Last night, my student was trying to improve her English speaking skills by shadowing Harry Potter.
Wingardium Leviosa.
But no matter how much Harry she watched, she couldn't improve because her English level was beginner.
I realized that she missed the most important thing when shadowing.
So, to help her and to help you, I have created a step-by-step learning curve to help you move from beginner to advanced with English pronunciation, articulation and accent.
The first thing is your mouth position.
Before jumping into any shadowing exercises, we need to be aware of our mouth shape and position when speaking English.
This is my jaw.
If I don't move my jaw when I speak, I sound unclear.
But if I drop my jaw when I speak, I sound clear.
As English speakers, we drop our jaw a lot when we speak.
This is uncommon in a lot of other languages.
So, as a non-native speaker, you need to drop your jaw more.
Here's how.
A tongue twister is repeating similar sounds which might twist your tongue or trip you up.
Here's an example.
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
Here's three tips to make tongue twisters more effective.
One, focus on opening your mouth a lot when you say them.
Over-exaggerate all the sounds and project them forward.
And three, go very slowly.
Remember, nice and slow is the way to grow.
But what's that?
I hear you ask.
But Jay, what sound do I practice?
Well, the simplest way to do this is to take one sound that you find difficult in your own language.
So, for example, if you're Korean, you might struggle with the L and R sounds.
So you can practice red lorry, yellow lorry, red lorry, yellow lorry, red lorry, yellow lorry.
If you're Spanish, you might struggle with the V sound.
So you could practice very berry, very berry. that's very berry good for your pronunciation and if you speak mandarin you might struggle with the n sound so you could practice a tongue twister like nine nasty nuns nick nuts by the way to nick is to steal in british slang now on to the next exercise A minimal pair is when there's a very small sound difference between two words.
For example, cap, cup, pan and pen, sheet and shit.
Just like practicing tongue twisters.
Minimal pairs can help you fix the specific sounds that you struggle with or you want to improve.
If you want to reach intermediate, do more shadowing.
Shadowing is copying a native speaker directly after they have just spoken.
The intention is not to understand perfectly, but rather is to mimic the mouth position and the sound that you hear.
Let's put this into action.
So I'm going to pull up spoutlanguage.com.
And Sprout Language is an English platform and app that I've built to help you guys become fluent in English.
Before I shadow this video, I'm going to set an intention.
My intention is to only shadow short, simple sentences.
And I'm going to pause the video at regular intervals.
So let's get into it.
Speaking of trees and bushes, this is a pine tree.
Speaking of trees and bushes, this is a pine tree.
You can tell by the needles.
You can tell by the needles.
These are pine needles.
These are pine needles.
Just like the needles that go in your skin.
Just like the needles that go in your skin.
When you go to the doctors.
When you go to the doctors.
Okay, you can see that I paused the video.
I only shadowed very short sentences.
This is level one of shadowing.
I was trying to copy the tone of the speaker.
I was trying to copy how high or low the voice is.
I was trying to copy the volume, how loud or how quiet they were speaking.
I'm trying to copy the facial expressions too and the gestures.
How do they move their hands?
How do they move their face?
The more you guys can get your body involved in shadowing, the more effective that it's going to be.
It becomes an all body exercise. very engaged and very effective.
Before we jump into level two of shadowing, the more advanced shadowing, I want to quickly discuss why my student struggled to shadow Harry Potter.
She struggled to understand.
Meticulous restraint required for advanced transfiguration process.
Miku, Miki, what?
Yeah, I totally got that.
English is cheating.
This was because she was a beginner and Harry Potter is quite an advanced level of English.
So this is why Sprout comes in super useful.
So you can see on the homepage, you have a recommended video.
Now this intelligently recommends a video for you guys based on your exact level of English.
So if you're B1, it will recommend B1 videos.
If you're B2, it will recommend B2 videos.
So watching videos at your level and shadowing those videos is key to improving your pronunciation.
Now I'm going to show you guys the next level of shadowing where I don't pause the video.
I'm just going to listen and shadow in real time.
It's a lot more challenging, but here's the idea.
You always need to trust your gut.
You always need to trust your gut.
Okay, Jay.
The moment... This is the final question.
This is the final question.
You have... You have...
No lifelines left.
And if you get this question wrong, you will then go down to $32,000.
But you do have the option to walk away now with $500,000.
Okay, so there I was shadowing our lovely Nikki and she has an American accent.
You can see that it was more challenging because I'm not pausing the video.
I'm trying to repeat directly after she has spoken and I'm trying to mimic her American accent.
My voice was higher, higher because she has a higher voice than me.
The idea is to play with this.
Now we've practiced our pronunciation, we've watched a video, we've learned new vocabulary, but the next step is to speak about this video.
I want to speak about the vocabulary used in this video.
So, I'm going to click this button here and it will pop up J.I.
J.I. is an AI version of me who you can speak with to improve your English.
Hi, Jay.
It's great to chat with you.
In the video, I was excited to play for $1 million.
How do you feel when you do something exciting?
