This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 349.
Three key sounds that will make you sound like a native speaker.
Welcome to the All Ears English podcast downloaded more than 10 million times.
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With your American hosts Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, and Michelle Kaplan, the New York radio girl, coming to you from Boston and New York City, USA.
Do you want to sound more like a native English speaker?
Today you'll learn three key sounds that you should focus on to sound more natural, with our guest, who brings his acting and vocal training background into today's episode.
We'll be right back.
Our guest is able to identify student challenges and focus on the most important pronunciation issues for you.
Our guest today is Sean Morgan.
Now let's welcome Sean to the show.
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Hi, Sean.
Welcome to the show.
How are you today?
Very good, Lindsay.
Thank you.
Good.
I'm glad you were able to join us today.
You know you are a pronunciation expert on italki and we're happy to have you here because again, we don't have pronunciation experts on very often and I know a lot of our listeners really want to improve their pronunciation.
So welcome.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, how did you get into teaching pronunciation?
I mean, why do you teach only pronunciation or specifically pronunciation?
Well, I started teaching English on italki and a lot of my students happened to be advanced speakers and they had a lot of trouble with pronunciation, but they weren't looking for pronunciation help.
However, I found that I had a special gift for identifying pronunciation issues due to my acting and vocal training.
I was able to do some very careful listening and...
You know, I can do impressions of accents from all over the world.
I somehow am able to tune into that and hear things that other teachers cannot hear, and then be able to give specific instructions on what students can do with their throat muscles, the shape of their mouth, their tongue and
And also memory devices for remembering the different categories of sounds.
Oh, I like that.
So understanding and being able to hear pronunciation is a big part of being able to help people improve it right.
Yes.
Some languages do not have the same sounds in their language, and so a speaker of a different language from English would not even hear this new sound.
It would not register because they do not have a reference for it.
Oh, that's interesting.
Okay, well, that gets us into your tips a little bit.
So could you let us know your three top tips?
If our listeners want to start to sound more natural and they've been working on this for years and years and they haven't found success yet what would be three things that they could do, maybe on their own, to get started to getting towards a smoother pronunciation style?
Sure.
Real quickly, I can say that I do specialize in the American accent.
Okay.
I'm native from the United States and there are two sounds that are very specific to the American accent.
And one is the R-modified sound, er.
Yeah, the er sound, okay.
The R.
And the way I help people figure out what this sound is, is by thinking of a dog growling.
And in the British English their version of this sound is more of an open sound like prop-uh instead of the American prop-err.
I see.
I see.
Okay.
So yeah, I always give people exercises where they practice this dog growling sound and they feel silly at first, but it really helps them get the idea of the sound that we're trying to create.
I like that.
So you think that that R sound is one of the most important sounds in the American English pronunciation.
Is that right?
That R sound?
Most definitely.
Very, very important.
Yeah, absolutely.
Okay, so how can our listeners work on this on their own?
Should they go around growling like a dog?
Is that what they can do?
Well, you know, it'd be good to have a reference for the way the British do it.
So you could go to Google and search a word that has an ER, especially an ER at the end of a word, like the word proper.
And just Google proper definition, and then there should be a way to play the audio in the British and the American versions.
And when you can hear the difference, you have a reference that helps you understand the sound better.
Yeah, they are really, really different.
It's incredible.
I mean, it's really interesting.
But this er sound, we say it in tons of words in American English.
So I like that.
I like that.
It sounds like you really like to focus on what's really important and what's more frequent and not waste time on kind of insignificant aspects of pronunciation.
Is that right?
That's right.
In fact, one of the tips I wanted to give next is to start out focusing on just the vowel sounds.
Good.
Okay.
I wanted to talk about the other very American sound, which is the nasal A sound.
Okay.
And how does that sound to us?
Can you demonstrate?
Sure.
The British would say more of an aw sound in a word such as apple.
Or the British would say maybe opple or perhaps another word like lands.
The Americans would say land, and the British might say land.
Those might not be the best examples, but there are a lot of words where the British use more of an ah, an ah kind of word.
The memory device I have for ah is that you imagine you're at the doctor and he puts the tongue depressor in your mouth and you open wide and you say ah.
Right, okay.
That's an important vowel sound.
But the American nasal A, the sound is tonally in the nasal cavity, which is much higher.
It's one of the higher tonal sounds.
And I think of the movie Dumb and Dumber, the first movie where Jim Carrey asks His buddy do you want to hear the most annoying sound in the world?
And then he makes this sound.
And that is the nasal sound.
It's not exactly the most beautiful sound.
Oh, that was a great movie, Dumb and Dumber.
Okay, so that sound.
It is not a beautiful sound, you're right, but we use it a lot in American English, right?
Right.
We use it a lot in words like apple and land, sand, and.
The word and is one of the most common words in the English language.
Sure, sure, absolutely.
We have to be able to say that sound.
