Transcripts
1. Course Introduction: So welcome to this course on English fluency. My name is Luke, and I will be teaching this course about English fluency. In this first lesson, I would just like to introduce the course little bit. Introduce, say something about the course a little bit, and tell you the meaning and the purpose of the course. So let's begin by talking about fluency. What is fluency? And we should know the meaning of the course. Fluency in language, in English in this course is the ability to speak easily and naturally. And to sound as though you're speaking easily on the naturally. Okay, so that's all it is. Fluency is the ability or the skill to speak out to say what you want to say very easily. And when you say it, it sounds good. It sounds clear. Other people can understand you easily. That's the meaning of fluency. And in this course we're going to be working on many different aspects or parts of fluency. How can we be more fluent in English? Now in this course, I'm not going to be teaching you very many words. I'm not going to be teaching you a lot of things that aren't useful for fluency. We are just going to be talking about and practicing very important and practicing how to get better at fluency, how to speak more fluently. And so that's what this course is about, okay? And I'm going to be using the board here like this. I'm going to be writing certain ideas down. I won't be writing down everything I say. And also you will notice that there are no subtitles under this video. The reason for that is I want you to also develop your listening. I want you to really, really focus on what I'm saying. If you can understand 70% of what I said, that is good. If you can understand 100%, maybe I'm speaking a little too slowly. I wanted to challenge you a little bit. So in this course, if you can't understand 100% of what I said, that is a very good reason to go back after you have improved and take the course again, watch the course again and see if you can understand 80% the next time. So in this way, I also hope that you will be able to improve your listening as well as your fluency. Your listening ability is connected to your ability to speak naturally, smoothly and fluently. Okay, so let me just talk a little bit about what we're going to talk about. This course, okay, we're going to talk about some, a few rules that we can follow about stress, about tone. And we'll talk about the difference between stress and tone and how those can change the feeling of the sentence and the meaning of the sentence. So we'll talk about that. We'll also talk about how we can connect things together in the sentence when we're speaking a sentence, when we're saying a sentence, how we can connect sounds and words together so that the whole sentence sounds more natural, sounds more fluent. So that's a very important part of fluency of speaking naturally connecting sounds together. And we'll talk about many different examples of how to connect sounds together. Again, very, very important. We're going to talk about the beginning of sentences. We're going to talk about the end of sentences and how to make sure people are able to hear us when we speak. And especially here, the difference between the end of a sentence and the beginning of a sentence. So we'll talk about that too. We'll talk about, as I mentioned, tone, particularly Question tone, when to use this question tone, when to use that question tone. That's a pretty simple thing. So next we'll go onto the first real lesson. And in this lesson we're going to be talking about a few important tips, a few important things to always keep in mind when you're trying to improve fluency. So I will see you in the next lesson in this course. We'll also talk about certain letter sounds. For example, the letter T. And we'll talk about how always saying the letter T is not such a good idea. That means saying it as it isn't such a good idea. And sometimes we need to change it a little bit to make a small change to make the letter and the whole sentence sound better, sound more natural. So we'll talk about a few examples of this kind of thing as well. Toward the end of the course, we're going to then move on and focus on some different exercises, some different things we can do to actually practice, improve fluency. So the first part of the course is more learning some specific things we can do. And the end of the course is focused on more practice. We're going to be reading a couple of longer paragraphs to get fluency Down, to learn to speak more naturally. And I will use my own speaking as an example. So if you don't like how I speak, then I'm sorry, that's too bad, but I'll do my best to make it very clear and very fluent. And then we'll do some other exercises such as tongue twisters. And we'll also talk about improvisation. Improvisation will also be a powerful tool for us to improve fluency. Okay? So this course, again, is designed to help you get better at fluency through learning specific things and through practice. We won't be learning too many new words in this course. We won't be learning a lot of grammar in this course. We're just going to focus on how to sound better, more natural when you're actually speaking in English.