When I do something exciting, I feel thrilled.
For example, I love riding roller coasters.
Although it's a little bit scary, I enjoy the feeling of butterflies in my stomach and the excitement of being in the theme park.
That sounds like fun.
Riding roller coasters can be thrilling.
It's great that you enjoy that feeling.
What is your favorite roller coaster that you have been on?
My favorite roller coaster I've been on is the big one in Blackpool.
There is a giant drop and it's pretty scary, but I remember it very fondly.
The big one in Blackpool.
That sounds intense.
I'm glad you have fond memories of it.
It's amazing how a little bit of fear can make things exciting, isn't it?
It is indeed, J.I.
Now tell me, what is the difference between fear and being scared?
That's a great question.
Scared is a feeling you have right now about something.
Like if you see a spider, you might feel scared.
Fear is more like a general feeling or idea about something dangerous or bad.
It's a bit more serious.
Does that make sense?
That makes perfect sense.
Okay, thank you, Jay.
That's all for today.
I'll chat to you tomorrow.
It was great chatting with you today, Jay.
You're making excellent progress.
And I'm excited to hear more from you tomorrow.
Goodbye for now.
See ya.
Now this is a wonderful way to immerse yourself in English.
You watch a video, you understand new vocabulary and then you speak about it to reinforce that vocabulary.
There's no stress or anxiety about talking to a real person, and it's something that you can practice every single day, which is the key to becoming better in English.
It's a small piece of action every single day.
I'm super excited by JI.
I think it's extremely powerful to help you guys improve your English.
Now, let's move on to the advanced exercises.
Connect dat speech.
Connected speech makes sentences sound smoother, faster, and more natural.
There are four main types of connected speech.
However, for simplicity, today we're gonna focus on two.
They've got fancy names, but you don't have to remember the names.
The first one is called catenation, and catenation is when two words link together.
For example, pick it up becomes pick it up.
Pick it up, pick it up.
Oh yes, sir.
Turn it off becomes turn it off.
Turn it off, turn it off.
Oh yes, sir.
Put it on becomes put it on, put it on Oi, put it on.
Oh, yes, sir.
Put it on, sir.
Another fun example is my cat ate all my ice cream.
Now, that sounds unnatural if I say it like that, so I would say my cat ate all my ice cream.
It's a strange one.
I'm joining cat ate all, it sounds like cat ate all, and I'm joining ice cream, ice cream.
My cat ate all my ice cream.
So if you're an advanced level, you really want to be aware of connected speech.
It's going to help you sound a lot more native.
The second type of connected speech is called intrusion.
Intrusion is when a sound intrudes.
It's when we add a tiny extra sound in between two vowel sounds.
For example, instead of saying go out, we would say go out, go out.
Instead of saying I agree, we would say I agree, I agree.
And instead of saying vanilla ice cream, we would say vanilla rice cream, vanilla ice cream.
And yes, it sounds like rice cream, vanilla ice cream.
Why do we do this?
Well, for me and all natives, it's just smoother and easier.
Here's a fun example combining catenation and intrusion.
I ate eight apples.
I ate eight apples.
Can you say that one?
I ate eight apples.
I ate eight apples.
If you're intermediate and you want to become a more advanced English speaker, then being aware of connected speech when shadowing or when having a conversation will help you to reach that level.
Besides connected speech, we also have rhythm.
In English, we don't say every word with the same force.
That sounds boring.
Instead, we stress the important words like verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs.
The less important words, like the small grammar words, we say very lightly.
This creates the natural rhythm of English.
Let's look at an example.
I want to eat some cake.
In this sentence, want, eat and cake are the stressed words.
I say them louder and with more emphasis, with a bit more oomph.
In that sentence, it goes unstressed, stressed, unstressed, stressed.
This is a regular pattern in English.
However, when we extend the sentence, when we lengthen the sentence, then we tend to have more unstressed syllables jammed together.
What do we do?
Well, we tend to shorten them and speed them up.
Instead of saying can you call your mum when you get home?
Who would say can you call your mum when you get home?
That's a natural way to say it.
And notice that I said can you, can you call?
Can you becomes?
Can you?
Can you, can you call when you get home?
Becomes when you get, when you get home.
Can you call your mum when you get home?
Can you call your mum when you get home?
Got it?
Good.
The best way to practice this and get better is to shadow.
Now you need to shadow with intention.
You need to focus on the natural rhythm of English while you are shadowing.
This takes a little bit of fine tuning and focus from your brain, but it will really get you to an advanced level of speech and have you sounding just like a native.
I want to speak like you.
I wanna speak like you, shadow you too Wanna speak like me?
Shadow me.
Now let's do a musical exercise to practice your rhythm.
Make a cake.
Make me a cake.
Can you make me a cake?
Can you make me a cake?
Cause I'm hungry.
If you like this video and you want to improve your English by watching videos, learning new vocabulary and speaking about it with JI afterwards, then check the link in the description for SproutLanguagecom.
Immerse yourself in English and have a beautiful day.
