ALL ABOUT INTONATION | The Live English Show with Hadar Shemesh

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the live English show. How are you doing? Different song today. I don't know if you can recognize it or not, but it's the same band. Welcome, everyone. Let me know in the comments that you're here with me in the live pool show every Thursday at 12pm EST. Now, for those of you for watching this and you know that I have a live event going on this week, then you're probably thinking, what is she doing live again? And it's my show. What can I do? That's like one of my favorite things to do. Wait, let me turn it down. Okay. Hello, everyone. Yes, people are joining. Okay, so for those of you who know, I have a live event events going on with live training and it's going to be available until August 7th. And if you haven't joined and you still want to join, we are doing a live training every single day. And that is unfreaking believable. So today we are on day four. Again, if you haven't joined, go to this link hadarchemish.com forward/live event. If someone who is in the event is watching this right now, if you can post a link just so people can join Live event, the main page where you can sign up and get all the notifications and everything and enjoy the live training. We had four coaching sessions. It was amazing. The community is amazing. We have a private Facebook group and there's a lot of learning that is happening there. So if you want to participate, make sure you sign up because again, it's not going to be up for a long time and you can still catch up on the content. For those of you who are in the live event, hi again. And today we have a different kind of lesson. It's not related to the live event. Just so you know, today we don't have a guest. It's just me. I hope you're good with that. And what I have for you today is a lesson about intonation. And this is why I'm standing up and this is why I have my board right behind me. So I can give you a quick lesson about American intonation or intonation in English and give you some. Some foundations so you can improve the way you communicate, but also the way you listen to other people. So we're going to do that and everything. Any question that you have for me about intonation, you can also ask me about pronunciation. You can put it in the comments and I will answer you. Okay. Samara Bay would be around. Actually, if you are in the live event, we have a zoom session with Samara at. In two hours. Okay, so for those of you who have signed up for the event, then wait for a notification. And we have a zoom call with Samara in two hours. Just a reminder, if you haven't signed up for the event and you want to join our call with Samara Bay, then make sure that you go to this link right here and you sign up and then you'll get all the notifications. Okay, good. I do see a lot of people from the event here. Hello. Happy to see you. If you are not a part of the live event, let me know in the comments as well. So I know, because otherwise I'll just talk about everything that we usually talk about. Okay, let's begin. What is the most challenging thing for you when it comes to speaking English? But I'm not talking about pronunciation. I'm talking about prosody. And I made it like a. Like I use a simpler, more familiar term, intonation. Okay. When you hear the word intonation, what does that mean to you? Okay, so again, for those of you participating in the live training that I offer right now, I do talk about it as prosody. Intonation is part of prosody. But if you're just joining me, let me know in the comments. What does it mean to you when I say a lesson about intonation? What does that mean? That mean. Okay. And Andrea, I'm giving up on improving my accent, pronunciation. I sound very Italian in English and I cannot improve anymore. Help. Are you a part of the live event? Let me know in the comments. Because if you're. If you're. You're not, then that's your answer. Okay, I show you how to do that, and I have some resources to help you. So go to the live event. If you don't know. Again, I don't have it in the links, but you can just go here. If someone can add this link, that would be amazing. Okay, go here and I will help you. Basically, the thing is about improving your pronunciation and is that you have a few layers. First of all, identifying your. Your pronunciation mistakes. Okay. That's the first step. So you don't have to work on all the sounds of English because there are many and not all of you are necessary. Second, first, like, actually the zero step is to acknowledge that an accent is not a bad thing. But if it affects your clarity, then yes, this is something that you can improve on. Understanding your challenges. Okay. Then being able to recognize them, to perceive the differences, then to build up pronunciation confidence, to know how to make the new sounds, then to develop muscle memory to be able to use them spontaneously and freely in words, phrases, and sentences. Okay? And then you need to intentionally use it in conversation. And the following step is you already using these sounds spontaneously. When it comes to intonation, it's going to be a little different. And today I'm going to tell you how you can do that for sure. Okay, Andrea, So I'm waiting for an answer to know if you are a part of the live event. If not, then get your butt in there as soon as possible. Intonation is when you go up and lower your voice. Okay, good. And then it is having flow. But flow could also be, you know, you could be pretty flat with your intonation, or you could. I would say that flow is probably a part of how you put it all together in spoken English, but it's not necessarily intonation. The music of the language. Right. I always use it as the music of the language. It's when you go up and when you go down. Leslie says where you put the stress on words. Yes, good. What else? The way you sound. Right, Emile? But I would say that it's not the way you sound is a lot of things. The way you sound is, you know, how you also pronounce the sounds. So if sounds are the building blocks and intonation, or prosody, which is like a bigger word than that, is how you put it all together in intonation. I would say intonation. I would say it's like the music of the language. Adriana, if you're not a part of the live event, you are missing out. It's totally free and you get a lot of serious information there about how to master fluency