2. Fluency Tips: Okay, so in this first actual lesson, we're going to be talking about just a few fluency tips. Remember fluency topic of this course is how to speak naturally and clearly in English. Tips means something that you should do, which can help you to do something better. If someone gives you a tip, it could be similar to a suggestion, or it could be similar to a good idea, which can help that person, which can help you in this situation. So fluency tips, I'm going to just tell you a few things to keep in mind. A few things to keep in mind for this course. Okay, Now the first and perhaps most important thing to remember about speaking fluently is that sentences, and when we are speaking naturally, words are blended. So it's important to know the correct pronunciation of each word. It really is. And actually I have another course about basic pronunciation, in which I talk about how to say different sounds correctly. For example, vowel sounds and consonant sounds. But that doesn't mean that you should say, when you're speaking a whole sentence, each word separately without connecting those words together. So let me give you an example. Let me give you an example. Does that sound good? Should I say, let me give you an example or let me give you an example, or let me give you an example. Okay, which one sounds better to you? I think you can probably guess and you probably feel that the one which sounds more natural is the one where I don't say each word one by one by one. If I do that, it doesn't sound fluent. So you need to know the right pronunciation of words. But when you're actually speaking sentences, you will sound strange. If you speak one word by one word, you will sound like a robot. So that's very important. We are going to learn how to mix and blend. Blend means to sort of mix two things together or make this one go into this one a little bit. We're going to talk about how to do this. And it's something I just want you to keep in your mind during this course. Very important. Okay, Now the next tip, I think is obvious. Obvious means it's very easy to guess that. It's obvious. Obvious means. Everybody probably knows. It's easy to see, but I should still mention it. I should still say this. Don't be flat. What does that mean? Well, you've been listening to me speaking so far in this course. And I don't talk like this. I don't say, you've been listening to me speaking so far in this course, done at a that is flat. Notice that when I speak, my voice rises and falls differently. And I do it for different reasons. And to some degree, to some extent, it is my choice which words I want to focus on. Widths, which words should be up, which words should be down? To some extent, it is my choice. It is my type of expression. And there are some which are common or normal. And we'll again talk about that a little bit later in the course. So I just want you to keep in mind that you do not want to be flat. If you speak flatly, you can't express emotion very clearly. And other people will feel very bored about what you are saying. People can't listen to that, okay, So just remember, it's better that you use some fluctuation. Fluctuation means your voice rises and falls. Fluctuation means up and down and up and down. It's better that you have that. And it sounds weird, then it's totally flat. So if you don't know how to make your voice go up and down for English, at least try. And we're going to learn about how to do it later. But at least try. It's better than if you speak like this flat bed. So don't be flat when you're speaking. Now, this is a huge one, and this is true for every part of English pronunciation and indeed pronunciation for pretty much any language, unless it's only a written language. Latin. Listening is very, very important. If you want to get the feeling for how a language sounds, you've got to be able to hear and listen and then notice the things about that language, right? I speak the way I speak, not because I learned some rules about how to say things this way, how to say things this way. Actually, no, I never learned any rules. And in this course we will be talking about some rules to help you to learn a little bit more quickly, right? But most native speakers of English didn't learn rules. They learned how to speak fluently by listening. So you need to be very good at listening if you want to speak naturally. So if you say to yourself, I want to be a great speaker, but I don't want to work on my listening. I only want to focus on speaking naturally. That is a very, very bad idea. And in fact, it's not possible because you can't know if you've sound natural, if you sound fluent, unless you're able to listen to how other people sound, to what fluent is to a standard of fluency. And I'm not saying that I am the standard. Fluency. There is no standard English, right? There are many different forms of English, but you need to be able to figure out which kind of English fluency you want to have. Okay, And so listening is really important. Now, the next one is really tough. Self-awareness means being able to pay attention to yourself. What you are doing. Awareness means the attention that you pay to something and your ability to notice that thing or get something from it. So Self-awareness just means focusing on yourself and being able to notice what you are doing. Very simple now, you think, well, I know, I know what I'm doing. You would be surprised. You may think you know what you're doing. Most people think they know what they are doing. But there are many things, especially when it comes to speaking habits that we have that keep us from becoming fluent. And in English, this is also true. And it's actually not only true for people learning English. A lot of Americans use recently in the last five or ten years, use the word like in sentences. But the word has no real meaning. They just use it as a sort of thinking word. And we'll actually talk about thinking words later in the course. Uh, thinking word is something that you say when you're thinking about what to say. And many Americans will say, Well, like, I think, like, like, and it's very common. And I mentioned this to my brother one time. Say like a lot when you speak, really. Okay. I'm going to stop. I will stop saying like, I think it doesn't make me sound smart, and that's true. I think if someone says like too much in a sentence, they don't sound very smart. My opinion. Just my opinion. He said, Okay. I'm not going to do it anymore. But like, it's really it's really hard for me. And he said like two times. So it's difficult to change your habits and notice what you're doing. I just wanted to tell you this because I want you to start trying