In this solo instructional podcast, Hadar Shemesh explains that confidence is a skill that can be developed and that certain speech patterns can undermine perceived confidence for non‑native English speakers. She outlines four key prosodic and articulatory patterns to watch: (1) rising vs. falling intonation, where rising pitch signals questions or uncertainty and falling pitch signals finality and confidence; (2) upspeak, the habit of ending every clause with a rising pitch, which can make speech sound tentative; (3) sentence‑final stress, emphasizing the last content word rather than letting the pitch and volume drop, to ensure the listener hears the focal point; (4) word grouping versus word‑by‑word articulation, encouraging learners to connect words into thought‑units for clearer, more confident delivery. She also warns against speaking too quickly without clear articulation, advising learners to slow down on stressed words and speed up on less important function words to achieve natural English rhythm. Throughout, she shares personal anecdotes, practical examples, and directs listeners to her website, free resources, and a pronunciation masterclass for deeper practice. The episode ends with a call for listeners to share their own confidence‑undermining patterns in the comments.
Chapters
Hey everyone, it's Hadar Shemeshesh. Today I'm going to teach you the speech patterns that are going to help you sound more confident. Now, short caveat before, the best way to sound confident is to be more confident. Confidence is a skill. It's not something you necessarily are born with, and it's not something that only happens when you improve your fluency. Confidence is something that you can definitely work on, and I talk a lot about it and I'm going to link to other videos where I talk about how to build confidence as a skill. However, there are some patterns that you might be using that you're not even aware of, that they might be making you sound less confident or more uncertain, and it's good to be aware of them, especially if English is your second language and you might be bringing in patterns from your first language, and these patterns are perceived in a different way in English. So today I'm going to teach you some of these patterns and also how to avoid them. So let's get started. Before that, if you're new to my channel, my name is Hadar Shemesheshemesh. I'm a non-native speaker of English, and I'm here to help you speak English with clarity, confidence, and freedom. A little anecdote, speaking of sounding confident, if you're watching this on my YouTube channel, you can scroll up or down to one of the very first videos that I created, and you can see the difference between how I sound today and how I sounded 10 years ago when I was a lot less confident. And also, I didn't know about all of these things that I'm teaching you now. It's not that I didn't know, it was just something that I didn't apply right away because a lot of the work that I do is based on my own experience, not only as an English student, but also as an English teacher. So many of the things that I'm teaching you now are things that I learned myself in my process of becoming a more confident communicative speaker, and I'm speaking here to you. So just something that I wanted to share. If you want to check out my website, you'll find there a ton of free resources and hundreds of different lessons. So go to HadarShemesh.com and/or you can follow me on social media and get access to daily lessons that I share on my social platforms. All right, so let's get started with the first pattern. And the first pattern is rising intonation. In English and in other languages as well, but right now we'll focus on English. There is a pattern where you go up in pitch or down in pitch. There are other patterns. I'll talk about these two, rising intonation and falling intonation. Rising intonation is when your voice goes up and stays up there. Uh, do it with me. Yes, yes. Starting low and going up, right? English is not flat. It's not yes, yes, Same note. Yes, rising intonation, and yes, falling intonation, starting high and dropping down. Yes, yes, yes. Now, as I'm saying this, you can already start associating the meaning or the intention behind how I'm saying it. Yes, Yes. I'm sure you can hear that in the first way I said the word yes, there is some kind of a question mark at the end versus yes, that feels more like a full stop. Yes? Yes. Really? Really. Right? So the rising, rising intonation has an open quality to it. So we use it when we ask questions, especially yes/no questions. Are you hungry? Do you want to go? Is it late? Are you there? Right? So it means that I'm expecting something from the listener. I'm also going to use this rising, rising intonation in the middle of the sentence if there is something else coming up. I always call it like the comma of intonation, where you put a comma. There is something else coming up. Don't interrupt me. I'm not done. I'm going to go to the store and get some milk, sugar, and eggs. The falling intonation closes it. It means full stop. So, I talked to her yesterday and she told me that she wasn't coming. Yesterday wasn't coming. Can you see? Yesterday, I'm