through building pronunciation confidence. Okay? Now, what I'm teaching here is nothing in comparison to what I teach there. So if you are not a part of it, it's only for a limited time. I highly recommend that you go and go. That you go there. Hadar shemesh.com. that's my name. Forward slash live event. You will find it. Intonation, prosody. Ruan, you already know this. Okay? Where is the super chat? No super chat here, unfortunately. Mariana, you're not a part. Please let me know that you signed up, okay? Okay. Because I want you to sign up again. You will get all the content to your inbox, so you don't even have to be in the live events, but you can really catch up on it. Intonation is when you control when to emphasis. Right? Right. Ruan, the information for the three minute video is Already posted in the Facebook group. He's asking a question about the live event. And not everyone here is in the live event. So I'm going to tell you and then I'm going to move on. The instructions for the scholarships are in the Facebook group. Also, for those of you who joined the live event, you'll have an opportunity to win a scholarship for my signature program. Another good reason to join you guys. Yeah. Okay. Sounds like American, but doesn't sound like, okay, I don't know, buffering. Am I still okay? Hello to everyone. Okay. Intonation is also how to accentuate vital parts of your speech. Very nice. Yes, exactly. So intonation. I'm going to take this out now, and if you need, I'll bring it back later. For those of you who still can't access the live event, or if you're watching the replay right now, it's live. If you're watching this on Thursday, you will see, I will post the link to the description later. I totally forgot to do it. Okay, So it's how you like. It's the parts of the speech that you choose to stress. Why is it so important when speaking? Speaking? A lot of times when people want to work on their pronunciation or their clarity in English and some may say their accent and they want to sound like a native, well, we already know that this is, you know, it's just like a generic term and we don't even know what that means. To speak like a native. I can replace it to not sound like myself or sound like a. Not sound like a foreigner. And then the question asked is, what is wrong with sounding like yourself or having an accent, showing your identity or. And your personality. But that's a different discussion. I'm going to discuss that and I have discussed it in the past. And if you join the live event, you will hear all about that in day number one. Now, when you want to improve your clarity and to improve your ability to deliver messages, there are a few aspects to your speech. One is, as I said, the building blocks, which is the pronunciation. And that is the main focus of a lot of people. A lot of people think that if they want to sound cool, clear, they need to work on their Rs and their Ls, THs and all of that, which is true, but it's only a part of it. And there is this huge more ambiguous part that is responsible for your clarity and that is prosody. And the sub headline would be intonation. Prosody is basically intonation, rhythm and stress, how you play the music of the language, what words you choose to stress and how you do it using rhythm and how it affects your entire rhythm when speaking. Okay, good. Looking at the comments really quickly. Now, the ups and downs in the speech, what we associate as American intonation, like that pitch going up and down, is very important because it's not just like this melody that makes us sound American or British or Australian, different than who we are, but it also helps us deliver the message. Why? Because when words are stressed, they usually go higher in pitch. Technically, they're different in pitch, but for the most part, they go higher in pitch and they're also held out. They're stressed, stretched. Okay? They're longer. So when I tell you something, it's not enough that I tell you, and I trust that you will understand what I'm saying. There is another layer that comes to that, and that is how I'm saying it to help you figure out what is more important and what is less important. Right. So there is the words. But it's kind of like, as the speaker, I don't trust that that is going to do a good enough job for you to listen to me. Because I know that people are usually concentrated on what I'm saying only 47% of the time, or a little more or a little less, because we have all of these distractions and there are all these thoughts going through our head that ultimately, when we listen to people, we only half listen. And I know that some of you are half listening to me right now, so I want you to come back to me. Because if you're doing other things, then it's important that you pay attention if you want to learn how to listen and how to speak so people listen, okay? Anyway, that was a joke. You can keep on doing other things, but then, you know, if you want to see improvement, then don't ask yourself why that happened. How to learn spelling? Not on this channel, my friend. Not on this channel. I'm the last person who teaches spelling. Actually, I teach you how to spell differently or to respell. That's what I'm about. I'm about spelling English like it sounds now, as we said, I want. I don't trust that my words are going to do the job okay, alone. So I need to add another layer, and that is intonation. Okay? I'm using intonation to help you as a listener, understand what's more important and what's less important. How do I do that? By understanding that the moment I change my pitch, then I draw your attention back to Me. So, for example, I can speak like that, sort of the same tone. So I have, like, my regular pitch here, but when I go higher in pitch, I draw your attention back to me. So that's the first thing. Every time we change pitch, we want to draw back attention. We say, that's important. Pay attention. Okay? So pitch is emphasis. What is pitch? The tone that I use. How do I do that? It's like singing while speaking, right? So I think in one of my videos, let's think of a song. We are the champion, my friends, right? Like, that's a song. And now if I want, instead of singing it, to speak it. We are the champions, my friends, right? We are the champions. I'm not saying we are the champions, my friend. Like, I didn't sing we are the champions, my friends, right? So I'm actually. I can sing while speaking without using my singing