American accent training | American English

Hi there. It's Hadar again, live. I haven't done any live streamings for like six months and now I'm going on every day. That's kind of exciting. And it makes it more easy, I guess, easier. So. Hello, everyone. Let me know if you can hear me and you can see me well and tell me where you're from in the comments. So I'm waiting. So today I wanted to answer a few of your questions and also talk about your accent training. Hello, everyone. Sandeep. No, Sundeep, I think, and Eliana. And from Chile and Brazil, we have here in Montreal. Hello, everyone. From Brazil, Alex from. From Brazil. And I can't see the name because my screen is broken. So. Hi, everyone. I'm happy to see you here. Very exciting. Okay, so I wanted to answer some of your questions. So if you have questions, think about them or try to come up with questions and wait until I tell you to ask the questions because right now I'm not looking at the comments. I just see all the highs. So that's very exciting and heartwarming and I'm doing well. Thank you very much for asking. So today I want to talk to you a little bit about accent training, about what's important and why we need accent training and to invite you to my live webinar tomorrow night, tomorrow evening. So, and that would be a place for you to ask me more questions and even participate and practice with me, because I'm going to ask you to go live with me and practice some, you know, some, some sounds and intonation patterns with a few of the participants. So if you want to try and work live with me, then register to the webinar, to the masterclass. Of course, I didn't put the link before. I will do it after session and. But you can go to the accentsway.com for forward/speak-clearly-masterclass, but I'll put the link below. Okay, so why do we need accent training? Well, you know what? Accent is not the most important thing, but also accent gets a bad, bad reputation because a lot of people say, hey, you know, accent is something that is so superficial. It's not, you know, the most important thing is fluency. And the most important thing is vocabulary and sentence direct structure and grammar. And yes, all that is really, really important. Hi, from Taiwan. I saw that. But still, why are you searching for accent training? Because there it's some. There is something deeper about accent training. And here's the thing, when you want to, when you think of your accent, it's A lot more than, you know, just pronunciation. It's a lot more than indication of where you're from. It's the way you grasp the language, the way the language should be spoken. It's the inner feel, it's the secret of the language. There is a reason why American intonation is the way it is, right? There is a reason why you need to stick the tongue up for the th. Otherwise it would be too difficult to pronounce some consonants or same thing for the R sound, right? If you're going for your native R sound, it might be more difficult for you to go from one sound to another. So if we understand how English should be spoken in terms of sounds, in terms of intonation, it would make our lives a lot easier just to deal with the language. On top of that, there is all this thing of self judgment, right? So sometimes we hear ourselves and we're like, no, this is not how it sounds. In my head. I feel awful about it. And by, just by the fact of us trying to, trying to deal with just thinking about how we sound, like zooming out and thinking of, of ourselves speaking, that takes us away from the moment. We don't think about what we want to say. So we think about how we sound, we become judgmental. And then, you know, English, you get stuck because you're not thinking of what you want to say or you become less fluent. And, and then of course, you, it affects your English. You become, you know, less fluent and then affects your English, not just your accent. Okay, so what I'm trying to say is when you want to improve your English, an accent is definitely a big part of it. Now, when you want to work on your accent, there are a few things that you should be consider. You should consider. One of them is what is the right training for you? Because if you go out there and you search American accent on YouTube, then you'll find hundreds of different lessons. Some of them are going to be super crucial for you and super important and will really boost your speaking skills. If you do the right, if you practice it correctly and some are less relevant, they will bring very minor change to your, to your speech. So the thing is that you need to know what, what you want to concentrate on to get the best results. So don't just go out there and learn everything. Try to figure out what is the most, what, what's most important for you and invest most of your time and energy into just learning and actually making a change right there. So for example, let's say that you know, your r is not perfect. So let's say you're using your native R. Let's assume you're a Spanish speaker, and then you're using a R sound instead of an R. So you have that. And on the other hand, you're also struggling with the T. Let's say you can't pronounce the nasal T like in the word kitten or mountain. And