to focus on what you are doing. How you need to have keen awareness, self-awareness, very important. All right, Now the next one is a tip that I think is incredibly useful, particularly for fluency. And that is to record yourself. To record yourself means to capture, capture or catch or keep your voice. Okay, we'll be doing some exercises that can be used when you are recording yourself later in the course. But generally, it's a great practice. And actually this can really help with the last tip, awareness. So if you say something and you record yourself, maybe on your phone or whatever, there are many different ways to do it. You will find that you're able to notice things that you didn't notice when you were speaking. And that's really important. You'll be able to catch your bad habits. You'd be able to catch and find the things that you are not doing that are keeping you from becoming fluent. And so this is a very powerful tool for you. So I hope that you will start doing it now some people say, I hate the way I sound when I record myself. Okay. You're the only one listening to it. So it's okay. Okay. You hate it. Okay. You hate it. But you can get used to it if you do it enough. Okay. I used to hate my voice when I heard myself or a recording of myself. Now, I'm totally used to it because I always record myself. This, this lesson, this video is a recording of myself and I will listen to it and edit it probably for many hours. So you'll get used to it, get passed to that. Recording yourself is a powerful tool, okay, now another tip which is really, really, really useful, which a lot of people don't really think about is the ability to hear in your head. Let's just do this. All right. I want you to imagine a word. Let's say the word banana, banana, banana, banana, say banana, say banana. Okay, we all know this word. Now I want you to say the same word two times in your head. Without speaking. The first time you say it, I want you to say it like this. Banana. Banana, okay? The second time, I want you to say it like this banana. Banana, it's not correct, but just do it. Okay, Let's try. Can you hear the difference between the two words in your own voice? I can. And I think you can too. And if you can't, you can work on this. The ability to hear sounds in your head without actually speaking can help you a lot. Because during the day you will be able to think about some of the things that we learn in class. Maybe something that you heard in a movie. And you will, you will start to think in your mind in English sound. Not only when you're watching movies, not only when you're listening to meet, not only when you are speaking, not only when you are listening to your recordings, you will be able to hear sounds in a kind of way in your own mind. And being able to think in this way, we can call this audible. Audible thinking can really help you and your progress to become more fluent. When you start thinking in sounds, you can begin to work on things almost unconsciously without focusing on that, without doing an exercise. So this is something that I really hope you can develop and try to start doing on a regular basis. Regular basis. That means usually. And if you start doing it, you will find that you progress more quickly. Now something which is true in pretty much every aspect of every language is that not all rules work. We may have some rules. They may have some ideas about how to do this. But it's very likely that there is an example that doesn't fit that rule, an example that doesn't work. This is called an exception. An exception to the rule. That's an E By the way. That's an E. And that's an E. Okay. My handwriting is a little bit messy. An exception to the rule. Okay? So if we learn something later in the course or if you hear something generally, we can say that usually works, but maybe it doesn't. Sometimes. I do. You just have to sort of accept it and say, Okay, I see, it's a language. It's not mathematics, it's not science. These things, mathematics and science have very clear rules and the rules must always work. 2 plus 2 always equals 4 always. But this rule about this thing in pronunciation, in fluency and grammar doesn't always work. It's kind of usually rule we could say, or a general rule we could say. Okay, so just keep that in mind. Finally, let's talk about something which if you are this kind of person, you really need to remember when you want to work on fluency. If you're the kind of person, the kind of student and there are students like this and at that's great, right? If you're the kind of student who thinks I must follow this rule and this rule and do this and this and this. And then I will be fluent. I must do all these things and then I will be fluent. It's going to be more difficult for you because there's an aspect or a part of language, particularly language fluency, that is not about doing a certain thing, but is instead about getting a certain feeling about it. And that's something that's very difficult to put into words. The best way for me to say it is, get the feeling of that. Let's take an example. Okay, Here's a piece of music that you play on the piano and one person learns it, plays the keys all correctly, people say, Okay, that's correct. And then a person who's really, really good at the piano takes that same piece of music and add something to it. Even though the notes are all the same, they add some passion to it. The add some emotion to it somehow. It's very difficult to put into words what that is. Well, it's the same in some way for fluency. The feeling of a language, the way that it sounds as spoken by the native speakers of that language is not always easy or even possible to put into this rule and this rule. And in fact, the people who, as I mentioned before, the people who do speak it in this way, they don't know any rules. They don't know why they're speaking it in this way. They just do. And so to some degree, you need to just sort of relax and