voice. That is pitch. I'm shifting from one note to another. People do it all of the time. Even you, that you think that you might be flat or monotone, you still use pitch. Everyone uses pitch, but they might use a limited pitch, right? Like a very limited pitch. So the lower notes and the higher notes, they're not very different. That is called monotone. When you speak something like this. And then there isn't really. There's not a lot of variation between the stress words and the unstressed words. And it sounds something like this. And it doesn't mean that I may not say something interesting, but it's a little harder to understand, to follow what I'm saying. But when I start changing my pitch, it is more engaging, it is more interesting. And the fact is, is that I'm helping you understand what is more important and what's less important. I'm also gesturing with my hands quite aggressively when I get to an important word. That's just me. That's how I speak, and that's in my body. But here's the thing. Like, it helps you understand better what it is that I'm saying. Because I'm suggesting that you listen to the important words. These are the operative words. These are the words that drive the conversation at the same time. At the same time, while I use pitch and length, right? I can hold out the consonant and I can hold out the vowel when I stress a word. And now I want you to always pay attention to how I say things, right? And I'm exaggerating it a little bit now, okay? Don't worry. You don't have to do it. I'm really exaggerating it for the sake of teaching. Okay. But like, if you start paying attention to people, you'll see that they're doing it. So there is like this constant up and down. It's not this fake, artificial way of speaking speaking. It's really another layer to speaking that helps you convey your message clearly. So I think a good reframe may help here, especially for those of you who resist using pitch. Okay. And you want to stay safe and you want to stay on using your neutral intonation or like a flatter, less varied voice. Now, we have other causes why that happens, and that's because you may apply the intonation of your native language onto English. But we'll talk about that in a sec, because I'm still talking about how to deliver your message in an effective way. So we said raising your pitch, right, Using pitch on the stress words, but at the same time, you want to hide the parts that are not that important. What are those parts? Let me know in the comments. And for those of you joining right now, welcome. This is a lesson about intonation. And also for those of you who are new to me, then I want to make sure that you know that we have a live event going on with a lot of free training, and it's going to be available until August 7th. And you get a ton of practice, conversation groups, improv classes, implementation workshops, live training for me, and additional fun stuff. And there is, like, also a scholarship contest. So if you are new to me and this is new to you, go check out this link right here where you can get access to that amazing event. And what's most amazing about that is that it's the most amazing community ever. So go there and check it out. Going back to intonation. Going back to intonation. We raised the pitch or change it significantly for the words that we want to move the conversation forward and we hide the parts that are a little less important. Now, I was the reason why I moved into talking about that function words. Exactly. I wanted to get the answers. What are those words that we want to hide? Function words like prepositions. Prepositions is one type of function words on an at of by Right. But there are more than that. What other words are a little less important for the conversation? Let me know in the comments. Go ahead, you guys. Even if you know when you're like, why should I comment? Still comment. Because it helps you register the ideas and the content better. So active participation helps you learn better and helps you be more engaged in what you're doing right now. If you keep on doing other things, you're less focused, and then the lesson is not going to be as effective. You're already here. You might as well get the best out of it. Okay, function words, Guests at a birthday party. Right? That's. That's a secret saved for the new sound of English. The new sound of English is the name of the event, by the way, for those of you who haven't joined just yet. So only if you join, you'll get what the power of the mind said about function words. As the guests. The introverts in the party, please. Now, the. The guests, but the introverted guests, the ones that just want to sit and sip their alcohol, their. Their cocktail and go home. Oh, thank you for sharing this. Yes, the live event. Thank you so much. Pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, etc. Yes, exactly. Ruan. Learning is an active process. So comment here. Okay, I'm gonna Wait. Where is it? Listen to Ruan. He knows what he's talking about. Learning is an active process. Exactly. This is part of the work that we do in the. In the event because we really want to make sure that you're no longer active, passive learners. So, yes, as most of you said, the words that are. That we hide are function words. And let me take this out for a sec, right? They're function words. And function words are all the. On, in, at, could, would, should, m, is, are, have, has all those small words that when they stand alone, you don't necessarily. They don't make a lot of sense. But if you see the word blue or colorful or strange or sometimes it means something, it can change the meaning of the sentence completely. These are the words that we usually go for. Okay. We don't stress every single content word. Noun, verb, adjective, adverb, words that signify something, Right? We don't stress all of them, but these are the words that are usually stressed. And all the rest, all those small words that we just mentioned, those words are not as stressed. Not only that, what happens to them? For those of you who are. Who have been on this journey for a little bit, what happens. Auxiliary verbs, right? What happens to those words? What do we do with them? Okay, so it's. Yeah, we do. We don't emphasize them, but it's not only that we just don't emphasize them. We do something in addition to that, even that makes them feel small. Okay, waiting for comments here. You guys. Don't leave me