some people find singing a lot more fun than talking. That’s great. Pick a song in English that you like and use youtube to help you learn it. Even if you can only remember the chorus, that’s a great start. Your plant is going to love it!

Until soon!

Jennifer

Silver Spoon

Being one of the 7 metals of antiquity, silver has long been valued as a precious metal. As currency, a conductor or as decoration, it has been used by humans since prehistoric times.

And you may recall that we use the word ‘silver’ as our reference point for a particular vowel sound. In primary school they called this sound the ‘short i’ (as opposed to the ‘long i’ that you hear in white). But the sound is not always represented by the letter ‘i’ as in business, build and women.

And to make matters worse, you probably don’t have this sound in your first language, so you have to learn it. So, today I have a special treat for you. I asked my dear friend and colleague, pronunciation expert Peggy Tharpe, to give us some tips on how we can master this sound. Here is what she explains:

The first thing we have to be aware of is that in the place of the silver sound, you are using the ‘green’ sound. Say /Ey/ (the vowel sound in ‘green’). Your tongue moves up diagonally from the bottom of your mouth, coming to touch your bottom teeth. The lips and jaw are tensed. Repeat a few times until you can identify where your tongue is.

From this sound, Peggy takes us to what is called the schwa, or as I like to call it, ‘mustard.’ This sound is easy to make … imagine you arrive home from a long day at work, you plop down on the sofa and you say ‘uh.’ This is the mustard sound. Practice this sound a few times. The lips and jaw are totally relaxed and your tongue rests at the bottom of your mouth.

Now we can try the silver sound. Your jaw and lips are relaxed. Your tongue moves up to touch your top teeth. To help your tongue learn this new trick, try standing in front of a mirror and as you say the first syllable of the word ‘silver’ bring your shoulders up towards your ears. This action is what Peggy calls a ‘Body Buddy:’ a large muscle movement that coaches it’s little brother, the tongue muscle.

Peggy describes the tongue as a rebellious teenager who doesn’t listen to its parents … the brain. Intellectually, you can understand the concept, but the tongue itself resists cooperation. But for some reason, the tongue does listen to a bigger sibling. This is why the Body Buddy will help you.

Peggy’s website is chockfull of pronunciation solutions for speakers of many different languages so I guarantee you’ll find the answers you’re looking for:

Every cloud has a silver lining,

Jennifer

Silver vs. Green

By now you must know that I’m a big fan of sound. I married a music promoter. My whole family either sings or plays a musical instrument (we have guitars, ukuleles, harmonicas, a piano, diverse percussion instruments … ) I even have my own radio station!

Perhaps it’s part of my culture … have you ever noticed that anglos can’t stand silence? We even have music for a 10 second elevator trip!

Now, I’ll bet my bottom dollar that you and I hear some of the same sounds differently. For example, to me the word ‘silver’ sounds like /sil-vEr/. To a Spanish speaking ear it sounds like /sEyl-vEr/, the same sound that’s in the word ‘green’. This is completely unintelligible to a native English speaker because the tonic (the vowel sound of the important syllable) isn’t correctly pronounced. It is not a question of accent reduction, but rather accent neutralisation. This involves learning to hear the sounds so that you can reproduce them correctly.

We learn to distinguish between the different sounds our mothers make when we are still in the womb. Those sounds are ingrained in our brain like a statue carved in stone. This makes learning a new sound as an adult so challenging. I remember trying to learn the Catalan ‘ll.’ My tongue did all kinds of weird tricks until it figured out where it was supposed to be.

Reading and writing won’t help you with this. You need to listen and speak. I’ve put together a collection of videos for you to watch that are perfect for your level. Just go to my youtube channel:

There are different playlists according to what you’re looking for. Don’t forget to subscribe to receive notifications of new videos!

To the Silver Tongue,

Jennifer

Listen Up!