you keep saying kitten and mountain, and you feel that these two things are, you know, a big problem for you, and you struggle with it. But let me tell you this. When native speakers listen to you and they hear the R sound every time you speak and use an R, and that sticks out a lot more than not using that N sound, as in the word kitten or mountain, does that make sense? Let me know if it makes sense. All right, so tell me if that. If you understand what I'm trying to say, which is basically, you have to focus. You have to know what to practice, and to practice only the things that will. I mean, to start practicing the things that will bring you the best results. So when you want to plan out your accent training, then I want you to start by focusing on the things that are most crucial for you and again, to know what those are. You're invited to come to my webinar on Monday tomorrow, and I'm going to talk about how to do that, how to learn, because it's a little longer explanation, and it's not for a live session. So you can come and practice it with me, and then I can also answer your questions. But even if you don't come to the webinar, always consider the things that are most important for you. Okay? So once we establish that, then you need to practice the sounds and intonation patterns. Okay? These are the things that you also want to practice when you're working on your accent. So work on pronunciation. Pronunciation of sounds, consonants, vowels, the difference between sheep and ship or the R or the th. And then, of course, understanding intonation patterns and stress. Okay? What you stress and how you stress it, okay? These are the things that are most important when you are working towards creating the perfect accent training for you. One more thing that is extremely important is practice, right? So you need to practice as much as possible, but you need to make sure that you're practicing the sounds or the new patterns correctly. So when you practice, you want to make sure that it's not about just repeating the same words over and over again without noticing whether you're creating change or not. But, you know, practicing even if it's Just five words, but making sure that you're actually changing your pronunciation and you're going more towards the desired pronunciation. In our case, it's going to be American English, but it could be any other dialect that you choose. So all of these things, I'm going to discuss a lot of them in the accent training, but I wanted to hear your opinion or what you think about it and to hear a little bit about your struggles or what are the most difficult things for you when you are practicing your English and, and your accent. So this would be a good time to tell me and ask me questions. And right now I will just scroll up until, and take a look at a few, a few of the questions here. Okay. So Jennifer says about what I said about this designated practice or you know, to a tailor made practice. Yes, I understand that, but I think that to have a, a real evaluation of your accent, a second person should tell you it's difficult to notice some sounds when they are not absolutely correct. And that's the biggest struggle of studying on your own. So of course, of course, when you have a dialect coach right. To work with you, then it's a lot easier because they tell you what you need to do. But that's not always the case, by the way, sometimes you do go to dialect coaches and they just work with you randomly on sounds that they hear or recognize. So even if you go and work with someone in person, ask them to tell you what are the most crucial sounds for you so you'll know how to focus your practice. Okay, so let's say that you are working with a dialect coach and there are like really hundreds of them out there, especially in the U.S. so if you're working with someone, make sure that you get a clear idea on what are the most important things for you. And the things once you change them will get will bring you the best results. If you don't have someone to work with, there are techniques to help you understand what are the most crucial things for you. So for that, and I'm going to talk about that in the webinar, you can join my webinar tomorrow. If you can't make it, you can just, you can register and then you'll get the replay afterwards. It's like it's a system that I've developed that helps people to practice on their own and also understand what are the biggest struggles for them. So I invite you to do that. But in general, I also made a video, a free video about how to practice on your own. So this is another great Tool to recognize the things. I published it like two weeks ago. So you can go and look it up in my video list. You can just go and you can practice on your own and be able to give yourself feedback that is as close as possible to what a native speaker would give you. And of course, there is nothing like having someone next to you telling you what you need to do. Of course. Right. But taking into consideration that, you know, that's not always an option. What can you do? You're going to get stuck, you know, practicing something incorrectly. No, there are ways to go about it. Okay, let me see a few more questions. Alexei