hanging. I'm waiting for feedback. I'm a teacher at heart. I need my classroom, right? So unfortunately, I don't have a classroom in front of me, but I do have 300 people watching this right now. Adjectives function, Words, reductions. Kathleen, thank you. Excellent student. You've been paying attention. I know. So, yes, we reduce those words into what we call a reduced vowel, the schwa. The schwa is the most neutral vowel sound in American English and English in general in all human languages. And it sounds something like this. So what we do is we take those variety of words and we reduce them when they're not stressed in a sentence. So in the car doesn't sound like in the car, but car is the stress word that's going to be the word that is high. Higher in pitch and longer. And in the. Is going to be reduced to the. In the. In the. In the. In the. The car. The car. I'm in the car right now. I can't talk. I'm in the car. I'm in the. I totally swallowed it. All I pronounced was consonants. I sort of just like, eliminated the vowels. I turned it into a schwa. I reduced it, but it feels like it drops completely. The car. Now, for someone listening, and we are taught to look for the words, right? We are taught to listen as we read, which is the worst thing you can tell someone studying English. You know what? We're not even told how to listen. We are expected to listen to English the way we read English and written English and spoken English are two different languages. You cannot expect to be able to read English and to understand it and then to hear English and to be like, I got it. All right, You. It's impossible, because. And the problem is, is that when we hear English, we have that filter of the written word. How many of you. Every time you hear a word, you visualize it, you see it written, you see the letters, you pull it, you retrieve it from your memory as a word, not as an object. Let's say you hear blue. You don't see blue. You see the word blue, but it only happens to you in English. Put yes in the comments if that's the case for you. Yeah. Liga, you're here, too. Oh, my God. You're gonna get tired of me eventually, right? So you filter what you hear through the written words. But the problem is, these are two different languages, and then they don't match. And then what happens? What enters your brain is just, like, one big mess of sounds, and you're like, I don't understand native speakers. It's not that you don't understand native speakers. You were never told how to listen To English. But if you understand this concept of stress words versus unstressed words and that the unstressed words are totally reduced so it feels like there is no schwa. And then five words feel like it's one. And here you are, you are hearing one word, and you're looking for that word in your vocabulary. You look for that written word that said, that says, right? And you're looking for that word and you can't find it or you can't understand how it fits into the context. But then when you see it written, you see what do you. And you're like, why didn't I get it? Why? Because you didn't hear what do you. You heard what Aya. And in context, when people speak fast, it is hard to get it. So it's learning intonation, learning prosody, understanding how to stress word and reduce words. Imperative not only for you to communicate your message clearly and to have impact. All of that is so important. But it trains or retrains your brain to listen to English because no one has taught you that before. And the only way to do that is through practice. And I'm going to talk about what you can do to practice. Okay? Stress words are higher in pitch and stretched. Non native speakers tend to underplay those words. Okay, so on one hand, we downgrade the position of the content words, and on another hand, because unstressed words are reduced and squeezed together, so we overemphasize those words. So we downplay the important words and overemphasize the unstressed words. And as a result, everything sounds so sort of the same, right? There is no distinction. And this is the issue of clarity. More than the r, more than the th. Sometimes, sometimes. Sometimes pronunciation is more important. You have your individual needs. It's not like copy paste from other people. And whatever I tell you may be relevant to you and may not be relevant to someone else. Okay, so take it with a grain of salt. I am speaking to thousands of people here, not live. But ultimately. Okay, back to more important, less important. I want you to imagine, like, think about how you read books in your native language. When you read books, do you read every single word in the book? Do you take the book? Let's see what we have here. Okay. Do you take the book and you read every single word slowly and you focus it. Robert left the next morning. No, I mean when you read, not out loud, you skim with your eyes, right? And especially, like, think about how you read in your native language. That would be most intuitive. You skim with your eyes, and your eyes pick on the import, the keywords you don't read or focus on all the ons and ats and ifs and ins and ofs. Right? In ours, the brain fills in this information. Anyway, this is how we speak to. In English. Okay. It may not be relevant for your native language, which leads me to the next topic, which is the thing about intonation is that we bring over the patterns of our native language onto English. So if in our native language, we stress function words and content words the same, and it's totally okay. There's nothing wrong about that. It's just how we do it in our native language. If we bring it over to English, that means that we don't have that. That distinction in English, which helps us sound more clear and also engaging and persuasive and with impact, which is what we want ultimately when speaking. So we want to be aware of the patterns of our native language that might be preventing us from really reaching that breakthrough in our clarity and pronunciation in English. So we want to identify if in our native language, there are certain patterns or melodies that we don't notice, and we apply them. There are two ways to do that. One is to analyze yourself, analyze your speech. Now, this is homework. Write it down if you want, because I'm going to give you some tools to find out if that's. If that's what you. How to do it. I'm reading some of the comments. Okay, Good. So one of the ways to do that is to take a