be open to the way that it actually sounds. Don't say infant should be this way, right? It should be this way, right? Well, I learned this. It should be, should be this way, right? If you always are doing this, if you're always saying should be, should be, it should be, you will miss the point. You will be very mechanical in the way that you speak. And so I hope you can relax your mind, relax your mouth. English is a very loose language. And if you do that, I think that you will find, if you're open to it, you will find that you improve very quickly and you're able to get that feeling of English, spoken English, that's hard to put into words. That's hard to say. It is that it is this, It's very difficult to say what it is. There's an aspect of it that is sort of intrinsic, an aspect of it that you can't really separate and describe. Okay, so in the next lesson we're going to be talking about blending words. That means how to put words together so that sentences flow like water. Water flows, flow more naturally in a sentence particularly. Okay, So I will see you in the next lesson.
3. Blending Part 1: So we talked about in the last lesson some basic tips, things to remember when we want to focus on improving fluency. And now I want to, in this lesson, actually start to learn a few important things we can think about an actually do when we want to improve fluency. So in this video we're going to be talking about blending. Blending. What does blending mean? Well, the very simple meaning of blending is where you have two things and you kind of mix them together. You take part of this one and part of this one, and you mix them together. Let me give you a visual example. Let's say we have here some lines like this and some lines like this. Okay? The first ones, these are, We could say vertical lines. On the second ones we can say these lines are horizontal. So now what can we do if we want to put these two together? Well, we could start to make these a little bit farther apart, like this, more and more separated. And then we could take these an extent, a few of them like this. So we have some of these here and some of these here. I know my drawing is not very good, but this is the basic idea. And you can think about this for color as well. You have blue here and green here, and you in the middle mix them. They are blended, mixed together. So this is blending in the very simple meaning of blending. Now, I know my drawing is really bad, but I hope you can get the basic idea. So we're going to be now talking about how we do that with words. If we say each word in a sentence one-by-one, Even if the pronunciation of each word is perfect, then the sentence will not sound fluent. It will sound like this. If I speak like this, each word is good, but every word is separate and not blended. See that it doesn't sound natural. That doesn't sound fluent, right? This sounds natural. This sounds fluid. So what am I doing? Make it sound like that. Well, I'm doing a lot of different things. But one of the things that I'm doing, he's blending. So let's talk about that. Mixing words together to make the sentence more natural. To make the sentence flow. Flow is like water to move from this to this, to this, like water naturally. Okay, so we need to first talk about vowels and consonants. Because when we talk about blending, we talk about vowels and consonants. A vowel is simply a letter of the alphabet. Letter of the alphabet. The alphabet has 26 letters. I'm sure he didn't know that. And five of those letters are called vowels. And those vowels are a, E, I, O, U. Now we won't talk about the pronunciation of these vowels. If you want to know about the pronunciation of these vowels, you can watch my other course about pronunciation. This is about fluency. So the vowels a, e, I, o, u, consonants, or the other 21 letters of the alphabet, B, J, K, L, and so on. L, that's an L, and so on. Okay. And so why am I saying this? I'm saying this because there is something about this that can help us to blend words, okay? If you have one word, let me make a little bit of space here. And the end letter or sound, I should say letter or sound. And not only letter, letter or sound is the same as the next word, the first letter or sound. Then we can actually put these two words together when we say it for vowel sounds and consonant sounds. Let me give you a simple example. Okay. Here we have a word bug, right? And gate. Bug, AND gate, two different words. But do we see here the letter consonant, in this case, at the end of the first word, is the same as the letter at the beginning of the next word, the word after it. So because it's the same and we can say the same sound, we should put them together when we say it. So instead of saying bug gate, we can say bug gate, bug, gate, bug gate. Now there are some situations where the letter doesn't make a sound. And so we have to, in that situation, say the sound, not the letter because sometimes for example, this word, the last letter is E, But this is called a silent E. We don't say it. We don't say, so. May we say sum? So the last sound is m naught, ie. We have another word here that begins with E. It doesn't work, it doesn't work. We can't really blend these words very well. And we'll talk about what we can do in that case in another lesson. But if the next word is an m at the beginning, the m sound, then we can do it. The last sound here, m, first sound here, m, some moms, some mumps, some mumps. So this is a very simple thing, but it can really, really help us to make our sentences much more fluent. I should also mention that sometimes Other letters make one sound. For example, pH makes the same sound as f. So if we have a word that ends with pH, and then the next sound is f, or the next word begins with the letter F. That's also okay. Same sound, same sound. So we can say in this case, usually the same letter, right? End of the first word has the same letter as the beginning of the next