not done, wasn't coming. I'm done. Now you can speak. Rising intonation is a great tool to communicate and to indicate that there is something else coming up and that you are either asking a question, but sometimes it can also indicate that you are uncertain. For example, I think I know how to do that. Okay, that rising, rising intonation means that I'm kind of doubting myself. I don't know, I'm not sure. Versus, "I think I know how to do that." Fall— rising, falling at the end. "I think I know how to do that." When I drop at the end, it means that I'm more certain and more confident in what I'm saying. Now, don't get me wrong, if you are uncertain, it's totally fine to say, "I think I know how to do that." Maybe you need to teach me, but if you are certain, then understanding that the rising intonation at the end is not ideal and you want to drop it at the end. Another example, "So, I work as a software developer and I have 5 years of experience," versus "I work as a software developer and I have 5 years of experience." So what it projects or what it suggests is very different depending on how you're using. Now, there's also a pattern called upspeak where someone speaks and they always raise the pitch at the end and they never stop. So yesterday I went to see my friend and I told her that I wasn't going to participate in her party preparation and She said that it's really not cool, and I was very upset, and then we had a fight, and then we had dinner together, and you see the point where I always drop— raise the pitch at the end. Now, this is a very common pattern, especially among certain groups, maybe younger people or certain social groups. No judgment whatsoever. This is a speech pattern. And this is something that happens in the language. But when I do that consistently without thinking about it, then I might sound a little too repetitive or a little uncertain, or that pattern is very noticeable. So there isn't interest, there, there isn't engagement in how you say things. And this is something else that I want you to be aware of because I see with my students, especially non-native speakers of English, sometimes they do that because they're thinking about the next sentence. They're thinking about what to say, and because of that, they lift the pitch because in their head there is something else that they want to say, but they don't notice that they keep going up and up and up, and that makes them sound a little less confident or certain or just repetitive. So be mindful of the rising pitch and start changing it, playing around with it. I have more videos about intonation and pitch, and if you want to find out more, make sure you click the link. Link below this video. I also have a pronunciation masterclass and it's absolutely free, and it's really going to teach you the elements of speech that you need to speak with confidence, clarity, and freedom. So make sure you grab your free seat in the description below. The next pattern I want to talk about is dropping at the end of sentences. This is something that might even happen to you in your first language, just something to think about. It almost feels like people put a lot of energy into the beginning of the sentence, and then when it's at the end, they're— they check out, they're done before they are actually done. I think I'm not gonna go to that party. I've been working on it for a few months now, but I haven't published the book. So it's like I put in a lot of energy and then gradually I dial it down a little bit and dial it down and dial it down until the last word is not even noticeable anymore. It's kind of like coming out of the frame. And the thing is that in English, usually the last content word in the sentence is the one that gets most of the stress or is the focus word, which means that it needs to be lifted. For example, "I've been waiting for 20 minutes," and not "I've been waiting for 20 minutes." "I've been waiting for 20 minutes." You lift the word minutes, or I forgot to bring my keys versus I forgot to bring my keys. I forgot to bring my keys. Right. So keys is the focus word here, and you want to lift it both in terms of length, pitch, and volume. Okay. And if you drop it down, then the key word in the sentence is not going to be heard. So this is something that I want you to pay attention to. So it's kind of like the opposite of raising the pitch at the end. Here you're dropping the pitch, but you're also dropping the volume. You want to find a nice balance between lifting it and dropping the pitch. Another pattern that I want you to be aware of is making sure that you don't separate the words to be clear. A lot of speakers of English as a second language have a tendency of separating the words. Do you want to go? Just to sound clear. Or maybe they feel like they can't connect it. Maybe they feel like connecting words means speaking faster, and that just doesn't feel right for them. But the thing is, here's how you need to see it. People expect to hear not word by word by word by, but thought by thought by thought. Every thought is grouped together. All the words are connected. This is how we think. This is how you speak in your first language. And this is how English works. So, for