text and a recording of someone who is a native speaker. But it doesn't need to be a certain accent, but a form of pronunciation or an accent that you love, okay. That you relate to, that you resonate with their voice. You love their voice. So you take that. You take the script for a lot of. For a lot of podcasts, you can download the script from the website totally free. That's amazing. Okay. TED Talks, npr, National Public Radio. The app, you can get the script, you can get the audio. You have amazing free resources out there. All you have to do is know what you're looking for. The most important thing is that you don't fall down the rabbit hole of just consuming content. But you want to take action. So you take a piece of text, doesn't need to be long. You read it out loud, you record it, then you listen to the original speaker, and then you compare it, and then you really want to isolate the music from the words. Now, one of the things that are exceptionally helpful is to play the video in half the speed. And then you really pay close attention or even like 25% of the speed. Because we, again, we're trying to detach ourselves from the words and the concept of the words. And then we want to play the melody and to listen to the melody. And if we have time at the end, I'll try to show you how to do that when I share the screen. So I am giving you exercises about intonation. So you do that to identify your patterns because awareness is key. And the questions you need to ask yourself, do I go up in certain areas that the other speaker did, hasn't. Okay. Or didn't? Do I? What? What happens at the end to my melody? And is it the same or different? What words did I stress? When did I go up in pitch? That means that the note is a little higher. When did I go down in pitch? Is it the same? If not, why? These are the questions that you want to ask yourself. And then play it again. Now, one of the great exercises is to do imitation exercises or shadow shadowing exercises where you play melody, you play a speech, you pause and you repeat. Pause and repeat. So that's the imitation exercise, but you can also do a shadowing exercise. And I love doing it especially with podcasts. I'm going to sit especially with podcasts where you can play it in half the speed and then you just shadow it. You follow it a split second after. Now, I don't guarantee that you'll understand the content as you're. As you're doing a shadowing because usually your brain is like so focused on what you're saying and, and not so much about the content, and that is okay. It's also great to do it with content that you already know, right? Maybe you've listened to that podcast and you really loved it and you want to do it again. Or YouTube videos. I'm inviting you to do it with my YouTube videos. You can also, if you do it with my podcast episodes, you can download the transcript. I forgot to tell you about that. The Influency podcast. So for almost all episodes, we have a full transcript that you can play the audio in half the speed and follow it with the transcript. So, yeah, just. Just look at the Influency podcast. I think you can find it in the links below. Okay, so question is, how else can I practice intonation? Any ideas and suggestions? How do you guys practice intonation? Let me know in the comments. Let me know in the comments. How do you practice intonation? We can do the same in YouTube videos. Absolutely. YouTube videos are awesome for that. Okay, let me see what else? How can I be sure the native speaker actually represents the intonation of the sentence in English? And if they're speaking in their own singular way. Okay, I get this question. If the person speaks in a way that is compelling, that is clear, and if you don't know if they're a native speaker or not, then you know. I'm assuming you would know. I'm assuming that you would know. And if they have an accent that is clear to you, that is good for you to work with. And every person has their own way of speaking and their own intonation. The thing about it is that it really depends on how they're stressing things. It really depends on what they're saying. So it's like, it's not like you have one pattern of English and that's it. That's what you should cook, copy, paste, unlearn, and do all of the time. There are patterns, which I often teach when I work with my students, but I also tell them, we break these patterns all of the time. You got to break them. But you've got to understand the. The main idea behind what you're stressing, which is usually content words are stressed. Function words are reduced. Content words are higher in pitch. The. The key word of the sentence is. Is changing in pitch significantly. So it's going to be a lot higher in pitch or a lot lower in pitch. For example, what do you want? Right? Want is stressed. I went higher in pitch. Or I can also go lower in pitch. What do you want? What do you want? Right? There was a significant shift in pitch, and that was enough for you to pay attention or for me to draw your attention to. To the word want. And what do you. Wasn't that stressed. But if you were only attentive to the keyword, your brain filled in the rest. So even if you don't understand every single word, which is like, it's a lesson about intonation, but it really is a lesson about listening, about comprehension, right? So if you. If you pay attention to those things, the brain will fill in the rest. You are a lot more capable than you think sometimes, and you understand a lot more than you think. Someone just wrote a comment here too fast. Okay, now, Eric, please be careful. Drive safely. You can watch the replay after. It's going to be on my YouTube channel. And Eric, I hope you're in the live event. And if not, then come, come back here after and check out the links below the video. Totally got distracted. What was I talking about? When you're listening, right, like, we want to be. Okay, someone said that I speak too fast and then they get distracted. See how easily we get distracted? My God. Pay attention to that when you're learning. I'm going to drink some water and get distracted a bit more with a comment. Right. Kathleen? Recently I started recording myself. I think that's an excellent way, excellent, excellent way to practice. Because it's like athletes that they want to improve their performance. They don't just think about it. They record the games, let's say a basketball player or soccer player. And if they want to