Yes.
Yeah I like it.
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So what kind of activities do you do with students to get them to be able to pronounce this A sound more, this nasal A?
Then
Are there any particular activities that you use?
What I do is help them explore their vocal register by ordering the vowel sounds by lowest tonally to highest tonally, so that they understand that all sounds, especially the vowels, have to do with tonality.
And so by starting out low with a sound like Long O, O, or the schwa sound, uh.
It's very low in the throat.
And then going up into the long E, that's a very, very high tonal sound E.
So the nasal A is very high tonally.
So being able to explore the vocal register really helps students be able to create that sound.
I see.
I see.
Very cool.
So, so far we have the er sound and the nasal A, the A sound.
So what is the third point that you, that our listeners, could focus on to really improve their pronunciation?
What do you think, Shawn?
Well, there's no use in trying to focus on the thousands of combinations of consonant and vowel sounds.
Just start out with the five long vowel sounds and then the other maybe six short vowel sounds and just practice those.
And you're going to be able to reduce your accent by who knows, maybe up to 50, because our language is made up of 50 vowel sounds.
Right.
We have a lot of vowel sounds.
And can you pronounce those vowel sounds for us now on the show?
Sure.
Yeah, the letters are A E I, O and U And the long vowel sounds are pronounced just like the letters in the alphabet.
A, I, O, E, and U, or OO.
I don't know if we have time to go into all the short vowels.
No, we don't have time for that.
But tell us a success story about some of the students that you've worked with that you've been able to really help them improve in terms of their pronunciation.
Does anything stand out to you in terms of a particular student?
Yes.
Something that comes to mind is that some people are learning an accent reduction or pronunciation course just for being able to feel more confident, which is great.
But I had another situation where someone was a medical doctor and he was really worried that his patients were not getting the information they needed because they couldn't understand him.
And so, through just a few classes, he was able to reduce his accent by maybe 50, which would mean that his patients could understand 50 more of the information they needed to stay healthy.
Oh, that's so important.
I could see how you would be nervous about that.
I mean, that's really scary if you have something you need to say to a patient and you're not sure if the patient totally got the message.
Wow.
Okay.
So that's good.
So we can see that it really can help by focusing on vowel sounds and sort of the key sounds in the English language.
And just after a couple of lessons, it sounds like, did you work with him just two or three times?
Yes, you know, pronunciation is not a quick fix.
You have to practice over time and develop muscles within your mouth.
But you know, taking one lesson a week and practicing all week, within a month you can reduce your accent quite a bit.
Within a month.
I like that.
I like that.
That's relatively quick results.
So, Sean, we know that you focus on teaching on italki, right?
You offer your pronunciation course.
What is the name of your special pronunciation course?
What do you call that?
The American Accent Training.
Oh, perfect.
Okay, great.
So we'd like to invite our listeners over to italki to check out what you have to offer, because I know that this is a major pain point for our listeners.
So we wanted to have you on today to show them what you're able to do and how you might be able to help them right.
So guys, in order to work with Sean, we want you to first go to allearsenglishcom.
Forward slash I-T-A-L-K-I.
Register on that page.
And if you register there... you'll get $10 off your second lesson with Sean.
So, after you register on that page, where should our listeners go Sean, after they've registered at allearsenglishcom?
Forward slash I-T-A-L-K-I.
How can they find you?
Well, my name is Sean Morgan and the name Sean is spelled S E A N And my link is italkicom backslash Sean Morgan.
Oh, Okay, great, great.
Awesome.
So if they're able to register through that page that I mentioned before, they'll be able to take the first lesson with you and they'll get tenuous dollars off your second lesson.
So we want to invite you guys to go over and check out Sean's American English pronunciation class, to get going with this accent, because we know this holds you back right.
I mean, have you seen this, Sean, with your students?
There's a lot of...
A lack of confidence, a sense of being shy, being afraid to open our mouths.
Yes, I've found that this increases confidence across the communication spectrum.
It's not just that accent.
It's about feeling more comfortable speaking.
Ugh.
Absolutely.
And that's what we want.
We just want to feel comfortable, because here at All Ears English, we say that it's about connection, not perfection, right?
And that is our goal is to connect with people.
And if we don't have the pronunciation that we need, we cannot connect with people.
Well, Sean, thank you so much for coming on today.
Do you have any final tip, like piece of advice for our listeners when it comes to pronunciation?
Any words of wisdom?
Yes.
Ask your teacher or your language exchange partner to focus on the top 100 words in the English language.
And you're going to be able to, you know, improve your pronunciation and your speaking ability, especially if you're a beginner.
I like that.
I like that.
Well, thanks so much, Sean, for coming on.
And I was excited to hear about your methods and what you're focusing on over there at italki.
So thanks so much and have a good day.
Thank you, Lindsay.
It's a pleasure.
Thank you.
Take care.
You too.
Bye.
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