527. 3 Things Musicians Know About Pronunciation Practice That English Learners Don't

Is the way you've been practicing your pronunciation making your English worse? Let's find out. Today we are going to talk about what musicians know about practice that English learners don't, and I'm going to share my thoughts about it from the perspective of someone who has learned piano for almost 10 years and as someone who has acquired the American accent in her 20s. So we're going to talk about music versus pronunciation. If you're new to my channel, then hi, my name I'm a non-native speaker of English, and I'm here to help you speak English with clarity, confidence, and freedom. I'm super passionate about pronunciation, intonation, rhythm, and stress, and helping you speak with an expressive and confident voice. By the way, if you want to go deeper into pronunciation work, definitely check out my free pronunciation masterclass. Link is in the description below, or just go to hadarshemesh.com/masterclass, and that's where I teach you the elements they just don't teach teach you in conventional English studies, and they are fundamental for speaking English with clarity and confidence. I'm going to teach you the elements that you need to know to improve your pronunciation, and also everything around intonation, rhythm, and stress that will make your voice expressive and clear. So check it out, you can watch it at any time, it's on demand. So I'll see you inside. All right, what are the 3 things that musicians know and English learners usually don't? The first one is that before before you try to get accurate here, you have to get accurate in the body. So every time I would sit down in front of my piano to play a new piece, I would first have to look at the notes and translate it into the finger movements and do it again and again and again and again until I was able to get it into my body and I wouldn't have to think about the different notes. It wasn't just like a one-time thing. I had to do it many, many times, and only once it was in my body, the accuracy of the notes was in my body, that's when I was able to think about the emotion that goes into it, the volume, the tempo, like all the things that make a musical piece moving and touching and not mechanic and automatic. And that's exactly the same thing with voice. So when it comes to speech sounds, you have to first get the accuracy through repetition. So you don't want to just imitate it. Shadowing is great, but it's not enough. You have to get it into your body so you wouldn't always have to think about the R sound or the L sound or the TH sound and think about where to put your tongue for each sound. It has to be in your body, and for you to be able to do that, you have to do repetitions. So just like in piano, I would do scales, right, again and again so that I train my muscles and I know where you know, each sound is without thinking about it, without looking at the piano. The same thing with sounds, and you have to practice it again and again, and I know it feels tedious, but it's not a lot of work, and honestly, it's a lot of fun. And only then you're able to get the accuracy that you want, and it's automatic without thinking about it. And when you have that accuracy, what I call predictable pronunciation, where you say the sounds in a way that is clear for others to understand which sound you intended to say, that's when you can add other elements like warmth in your voice and emphasizing words that matter more and reducing words that matter less, where you can sound a little bit more excited or expressive or funny, like all the things that add emotion like you would add to music. The second thing that I want to talk about is that you have to go slower to go faster. So musicians, when they practice a new piece, or when they want to practice scales or something that is a little bit more challenging, for you to get it in your body and for you to understand the— how you get your fingers through the instrument, you have to go slow. And when you go slow, you can control what you're doing. It's easier for your brain to understand the hand movements on the instrument. And only when you do it slowly again and again and again, you can go faster. Now I see that a lot of students skip the slowing down part. They go into a text or a tongue twister that they want to practice, or just speaking. And let's say they want to incorporate a new sound like the TH sound or the R sound, and they would want to speak in their normal speed, otherwise they feel like they're not doing it right. Or they feel artificial. And the thing is that it's not supposed to feel artificial at the beginning. You don't go at normal speed when you're learning something new, whether it's a new sound or even a new word or a new grammatical structure. You have to slow down to allow things to land in the brain and in the body, to make that connection between the brain and the mouth. And it's okay not to speak at normal speed when you're learning something new. And when you go slowly and you say it again and again and again, the repetition that we talked about, that's when you can go faster. So to go faster, you have to go slower. Even when I teach reductions, even when I teach you how to connect phrases together, I teach you how to do it slowly. If you've seen any of my videos, you see that I always slow things down, and then that's when we can go faster. When I teach my students how to say a tongue twister, I break it down really slowly and say it again and again and again really slowly, and only then you can speed up. Okay, now the third thing that I want to talk about is that musicians know the difference between practicing on their own and then performing or playing in front of others. And this is not just the technique, that's the mindset. Because when you practice on your own, it's only you, you're not so afraid of making mistakes because you know you'll be able to fix it quickly, and you have this sense of ease that you normally don't have when you feel like someone is watching or listening. And then something happens when there is 1, 2, 3, or an entire audience sitting and listening to you play, and that is mindset work. It's working on your breath, it's working on your thinking. So when you have intrusive thoughts or negative thoughts about what's going to happen— I remember in one of my recitals at the year. I was sitting there waiting for all the other younger kids to play their piece, and I was like trying to think about my piece. And I remember one year I was so stressed out and I was so nervous about that one part that I kept messing up, and I kept replaying it in my head, and I was so conscious of the possibility of making mistakes that, guess what, when I got to that part, I completely messed up. I couldn't get my fingers around that part. I was, you know, I, I paused, I started again, I paused again, I started again, and then I had to skip that part to be able to get to the end. And that was really, really embarrassing. I hated that it happened, but that's what happened because I was just so conscious about making that mistake. So learning how to manage your brain and focus on the ideal outcome is something that musicians always do. Also training themselves not to let the nerves take over your body. And this is definitely something that I encourage people to do when speaking in front of others or when practicing with other people, because when you get self-conscious about your ability and about speaking and about, um, using your voice you start thinking about the mistakes, you start thinking about the sounds, you start thinking about all the sounds that you're not using right now, it will impact your performance. You are likely to make mistakes that you don't usually make. You are likely to avoid speaking more than you normally would because you wouldn't want to make mistakes, and you are just likely to feel bad about speaking. And that is not the goal of the work that we do. The work that we do here is to help you speak clearly, to speak confidently, and to feel freaking good about yourself and your English so you can share your voice and show up in any language that you speak. And if you let the negative thoughts, the intrusive thoughts, impact how you use English, then all the work that you've done is not going to be worth it. So definitely, when I teach English or when I help my students improve their pronunciation, mindset is a significant part of the work that we do. Musicians do it, and English learners should do it as well. So the 3 elements: get it in your body first through repetition, and only then you can add the layer of emotion and intention. That's relevant for playing, that's relevant for music, that's relevant for speaking, especially when it comes to pronunciation work. The second part is you have to go slowly to go faster. You cannot go fast without putting in the work and understanding and, and kind of like making all the connections needed when you do it slowly. And the third thing, you have to work on your mindset, not to let the thinking patterns that hold you back, overthinking, rethinking, translating, all the things, all the things that are related to mindset, you don't wanna let it impact your performance when you speak to other people. If you are able to do well when you are in front of the mirror speaking to yourself or speaking to a good friend, there is no reason why you shouldn't succeed speaking in front of the camera or at work or in a meeting or in front of a large audience. So these are the elements that musicians know, and English learners should know and use them as well. And if you want to learn more on how to do that, definitely join my free masterclass at hadarshemesh.com/masterclass. And if you haven't yet, make sure you subscribe to my channel. Now I have a question for you. What other elements from music we can implement into English learning? Let me know in the comments below. Have a beautiful, beautiful rest of the day, and I will see you next week in the next video. Bye.