improve their performance, they can't just feel it when, while they're on the field, they have to record it and watch it with their coach, usually, and analyze their behaviors. And if they have certain patterns that are not helpful or they don't serve the, the game or the strategy or them, they work on, on changing it and improving it and developing new, new habits. Right? That's how we work. That's how we work when we work on pronunciation and prosody and all of those things. It really is just like sports because it's all about muscles and training yourselves. So Andrea from Italy said, well, I can't do it. It's not that you can't do it. You just use the wrong method. Up until now, hopefully, you know, some of the things that we're going to share with you here or if you join the live event, we'll help you do that. But the idea is that these are muscles and you can retrain your muscles to do other things. It's just a question of how you do it, both when it comes to prosody and when it comes to pronunciation. Okay. We are born able to pronounce all the sounds a human mouth can make. Okay. We make all the possible sounds or at least able. Okay. The fact that we were born French doesn't mean that the mouth is unable to make the clicks that appear in some languages. However, after a few months, right when you're about four to six months, you start narrowing the sounds that you use to the sounds that exist in your native language. And that's the babbling part, where you hear kids, ba, ba ba ga ga ga, ga, ga, ga ga ga ga, ga, ga, ga, using sounds. And you'll notice that the kids use, use sounds that exist in the language. And the more they grow up, they use only sounds and they don't use all those weird sounds that don't exist in their language. So you physically, you're able to make all sounds. So don't tell me that you can't make an R sound or don't tell me that you can't make a dark L sound. You just haven't had the right system or the right practice, or you haven't turned it into a habit, or you haven't developed the muscle memory. And all of that is great because not everyone needs to work on their pronunciation or master a certain sound. You might be super clear pronouncing the L as you pronounce it right now. Okay? So it's really a question of decision. But if you made the decision change and to improve your clarity by learning and mastering the sounds and building pronunciation confidence, then there is a way to do that. But it create, it takes consistency and persistence. Okay. Kleine says I work at a as a customer call center for the US I have noticed that when I speak to native speakers and so shy and make stupid mistakes when talk to people with an accent, it feels better. Okay, Kayleen, this is such a good point because what I want to say here is that an accent is a tool, okay? And as you said, sometimes there are two, two ways to look at it. One, and Kayleen, if you are not in the live event, I really invite you to join because day three, three is going to be really important for you. So again, like for, because we talk about the fears and the mindset and all of that, I'm going to share the link again here. So if you want to join, if you're not a part of the, of the live event, then join us. It's totally free. And the live training, especially the one from day one and day three, I think can definitely help you if that is your struggle because you do work with English speakers and I think this can help you. Okay? And if you are in the live event, then let me know. And the thing is, it's two things. One, we have to get comfortable with who we are. And even if we make mistakes, we need to reframe it and say, at least I'm communicating. I'm helping them. They need my help. They're calling because they need my help. Right? I'm communicating with other people and I know how to speak. Instead of saying, oh, I'm too, you know, I'm shy, they're gonna make fun of my accent, they're gonna think I'm stupid. All of those negative self conversations that you're having with yourself when speaking English at the same time, I get it. You know, having people can discriminate you or discriminate against you when they hear your accent. I have had students in call centers telling me that they, you know, they started speaking and then the other person said, can I speak to someone who speaks English? I mean, I could punch that person in the face, but because that's a rude way of saying something to anyone. Unfortunately, no. I'm. I'm against violence. I would never punch someone, but I would tell him off anyway. Have you watched day three, Killeen? If, if you have, have you done the reframe. Reframing of the beliefs? Because if you have, every time, every time you get into that conversation with yourself, I want you to say that, reframe that. That affirmation. Your head, because it's going to help. But as we said, yes, like having an, you know, if you, if you feel that you're discriminated against, then yes, this is really important to have the tool of knowing how to use English in a way that is clearer so you can get what you want. Okay? So people listen to you because unfortunately, sometimes they don't. And that's, you know, we can blame them, but at the same time, it doesn't serve you because you need to get what you want. It's not about them having an easier time listening to you. It's not about them just understanding you. It's you getting what you want. You gotta understand that the power needs to be back you. You need to gain back the power. Okay? It's not like that. You are this, this person just knocking on doors and like, please listen to. To me, please. I'm going to do my best for you to accept me and to like the way I sound and maybe, maybe you'll accept me to your group. No, we're changing this. We are changing this. We are erasing speak like a native because there is nothing wrong about speaking like a non native. But what we want is to speak like yourself with confidence and integrity and clarity and pride. Right? That's the new conversation. And I really want you to understand that it's important. Language is important. Language is important. This is why I insist on it with my students, with my followers, and with my teachers. Because I have a training program for teachers that. That's what we do. We change the way English is being taught. We decolonize the way English is being taught. Because you don't need to be in an inferior position position. You need to be in a powerful