example, instead of saying, "I'll check my calendar and let you know when I'm free," right? Here, I'm trying to be clear and saying every word separately. Instead, you want to group it up. "I'll check my calendar and let you know when I'm free." Two groups. "I'll check my calendar," da-da-da-da-da-da, I'm connecting all the words together, "and let you know when I'm free." So even when you listen to me speak now, you'll notice that I'm connecting the words together and I'm slowing down on the words that require a little bit more emphasis, or I take a break before emphasizing a word, or before an important part, or before an important part. All of that was grouped together. I'm not saying that for you to start speaking faster. I'm saying that for you to understand that when you speak, connecting words actually helps you sound more clear and ultimately more confident. Because when you are speaking word by word by word, it almost feels like you are holding your words back out of lack of confidence or out of uncertainty, and you're choosing the words and you are delivering them one by one. But I want I want you to connect the words even if you don't speak faster, because first of all, it will help you group an idea together. You will be more clear, even if it feels counterintuitive, and you will sound and ultimately feel more confident. Okay? Good. And that brings us to the last pattern that I want you to be aware of and potentially avoid is to Speak quickly without clarity. So here's the thing, I come across a lot of students who are fast speakers, non-native speakers of English who speak English, and they tend to speak fast. And usually it has a few reasons. One could be a habit that they bring from their first language. They are just fast speakers, and that's how they speak in their first language and in English. The second one, their brain is really fast, works really, really fast and the mouth is not catching up with the brain. So the mouth is speeding up, so you're speaking faster and the brain is already in like the third, fourth sentence and the mouth is trying to catch up, so you're speaking faster. Another reason that I often see is that people associate speed with fluency and they want to be perceived as more fluent and they just speak faster because they think this is how they're going to sound more fluent, where it's not necessarily the case. And lastly, sometimes people speak faster because they're afraid of making mistakes, and they know that if they were to speak faster, they're— the listener may not hear those mistakes. Okay? Maybe there are more reasons, but these are the reasons that I've collected. And the thing is that speaking faster without knowing what to do with your mouth, without clear articulation, without recognizing that stressed words still need to be prolonged. You wanna slow down on them. Stressed is going to make you sound unclear, and a lot of, of the times, just a little unsure of what you're saying. Okay? It's actually the opposite. It feels a little chaotic, and it's going to result ultimately in people asking you to repeat yourself. Speaking slower is not a disadvantage, it's a huge advantage. And here's the thing about English, you don't need to speak fast. You can reduce the parts that are less important, all the function words. I talk a lot about that. I'm going to link to more resources where I talk about it, and also in my masterclass I talk about it where you can reduce less important parts and go a little faster, but it doesn't mean that you need to go fast as a rule whenever you speak. You wanna go faster in the parts that are less important and slow down on the parts that are more important. And that is how you find the balance. That also gives you the rhythm of English, but it's not just to speak fast. And like I said, we don't wanna drop sounds. We wanna make sure, sure that our articulation is clear. So speaking fast without clarity and without the foundation of prosody, intonation, rhythm, sentence stress, word stress is going to make you sound less clear and ultimately less confident. So these are the things that I want you to remember, become more aware of, recognize where you might be a little less in control, and see what you want to do to change that. All right, that is it. Now I have a question for you. What are the patterns that you notice when other people use, or when you use, or maybe you have used in the past that made you sound or feel less confident or clear when communicating in English? Let me know in the comments and we'll start a conversation. And like I said, if you want to get more tools, make sure that you check out all the resources that I linked for you in the description below. And definitely make sure that you save your seat to my free pronunciation masterclass where we'll take some of the things that I talked about here, and you are going to get practical tools for implementation because Theory is great, but implementation is key. Thank you so much for joining me today. And remember, confidence is something that you deserve to feel, and you can work on it, and I'm here to help you do just that. Have a beautiful, beautiful rest of the day, and I'll see you next week in the next video. Bye.