is asking. How about American mentality? Can you copy sounds but you still sound like a non native speaker? I'm not. Wait. Sure. Okay, sorry, I'm. I think I've deleted your message by mistake. Okay, so, yes, there is this mentality thing, of course. And voice that is also important when you know that, for example, Chinese or Japanese voice or Arabic voice or Spanish voice is not the same as American voice. That's just how it is. So we need to also work voice placement. Sometimes it would be, you know, somewhere up high in priority, and sometimes that wouldn't be the most important thing because pronouncing sounds correctly would be more important for clarity and for confidence. So there is the aspect of being clear and feeling confident, and there is the aspect of just immersing yourself in the language and also becoming kind of like obtaining or becoming American by letting go of the things that distinguish you. And this is a problem, problematic issue, because some people don't want to fully immerse. Some people want to stay unique or to keep their mentality, you know, a little different because they don't fully connect to American culture. And that's totally okay. The language aspect and there is the cultural aspect. And sometimes people feel that when there is a cultural barrier, it does prevent them from immersing in the. In society and in the language and even, you know, using English clearly. And for that, I would say just go and imitate. You know, people pick an accent idol that you like, really try to own their. All the features of their voice and sound and patterns and even, you know, gestures. It's like working on a character. So even if you're not an actor or an actress, then you can definitely look at the way people speak and try to imitate that. But I truly don't think it's a must. I truly don't think it's a must. When you're working on improving your accent, improving your clarity, not all of us are aiming for becoming the accentless speakers. Sometimes it's just about being clear, being understood, feeling confident. Okay, so there are, of course, a lot of levels. And the cultural barrier. Sorry, I see that I have, like, paint here on my hand. That's because of my daughter. That distracted me for a sec. Anyway, so the, you know, overcoming cultural barriers is something that is in addition to language, and that's something that should be addressed a little differently. But that's not, I think, the first thing that you need to address. Okay. Culture and cultural. Okay, speaking of culture and cultural, let's talk about how to pronounce culture and cultural. So here we have a dark L, and we begin with a K sound. So when there is a K sound, there's always a little H after. When it's at the beginning of a word, it's called an aberrated sound. And then because of the dark L, it feels like the middle vowel. Basically, it's a cup sound, like in the word cup, because of the dark L, it sounds almost like an O sound. Coal. Then you move on to ch, a schwa, and an R for the word culture, culture for the word cultural. Then you're just adding roll at the end. Culture, roll. Cultural, culture and cultural. So practice that for a bit while I read some of your questions. Okay, so how did I lose my accent? What age did I study? Started studying English. Okay, I'll tell you a little bit. Okay. I started learning English in school. I think it was fifth grade or sixth grade. But I had a terrible teacher. So sorry, if you're watching this, then, you know, just know that you were a terrible teacher with a very thick accent. I grew up in Israel and by. But I always loved English. But we weren't as exposed. There was no Internet. You know, Internet started back in 98 when I was already 18. Right. So I didn't grow up being so exposed to English. And we didn't have, like, an active television at home. We did, but we would only watch it, you know, a few hours a week. And so I had okay, English, I had an accent. And when I moved there, I moved there. I was 20, almost 21, and I lived there for a year and a half. I did a whole bunch of things. And I don't think that I've improved my fluency and clarity, but I haven't improved my accent until I started studying acting. And there I studied acting for two years in New York, and then we had accent and pronunciation classes. It was for everyone, not just for Israeli, not Just for foreign speakers. It was also for American speakers because they were teaching classical English, classical American, and also general American, so there wouldn't be too many different regional accents. And so anyway, I. I studied there for two years, and we had two hours a week of speech classes. And I loved it. I became obsessed with it, and I wanted to be the best, even better than my fellow American students. So I practiced a lot for the first year. But then I think the real change came during the summer break for two months of the really intense practice. Now, remember, it was after a full year of accent training, two hours a week, and I practiced it about an hour a week in addition, and then during the summer, I practiced almost every day for an hour. And I took some private classes with, you know, an amazing dialect coach. And I think that what really