Here is how you learned your first language:

listening > speaking > reading > writing > grammar

If you learned English as a second language in school, you probably did the exact opposite. You started with the grammar, you copied meaningless words and phrases, you read textbooks, your speech was unintelligible to a native speaker and it was likely quite difficult for you to understand what anybody was saying.

Your ears are the very first part of your body you should be using to learn to speak English fluently. Remember, your mouth only does half of the work in your first language too. The rest of a conversation is spent listening. Otherwise, how would you know what to say?

And believe it or not, the actual words are of relative unimportance. I’ve mentioned before that only 20% of our communication is what we say. The rest is gestures, facial expressions and tone. For example, I know when a native English speaker is asking me a question ... even if the structure of the sentence is not in the interrogative form, there are no question words and including if the speaker uses only one word ... because their tone goes up at the very end. This change in the sound tells me how to respond.

Sound, that’s the important thing. There are 40 sounds in English, 24 consonant sounds and 16 vowel sounds. Without a doubt, the vowel sounds are the most important and are also the sounds you likely find more challenging. I encourage you to practice them with this three-minute ESL Vowel Sounds Yoga workout video:

As with the other 'homework' I recommend, it's in your best interest to practice with this video every day: perhaps in the morning to start the day off by centering yourself or as a break in the middle of the day, or in the evening to end the day with a nice relaxing exercise. Either way, work it into your daily agenda and you will find that you dominate these 16 essential sounds in no time!

Have a great week!

Jennifer

Chunking

Just this week a new student signed up with me and she said something I’d like to share with you,

“I will never be fluent in English.”

Ouch! She continued by saying she’s been studying for a very long time and feels like she’s been running around in circles getting nowhere.

When I moved from Canada to Spain almost a quarter of a century ago I knew four words in Spanish: Dos cervezas por favor. And I couldn’t even say those right. So how did I get from zero to being fluent (TV and radio appearances, magazine articles)? I chunked.

What is that? Chunking is breaking a big thing down into smaller pieces. The process involves understanding the smaller tasks and putting them on a timeline. Reaching these mini goals is rewarding and keeps you focused, making you hungry for more victories.

I discovered this method while studying Theatre Direction at university. Think about your fluency as opening night. What has to be done in the weeks and months prior to the big show? The actors have to learn their lines, the costumes have to be made, the set has to be built, posters and programs have to be designed and printed … and as you can imagine, all these tasks have to be executed in a specific order. It’s so much easier to do this by working backwards.

Perhaps the best way to start is with a good, old-fashioned pencil and a piece of paper. Brainstorm all the things you have to do to reach fluency. Here are a few things that may be on your list:

• Look for a good teacher
• Learn the irregular verbs
• Master the sounds in English (the sounds are the building blocks)
• Amass vocabulary
• Learn what the different verb tenses are for (we use the tenses to express more than just time)
• Join a conversation group

This list has very general concepts on it but you should make yours as specific as possible. For example, ‘amass vocabulary’ could be ‘learn 5 new words every day.’

Next draw a line on your piece of paper and write ‘FLUENCY’ at the far right end. Now put all the points on your list in chronological order along the timeline. The following step is to determine the regularity with which you will be performing these tasks. For example, if you do your research, you will only have to look for a good teacher once, but you will have to learn some new words every day to keep up the momentum. So now go to your agenda (the one you use for work) and load all your tasks onto it. When that little bell goes off … do it!

Directing a play is a lot like learning a language. You start out with a few words, you go through a process and then you amaze your audience. It’s tempting to dream about the great reviews while you’re still rehearsing, but in reality this only distracts you from your goal. By focusing on each step, the work gets done in a logical sequence ... and I emphasise ‘gets done.’

Start brainstorming your list right now. Just grab any old scrap of paper and write down the first things that come to your head. Stuck for ideas? Why not check out the ‘Speak English Once and for All’ facebook group?

Break a leg!

Jennifer

ps: ‘break a leg’ is a theatre expression that means ‘good luck.’ It’s considered bad luck to say ‘good luck!’