word. Or we could say at least the same sound. In the case of this, it's the sound that's the same, not the letter, because the last letter here is E, but we don't say that E. So I hope you can get that basic idea. It's a pretty simple idea. It's called blending. If you do it, your sentences will sound much more natural. And we still say the word correctly. We just put the two words together. And this takes some practice. So let's do some practice. All right, so for practice, we're going to start with vowels and how we can put these together, how we can blend these two words together. We could also sometimes call this linking to link things together. Linking is when we connect two things together, I prefer to use blending because that's how it feels. A word which makes you feel like it's softer linking is sort of a hard cut trunk thing. I don't really like that. So let's practice with vowels first here we can say the letter here and the letter letter here are both vowels and they are the same. Or we can also say the sound is pretty much the same. And here and here, the letter is the same. However, in this case, when we say it, the sound is a little bit different, but it's close enough here will probably say V. Sometimes people say that. But in this case people will usually say v. And here, egg, the egg. So this is the short e, and this is the long e. But it's pretty close and so we can still do it. So you shouldn't say, Oh, well, they're not exactly the same, so I shouldn't try to put them together. In fact, you can usually, you can, you can usually put sounds together like this if they're pretty much the same, almost the same. So let's talk about this one. Let's do this one. This one, we should say not as I go over, you can hear that. Go over, uh, uh, the next one begins over. This is not blended and it sounds, if we say it in a sentence, not very fluent. Instead, we'll add a small w sound here, a little. What, what sound to help us blend the words? Go over, go over, go over, go over, and we'll talk about the little w sound more in another video. But now I just want to give you the feeling for putting words together. So I don't want to talk about that little sound too much. So try this, go over. If you're saying go over a, then it's not right. It has to be a continuous sound. Go over, go over, go over, go over. It's not a very, very strong w sound. It's not go whoa, over like that. It's a very mild sound. Go over. Here. They are a little different, but we can still put them together. The egg, the egg instead of little y sound instead of the egg. The egg, the egg. That sounds very hard, right? It doesn't sound natural. The egg, the egg, the egg, the egg, the egg, the egg, the egg. So go over the EKG time. Go over the EKG time. Go over the EKG time. Go over the egg tongue, go over the EKG time. Now, the same idea, but this time we'll talk about consonants, or we could say consonant sounds. Here we won't be adding the little w sound with a little y sound as we did for the vowels, we're going to be just smacking two words together because they have a common consonant or a common consonant sound. Okay, so let's, let's go into the example. Let me just read this one time. Each word individually. I had devs number ready. I had devs number ready. Now, each word is correct, but it doesn't sound great. It doesn't sound natural. Instead, we should connect these two. And these two. Instead of saying had devs, we should say had devs, had devs hat stop. Dave's, there's no space between them. No space had devs hat, Dave's here. Instead of number ready, we should say number ready. We make the r sound a little bit longer. Number ready? Number, ready? Number ready. I had devs number ready. I had devs number ready. I had devs number ready. I had Davis number ready, good. The next one. Same thing. Put these together. Consonant, consonant. These are the letters same. Man-made instead of mom made doesn't sound as natural. We should say. Mom made mom made, mom made I don't stop my voice. Mum made mom made it's continuous. Mom made here new waffles. No stop. New waffles, new waffles, new waffles, man-made new waffles. Mom made new waffles. Mom made new waffles. So very important to catch this point. There is no stop between the two words, new waffles mom made. That's very important. Okay. So you have to continue the sound. If you can't do it, work until you can't, you must be able to do it to speak more fluently. Next one, my wife found, wife found. Here's an example where the letter isn't the same, but the sound is the same, right? Wife is the last sound, f is the last sound. So wife found, wife found not, wife, found not good. Why found wife found? So I continue the sound here. Black cookbook, not black cookbook. Black cookbook. If you can hear two. Black cookbook, it's wrong. It doesn't sound good. It's right for each word. Yes. But if we're trying to say the sentence, well, it's not good. Black cookbook. Black cookbook. Black cookbook. My wife found a black cookbook. My wife found a black cookbook. Okay. So let me quickly read these. I had devs number ready. I had devs number ready. Mom made new waffles. Mom made new waffles. My wife found a black cookbook. My wife found of black cookbook. Okay, so practice these until you can do it very easily. Okay, now next I want to go into a more serious example that we can use to practice this. Very, very well. It's a little difficult, but I think you can do it. So let's now look at a longer example of blending words.