made the difference. And the second year, we worked on different dialects, so that was also very effective because we. I kind of, like, understood the phonology of English or phonology of different dialects more clearly, and that helped me. And afterwards, I lived for another year in the US and worked as an actress. And there I worked a lot on texts, and just. I was fully immersed in the culture and in the language because I was surrounded just by American speakers. And I think what really made it for. For me, like, what really made the change is not so much the practice time, although it was important, it was about. It was more about how I listened to English around me, how I started analyzing everything that I've heard. Like, I would hear a word, and I would be, like, breaking it down into consonants and sounds, and I would be listening to their. Their voice and their intonation, and I would play the music in my head. Like, I would never listen to English and just hear the words. I would always hear the sounds and the melody, and I would kind of, like, challenge what I'm hearing. Is this an ah sound? Was this an ah? I would try to categorize it. Having the. The knowing the different sounds of American English and knowing patterns really, really helped because only then, only having this as a tool and starting to listen to English differently, that what really made the difference. And I think this is why it's very important for people to have the knowledge. Not just imitation is great, but you also need to have knowledge of how it works so you can map it out and then always analyze it and think about it. Okay, so let's see if we have any other questions. Okay. Some problem pronunciation S after. Okay, so how can I prevent this? The back of my tongue. Throat hurts. When I speak English, sound. Okay, Mehdi. Mehdi Hassan. I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly. You have a lot of tension. So you feel a lot of tongue and throat pain when you speak English. This is a very important point, and I think a lot of people feel that as well. I'm going to address that really quickly and tell you that in a week or so, I have video coming up about how to sound effortless in English. And I think that would really, really help you because hold a lot of unnecessary tension. That's the thing. Sometimes we work too hard to pronounce the sounds that we're not comfortable with. And we're not, you know, we don't know if we're pronouncing them correctly or not. And then when we hold all these, all this tension, you know, it hurts. It really hurts. It's a muscle. So think like you would, you know, stand like this for, like, really clenching my fist here. You would stand like this for an hour. Your palm would hurt, right? It's the same thing with the root of the tongue. You need to tense it up. But just for the sounds that are tense. For everything else, it should be super relaxed. Now, if you're holding a lot of tension here and pushing the root of the tongue down and your lips are tense and your jaw tense, you're gonna feel the pain and you would be exhausted after an hour of conversation. We don't want that. So for that, I highly recommend. So first of all, follow me on YouTube and tap the bell to get the notifications, because I will publish a video just about that. But for now, just always remind yourself to let go and make sure that you're not investing a lot of tension for every single sound. And when you all. When you do have one, like any of those 10 sounds like the R or the L, make sure that it doesn't color the entire word. So, for example, if you have the word rare, rare, which is, you know, a difficult word, it has an R at the beginning and R at the end. But if I would hold the tension throughout the entire word, first of all, the word is not going to be clear. Listen. Rare, rare. Second of all, I invested 200% of the energy more, 200% more of the energy that I should invest. And, you know, if I do that every other word, it would be very tiresome. Okay, so it's all a question of the energy that you're investing and engaging muscles that don't need to be engaged. So, for example, if you pronounce a th sound. Are your lips, you know, tight as well? Is your jaw locked? Think because you're thinking about the th. If it is, then again you're gonna get tired because all you need to test here is, you know, the muscle of the tongue. Think, think. The lips are completely relaxed. The jaw is relaxed. Okay? So think about that. Okay, so this is the last time I'm going to invite you to join Masterclass Tomorrow. It's going to be 2:00pm New York time, and if you go to my website, click on the link below. I'm going to upload the link in just a few minutes. If you go to my website, you will see the. I will put a link to a time converter tool so you can know when it is, when it takes place in your country, I really hope. Thank you so much. And if you have more questions, please please write them as a comment below this video because although I won't be able to see all your comments now, unfortunately. So that's it? That's it. Thank you and come follow me on Instagram Accentsway by hadar and on Facebook the Accents way. Take care and have a good day or good night, wherever you are.