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When you're speaking English, if people are constantly saying What? Huh? What'd you say? Could you repeat that? I didn't understand you. Or they look confused when you're speaking, then I know that you're probably not feeling very confident in your English speaking skills. So the question is, how much of your native language shows up in the way you speak English? I teach intermediate to advanced non-native speakers of English how to sound speaking American English. And so much of it has to do with finding a totally different voice than the voice they use to speak their own native language. Scan this QR code or go to
rachelsenglish.com/free to get my free course, the top three ways to master the American accent. It will blow your mind. It will give you totally new ideas on how to get the sound you've always wanted. The American accent is not about fitting the sounds of American English into your native language. It's about developing a completely different way of speaking from the bottom up, the way a baby learns a language. For you, what's the biggest thing standing between you and the way you want to speak English? What's the gap? That's a question I put out on my YouTube channel a while back, and today I want to feature Patinya and show her and all of you one pretty simple trick
that solves one of the big issues in developing the American accent. Hello. My name is Patinya. My friend call me Tiki. I am from Thailand. And my native language is Thai. My biggest problem in English like a my native language is the uh they don't have uh connected speech. So, when I speak English it's not connected. She's exactly right. If I was working with her in a live class, which is something I do once a month with my students in Rachel's English Academy, that's probably the first thing I would have chosen to work on with her. Each of her words is separate. That's not what we want in an American accent. That's [snorts]
not what we want in an American accent. [snorts] That's not what we want in an American accent. Do you hear that smooth connecting? In this video, you'll see me working with students in Rachel's English Academy. Rachel's English Academy is absolutely, hands-down, the best place to improve your American accent and English speaking skills. Over 50,000 students from all over the world in every profession you can think of and of nearly every native language out there have fundamentally changed the way they speak English and enjoyed the life that opened up for them. If you're curious about becoming one of my students, scan this QR code or visit rachelsenglishacademy.com.
I'm accepting new students right now and I would love to have you as a student. Sometime when I speak, it's cut. Like a dump. That's not what we want in an American accent. Very different from each word being choppy and having a feeling of separateness from the rest of the sentence. I call that choppy speech and it's the exact opposite of the smooth speech that sounds natural in American English. There are a couple of different ways to work on this and today we'll focus on the one that gets the quickest results. This is linking consonant to vowel. That would be one word ends in a consonant and the next word begins with a vowel. For example, in a
minute. in a day, in a while, in a week, in a month. The trick is you think of the consonant beginning the second word. So that would be in na. Now link them together. Inna. Link them slowly really focusing on that n. Do this out loud with me. Inna. It's like one two syllable word, not two one syllable words. In a minute. In a rush. In a sec. In a while. Now you do it and repeat each part with me again. Inna.
Inna. Repeat out loud. In a day. In a while. In a sec. In a week. I'm Rachel and I've been helping non-native speakers of English with their English speaking skills for over 20 years. My background is in opera singing and my passion and my specialty is helping you get the American accent that you've always wanted. Your speaking skills shouldn't be holding you back from your dreams. Scan this QR code or follow the link in the video description to get my cheat sheet for the sounds of American English. It's a great reference guide for the mouth positions of all of the sounds and it's yours free. Now, let's do a phrase where there are two
consonant to vowel links in a row. work as We have an ending K linking into as. And now in this sentence, we're actually going to pronounce as like is. This is called a reduction, changing or dropping a sound, but that's a topic for another video. Let's stay focused on linking consonant to vowel. The ending K of work links into as and it becomes cuz like A sound is cuz wer cuz Now, here we can't hold out the linking consonant. When we were working on in we could hold out that N. That's a sound that can be as long as you have breath. In
a but the K sound is not that way. K It's made with a stop of air and a release, so there's no holding it out. wer cuz work is So, we're going to take it off of wer and we're going to attach it to z. wer cuz work is Now, do it with no break, but keep that K connected. work is Repeat out loud after me. work is Now, the ending Z of as links into the article a. z work z Linking ending consonant to beginning vowel. Do that with me. work z work as a That smoothness that we get through the linking is what we're always after in American English. Not choppy, separated words. Work as a The phrase work as a I work as a is a phrase that I got from working with the student in Rachel's English Academy. Before [snorts] this, she'd been too
careful. Her words were over pronounced, a little separated. So, we worked together using something called the play it say it method, which is what all the audio training in my courses is based on. The idea is you don't think, you just repeat over and over with a native speaker, and your body starts to hear it differently, and make little adjustments to match better. Here's a clip from that class. Now, we're going to do play it say it. I'm going to say it, you repeat it. I say it, you repeat it a lot of times in a row. I work as a Yeah. Okay, okay.
I started to like that. In the middle it seemed like you maybe your mind like you were doing an awesome job, very purely imitating. Then I felt like your something in your mind said, "Oh my gosh, I need to think about my W." And then the word work felt a little bit long. Did I get it? Was that what it was? I heard that and it made your imitation less good. Mhm. Which is surprising. You know, we think, well, we know our problems, so let's think about our problems and figure it out. But I actually think knowing our problems, like you probably got that feedback from Laura or from another teacher, knowing our problems shows us where to work. And you know, you watch the video and
you learn, but it really shouldn't be part of what we do when we're practicing like the play it say it method. At that point, we don't really want to think about what we think our problems are and what we need to focus on. At that point, we just do the play it say it and honestly, that takes care of things. The more purely you can imitate, the more you'll be able to relax and match the qualities of the linking we want to hear. I work as a life coach. But my husband and I work as a team. I work as a recruiter. And I work as a janitor. I work as a social worker with addicts at an Austin hospital.
Beauty parlor where I work as a shampoo technician. I work as a decorator. Yeah, I work as a mechanic. Here's another example, American English. English. We want to take the N in American and attach it to the beginning vowel of English. N English. Do that with me. N English. American English. It helps to do it really slowly so you can feel that link and get comfortable with that before you start speeding it up.
American English. Here, I'm working with a student whose native language is Vietnamese. So, I said American I took the N and I linked it right into the vowel. And you wanted to put a break. American English. We don't need breaks between words. We don't want breaks between words. Can you take the N and can connect it with the continuous sound? American English. Nenglish. Um yeah. American English. Yes, there we go. That's a link. And that's what we want all the time. Now, let's take a few more phrases and I want you to practice out loud. See if linking this way feels natural or totally unnatural. The goal is to link
all your words together and have it feel so natural that you don't even have to think about it. That's the kind of habit you can build with the audio training in Rachel's English Academy. Let's get started. all alone at eight bad idea big eyes close it far away up above How is it feeling? Thank you so much for studying with me and don't forget to subscribe with notifications on. If you know anyone who could use help with linking, please send them this video and keep your learning going now with this video. That's it. Thanks so much for using Rachel's English.