4. Blending Part 1: Practice: Okay, so now let's look at a paragraph that we can use to practice this idea of blending for both vowel sounds and consonant sounds. Now, I don't want you to focus on the meaning. It's crazy and weird. I just wrote it like this because it has many different examples of sounds that can be blended. Don't focus on the meaning. It has almost no meaning. It does have meaning, but it's very strange. Just forget it. Okay, that's not the purpose. So let's go over this slowly once and talk about the places where the words should link. And then I'll, I'll read it a couple of times slowly and quickly altogether. Okay. So the first one, if they're really, they're really, there, really is someone, is someone. Now this is a but they're so close that we can pretty much put them together. If there really is someone, is someone with the, with the, with the, with the key U key, you need, key, you need if there really is someone with key you need. If there really is someone with the key unique, with the, with the key you need, okay. You should do over, du over, and so little different, do an OH, right. But we can still pretty much blend them. You should do over, should do, should do over. So here's three sounds. Now, if you feel tired, you could say should do. Okay, It's all right. Sometimes it's difficult to blend every word that you can, but it might be a good idea to blend this one as well. Should do over, should do over. And above the expectations. The expectations, the expectations, the expectations, someone expectations, someone expectations, someone, these are also the same. Someone else secretly, another one else secretly, else secretly. L secretly keeps. If faking, if faking, if faking. Here, if faking, gout, faking, gout, faking gout. These two are also blended. Faking out if faking out, if faking gout. If faking gout, if faking out helps solve, helps solve, helps solve, solve volumes, solve volumes, solve volumes, solve volumes of victimization or victimization. Now this one, it's an F. Yes. But it equals the V sound here. We don't say off, we say of the v sound. These two have the same sound of victimization, of victimization, of victimization, of victimization, of victimization concerns. Go on, go on. Go on. It's a little w sound there, like we said before, go on and do it and do it. These are also together and do it and do it. Okay, so now let's go over this. Let's read this very slowly. If there really is someone with the key you need, you should do over and above the expectations someone else secretly keeps. I'm stressing these points. I won't quite say it's like this. When I read it naturally. Someone else secretly keeps. If faking gout helps solve volumes of victimization concerns, go on and do it. Okay, So I'll read it slowly. I'm going to read it as though I wouldn't naturally read it. There might be a couple of places where I do make a small break just because there are so many in this paragraph, so many examples. It's very difficult when reading naturally, totally naturally to focus on each one. And I actually don't mean that you should do everyone. Right, because again, in normal conversation and normal speaking, there won't be this many of these blended words in a paragraph. This is just an exercise, okay, so I'm just going to read it now as I would totally naturally read it. If there really is someone with the key you need, you should do over and above the expectations. Someone else secretly keeps it faking gout, help solve volumes of victimization concerns. Go on and do it. Now, let me read it one more time. More quickly and totally naturally. If there really is someone with the key you need, you should do over and above the expectations. Someone else secretly keeps it faking out helps. So volumes of victimization concerns go on and do it. So this is natural. This is how I would read it totally naturally if I were looking at it for the first time. So practice this, read it many times out loud. Record yourself to, to match my pronunciation. Go back, listen to what I said again. Listen to my version of reading it slowly and quickly. Try to really, really get it down, okay? And I think you will find that once you start thinking in this way, you begin to speak more naturally, more fluently. So in the next lesson we're going to be continuing talking about blending words, but we're going to focus on a different aspect of blending words. So I'll see you in the next lesson.
5. Blending Part 2: Okay, In the last lesson, we talked about how we use consonant and vowel sounds which are the same, sometimes letters, sometimes just sounds which are the same to blend or mix words together. And in this video we're going to be talking about something very similar, also about blending. But what about when words don't have the same sound? Exactly? What about when there are different? Can we still kind of blend or link these words together? And the answer is yes. In a way, we can make them sound much more natural. We can sound much more fluent when we're speaking. We, if we do this. So what I would like you to do first is just try to rethink how you think about words. We think about words when we're speaking as one word, one word, one word, isolated. Isolated means separate from everything else, this word and this word and this word. But when we're speaking, we can think in this way. And a natural fluent English isn't like this. We blend everything pretty much not only words that have the same sound. We jump from one to the next rather than stopping and saying the next. That's why I have this word jumping here. It's not that we say this word and then this word first this one, and then this 1 first this one, and then this one. No, we jump to the next word. We use the word before to spring, or jumped to the next. Not in every situation, but in many, many, many, many situations. Did I say many? Yes, many. So we would, we could say this is everyone. But that sounds very hard. There's a sharp line, is everyone, is everyone. But I want you to rethink this word. Instead of thinking of the separation, I should say. Instead of thinking of this separation as being here, I want you to try to rethink about where the line is. I want you to instead move the line to here in this case. So let's move the line here rather than where it was, which was here. Instead of saying, Is everyone, I want you to begin with the i sound. And then I want you to imagine