position because that's how you learn and that's how you own the language. Not if you are constantly in a fear of not being okay. Not being right. Feeling like a fraud. Right. Not being enough. We totally went off track with this conversation. But, like, it got me all fired up. So, Kayleen, because you brought it up, if that resonates with you, please let me know in the comments. I want to know if that resonates with you. With you. Okay? Yeah. And watch it. But I. I really need you to understand that we need to change the conversation as the community of English speakers. And this is why my live event is called the New Sound of English. Because we reinvent the new sound of English. There is no longer standard English is the right English. And you need to bring yourself there. There is the new sound of English. And yes, we are hard workers. We are all about speaking with clarity. So we get what we want and we communicate and we persuade and we have an impact and we make a change and we give back. That's the idea of communication. Not so that people accept us. Yes. That's a byproduct, and that's great, right? Yes, you create to yourself better circumstances when you have. Have more clarity. But if your starting point is just to bring yourself to become, you know, like, to. To. To. To bring yourself to be equal, okay. And you constantly feel like how. How you are not enough. That is not a strong point. Or that's not a strong starting point. Okay. If you think about, you know, a soccer player, player playing in, you know, a. A very. Like a national team, and imagine that person constantly being said, you know, you gotta play like you. You gotta play better. You got. Well, maybe that's not a good example, but you're not enough. You're not good enough. You're a bad player. You like you. You don't belong here. You gotta go to a different level league like you got. You don't belong here. This is not good. Right? This is not something that is inspiring. Constantly being reminded, like, that you are not an equal player. But the fact is that there are so many different speakers of English around the world, and English does not belong to anyone. Not to native speakers of American English or British English, of Australian English, or for people who learned English, which means that even mistakes are. Okay. Okay, Now going back to. I'm reading some of the comments. What other questions do you have for me about intonation? Let's go back to intonation. I have to speak English. Help me to practice. Well, first of all, join the live event because we have a lot of conversation groups. And then I'll tell you also how you can continue. Hi, Fatima. Good to see you here. Okay, let me see what Eric says. I can start speaking very well when I speak with a native speaker, but sometimes in the middle of the conversation, I get lost because I feel they push me to continue with the level. I started with a conversation. Eric, I'm not sure I follow. So you get started, you get lost because they push you to continue with the level. I started the conversation. If they push you to continue with a level, how does that, how does that distract you? Maybe they go into a higher level and that. That scares you. So I'm going to answer two different things. If that scares you, let's say you start in a certain level and then they. They raise the bar. Okay. They raise the bar and you get lost. Here's what I have to say about it. Embrace the moment. That's a golden moment for you to reach a breakthrough. Because if you stay in your comfort zone where you constantly understand and feel safe, you are not growing, but the moment you are pushed right to go above your level, that's the moment of growth and learning and breakthroughs. So if that happens to. To you, don't cave into feeling lost and push through and see what can you do to make the best out of it and to learn from it afterwards. And after that, instead of feeling frustrated, be like, that was an amazing learning opportunity because I'm a little better, because I was pushed to go a little bit beyond my limits. Because if you're constantly left in the same area, nothing will change. That's what we call a plateau. A plateau is a flat area on a high place. So, for example, if you could climb up the mountain, sometimes you hit a plateau where it's like a flat area, okay, but it's high above ground. So you have reached an improvement. But then you felt stuck. There was no more climb. And that's where you are if you constantly keep yourself in the same area. But you may have meant something else. And if you have, then I'm inviting you to tell me, to tell you to tell me, to tell us. Okay? Andres, I need your help with the R sound. Great. I have one video about how to pronounce the American R&1 the longest podcast you'll ever hear about the R sound and everything you need to know about the R sound, including a PDF with the drills and audio for you to practice. So I will not waste the time for something that I have, like, such a deep resource for and you can find it. I can't remember the episode name, but on my channel, just look for American R and my Name and you will find it. What other exercises can we do to improve? So, speech analysis. For example, when you take a text and then you break it down into. You look at the text, and then you first of all divide it into lines, smaller lines. So if you take a paragraph, maybe one day I'll do it with you. Here, I'll show you how I do it. Not today. But you take an entire paragraph and then you break it into separate lines. Each line is a thought. Okay. Each line is a group of thought that you usually say on one breath. Okay? And in each line, you want to mark in bold. If you do it on your computer. Computer, the words that are stressed. And then you take out all the vowels, or you reduce the words, you squeeze them together in writing. So you write the script. Actually, if you go to my YouTube channel and you look at the playlists, there is one playlist that says intonation, prosody, practice, blah, blah, blah, all of that. There are a few speeches. One of Reese Witherspoon, one of Simon Sinek, and one of Bill Murray. And I have another one of. What's your name? Shonda Rhimes. All of them. I have broken them down and created a script for you that is exactly what I'm talking about. So this would be an example of what I think you should do to improve. Okay, Adriana, so go get that list, that PDF, not that list, that script. Okay. And do