that actually the S is the first letter of the next word. Just in your mind, not for the meaning but for the pronunciation. So instead of saying Is everyone, I want you to say it. Everyone. Everyone. Now that's still separate. It doesn't sound perfect, but that's the idea. That's the rethinking that I want you to do. Now. We know how to say is, so all we have to do is jump from the S to the next word, just like we practice it. Everyone is everyone. We can do that and we can say is everyone. So we can say this word as a continuous sound. We bring these two together and now we jump to the next. Like this is everyone, is, everyone. Is everyone. Is everyone. So from this S we tune into the next word is everyone, is, everybody is everything. So we jump to the next one. How about this one? Well, first we think, okay, this is show up. These two words. Show up, up, up, different sound. We can't, we can't blend them. We can blend them. We can blend them in a way, a slightly different kind of blending. We can jump from this word to this word. Jump, push off the last word into the next word. So how can we do it for this one? I want you to break the word here. So the first part is there, the second part is there. And I want you to say these to show. Show. Don't focus on the sound yet. Show, show. And then here, what, what, what, instead of show up, show up. That's not very natural. Show what? Show? What, okay, now all we have to do is mix the two. We know how to say show up. And now we can say show up, right? So now we just need to put these two ideas together just like we did for is everyone. Now we can say show up, show up, show up. What between these two? My voice does not stop. It continues just like here is Is my voice never stops. So there's no break. My voice very important. And for this one as well, show up, show up, show up. And now we do it's more quickly. Is everyone show up? Is everyone show up? Alright, so that's pretty easy. So I just want you to rethink how you think about words when you're speaking, okay, That's a very, very important thing to do to become more fluent. Now, the same idea here and something that we talked about a little bit in the last lesson. And the lesson about vowels is that sometimes, and actually, I should say most times when we have vowels next to each other, even if it's not the same vowels, we use a little y or a w sound to make them go together more nicely. So for these, we're going to be using the y sound to help blend them. And for these, we're going to be using the w sound to help blend them. Okay, so imagine that here we put a little y here, we put a little y here, a little bit of a y here, a little y sound. And this helps us to jump across to the next word rather than saying, we are, he is, Hi, everyone, die under. We can jump with why we are we are yeah, there's a little y there. I'm not saying we are. That's too strong. It's a small y sound. We are, we are, we are, we are. We are, we are. My voice does not stop. Ie we are we are we are we are. No break in the voice. He is. He is, he is. He is. He is. Hi everyone. Hi everyone. Hi everyone. Hi everyone. Hi everyone. Hi everyone. Hi everyone. Hi everyone. Know, break. Die under, die under. Here. Here. Here. Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it. Do it. Instead of do it. Do it. Do it. Do it, do it. Do everything. Do everything. Do everything. Do everything. Do everything, not do everything. Do everything. Again, it's very, very important to remember to continue the voice. Okay, Let me quickly go through these again. We are, he is Hi everyone. Die under. We are he is Hi everyone. Die under. Go in. You are. Do it, do everything. Okay? So these are just simple examples of cases when we can mix or blend or link words together with pronunciation to make our sentences sound more natural and fluent. This is one of the things we can do. These are not the only examples, just some simple examples to give you the idea about how to do this. And we're starting to get a bigger picture that we can blend many things. Not only words with the same vowel or consonant sound, but also words like this that are just vowels at the beginning or end. And we use the y and w sound until link them together as well. Okay, next, compound words. What is a compound word? Very simple. A compound word is a word made of two words or maybe three words, like sum, buddy, sum is a word and body is a word. We put them together. One word, somebody. Now, the reason I want to talk about compound words is the way we say compound words can make us more or less fluent when we're speaking. We cannot say some buddy, somebody any more, any more. You can not have any space between the two words in the compound word. You'll have to make sure you say the whole word fluently and try to as much as you can jump into the next part of the word. Now we have two different types of compound, compound words, voiced and unvoiced. What is voiced mean? Voiced means that the two words at the end of this one and the beginning of this one are using the voice, both of them, E, E, will, or the hm, hm, okay, these are all, and actually this is an example of a word we talked about before. Same sound. These are all voiced, both words, the end of this one, the beginning of this one voiced. These are unvoiced. So for the unvoiced words, basically what it means is that we don't use the voice for parts of it. Part of the word. At the end of maybe the first word or the beginning of the second is unvoiced. Okay, So for part of this middle between them where we should link them together. So here's an example. Pay, yeah, yeah, yeah, voiced check, check, check, unvoiced. Okay. So let's just go through these and we should continue the voice. For the voiced ones, very important, continue the voice. Somebody, somebody, somebody instead of sum, buddy, we should say somebody, somebody anymore, anymore. Anymore, anymore, not any more anymore. Anyway. Anyway. Anyway. Anyway. Anyway, overdoing, overdoing, over