that bold, the stressed words, reduce the unstressed words, and then practice it together. But if you're a visual learner, this is going to be very helpful for you. If it's easier for you to see and hear at the same time, and then it's a lot more impactful, and you really feel the difference and change. And of course, always repeat it again and again and again. Okay, so I'm the one who kind of got us stuck in a plateau. So, first of all, you are in the live event, right? You are in the new Sound of English event. So this is definitely an opportunity to learn. I also have a podcast episode about what to do when you hit a plateau. It's also on my YouTube channel, so you can go ahead. And I'm giving you a lot of resources today, a lot of homework, you guys. You need to do a lot of research. You need to do on my channel. But what can I do? There's, like, good, good lessons there, and it's really important for you to know what to look for and just to consume content that is not taking you anywhere, including on my channel. So because I have a lot of videos there, and you shouldn't watch all of them, only the ones that will get your results. What to do when you hit a plateau is like an actionable lesson where you can learn a few things that you can do a few exercises. So I want you to go and listen to that, because I think it's going to be helpful. Okay. I can pronounce the R words within a sentence. Okay. This is what I call being intentional about practicing pronunciation. I'm going to give you a little break. Brief. But again, I'm going to refer you to two different resources. One, my R podcast episode. Right. Like, everything you wanted to know about the R, I think it's on my channel, too. And two, how to practice pronunciation. So it's not just about how to practice pronunciation, but how to take the things that you learn and put them into your speech. Okay. So it's exactly what you're talking about. Because this is the. This is the biggest pitfall of English learners who work on their pronunciation. Because you think that if you work on, like, you learn how to pronounce a sound, that is enough, and if you know how to use it in words, that is enough. And then you don't understand why you can't use it freely when speaking. So again, like, you know, understanding what to make with what to do with your mouth to create a sound is only the first step. If you want to integrate that sound into your speech, then you need to develop the muscle memory so you can do it on command. Okay. So you don't have to think about what to do with the tongue. But that is not enough also, because then you used to intentionally use it in a conversation. That means recording yourself and then using it intentionally. Right? And finally, speaking spontaneously without thinking about it and analyzing your performance. Now, I know it sounds a lot, but you only do it one time, and that's it. The R is yours. So don't be discouraged. Okay? But again, learning how to make a sound is just the first step. We have five. I think it's five, right? Learning how to make the sound, using it in words, building the pronunciation confidence, developing muscle memory, using it intentionally. It is 5. Using it intentionally when speaking. That means that you're going to be speaking a little slower, but you will be thinking about using the R and then speaking spontaneously, freely, and analyzing your performance. Okay, we have two more minutes for the broadcast. Last questions, my friends. Okay. I'm good at listening and comprehension, but I'm not good in speaking. I process the idea well. In English. Here's the thing. You gotta have speaking time. If you join my live event, go to day one to understand the Fluency Wheel. If you don't want to join the live event, that is okay too. I have a video called Just type in Fluency Wheel Wheel, right? And then it'll tell you what are the elements that you need to become fluent. Comprehension is one pillar out of six. We need to be at the same level in those six pillars to be able to be really fluent. We don't have a. We don't need to have a score of a 10 or a 5 or an 8. If we look at the scale of 0 to 10, 1 to 10, but they need to be at the same level. And if your comprehension is a 10 and your speaking time, which is the opportunity that you get to speak is two, pronunciation is three, and grammar is seven, it's not balanced. It's going to affect your fluency. Okay? So either join the live event. I'm going to add this here, here, and let's see. I forgot that we need music at the end and I totally turned off. Okay, so any requests for a song at the end? Or shall I just put the same one? Okay, so go download the Fluency Wheel. Or Joy. Join the live event. And again, I'm going to post the link. Sorry, I'm not looking at you guys. I'm looking at you right now. This is the live event. It's called the New Sound of English. We have a few more days before we end the live event, but you can still catch up on it. This is day four today. And also if you join the live event, you will learn how you can apply for a scholarship, but you have to go through the training first. So it's not like everyone. You can apply for a scholarship. For my signature program. For my program Accent Makeover that opens on opens next week. So I also have a program coming up. But before that, I really invite you to come and check out my live event. Let's see. Last questions. Okay, I'm just going to wrap we are the Champions. Oh, okay. Yeah. Because I think it's only appropriate I was using it today. Right, Right. And then you can. You can have it in your head and then you can speak it using intonation. Let's play it such so old school. I love it. Okay, I'm going to read final comments. Can you even hear it? Everyone together? Okay. How can I be fluent? The question of all questions again. Go check out my fluency Wheel. Thank you so much, you guys. We love live event. I will not. August 7th, everything goes down. You got to join now. You got to watch it live. In the comments. We are the champions. The new fancy way. Okay, you guys. And let's let me know in the comments if you will be calling after watching this live. If you're new to this, thank you so much. I'll see you next Thursday with the ladies of English. I'm going to interview two of my students who are also English teacher teachers, and they're going to talk about their journey and their teaching philosophy. And you do not want to miss it out. Okay? See you next week.