doing, not over doing overdoing. It has to be continuous. Homemade, homemade, homemade. And we talked about this before. The sound is the m sound, so we know that one unvoiced. Now without it, we still need to make sure we jump, even though we don't continue the voice, we still need to try to jump and make it continuous paycheck instead of pay check, paycheck, paycheck. Misunderstanding instead of miss understanding, misunderstanding, misunderstanding, or misunderstanding. Can't do that either. Misunderstanding. Weekend, weekend, canned, canned weekend, weekend. Sometimes, sometimes, sometimes household, household, household. So what's really important to remember for these compound words here is. Let's say for example, under stan, which is two parts under instead, that makes it a compound word. Instead of saying under, stand, Understand, understand. We jump to the next. And here there is, it's not quite a word. But instead of saying miss under, we say Miss sunder, sunder. The end of this one jumps into the beginning of the next one. Here. This one, we break it in another way like we did previously. Instead of saying week end, we should say we can weekend, weekend, weekend, weekend, That's better. Instead of saying sometimes, sometimes this one doesn't have a very obvious jump from this one to this one. But you can hear the difference between some times and sometimes, sometimes, sometimes it's still very, very fast. So some of these compound words, we can easily jump from the first to the second. Some of them like sometimes we can't so easily jump into the next word, but we can still say it very quickly and leave no space between them. Here's another example. Instead of saying house, hold, house, hold household, household, household. So it's almost like this one is the beginning. This is the way that we can say compound words more naturally. It's very important to remember, keep the space between them small. No stop, no break. Even if one of them is voiced, one of them is unvoiced. So practice these compound words. And I think if you come across compound words, you can use the basic idea that I just talked about, but leaving no space and about trying to jump to the next part if you can. The two most important ideas, to say any compound word more naturally, more fluently. Let me just read through these one more time quickly. Somebody, somebody anymore, anymore. Anyway. Anyway, overdoing, overdoing. Homemade homemade paycheck, paycheck, misunderstanding, misunderstanding, misunderstanding. Weekend, weekend, weekend. Sometimes sometimes sometimes household, household, household. And you can hear the difference between household and household. Household. So space between them, that's too long. House hold these better household. Okay, so practice these. Now I want to talk about and do a little bit of practice. Reading practice for this kind of, this kind of word, jumping from one word to the next. Okay, now, a short paragraph we can use to practice jumping as we have worked on, and also how to do or use or say. Compound words, right? So we can use this as an example for practice. Now once again, please do not focus on the meaning. The meaning is almost nonsensical. It doesn't really make sense, so don't focus on it. I just wrote this as a way to help you practice the things that we learned in this and the last video. So I'm going to read it slowly and then read it quickly. I want you to try to follow along and then go back, listen to it and read it by yourself. Record yourself, listen to yourself the recording and see if you have made progress. Okay, So first slowly and then quickly. Hi everyone. Hi everyone. We are going to talk about how overdoing things, how overdoing things can sometimes cause misunderstanding. Can sometimes cause misunderstanding. Do we know anymore? Do we know anymore? Do we know anymore? Sometimes we must go into a topic deeply to understand it. Sometimes we must go into a topic deeply to understand it. Hi everyone. We are going to talk about how overdoing things can sometimes cause misunderstanding. Do we know anymore? Sometimes we must go into a topic deeply to understand it. Hi everyone. We're going to talk about how overdoing things can sometimes cause misunderstanding. Do we know anymore? Sometimes we must go into a topic deeply to understand it. And now very quickly, very, very quickly. Hi everyone. We're going to talk about how overdoing things can sometimes cause misunderstanding. Do we know anymore? Sometimes we must go into a topic deeply to understand it. That's a very, very fast. If you can't do it that quickly, no problem. It's actually difficult for me to do it that quickly. And again, doing things very, very quickly is not the point. The point is not speed. If you can't say things very, very fast, that's actually okay, no problem. It will be more clear when people are listening to you, there'll be able to understand you. It's better that you have fluency. Fluency is not speed. Fluency is the ability to sound natural when speaking. So if you are unable to do it quickly, just focus on doing it slowly, but sounding smooth and natural when you're doing it. Okay. So just to be very, very clear, fluency isn't speed. There are different. Someone who's very fluent, maybe doesn't speak very quickly. You don't have to. Okay. And in fact, it might be better if you don't for new, I would recommend not doing it unless you have first mastered slow fluency. Okay, so that's all for this lesson. Practice this one a lot. Try to get it down. This one's pretty short, so it's easy to practice and again, record yourself. So in the next lesson we're going to be talking about the T-H sound and what we can do with the t sound to become more fluent because it's a very hard sound. And a lot of the time, if we say, it can reduce the sound of the fluency in what we are saying. So we're going to talk about what do we can do with the T. So I'll see you in the next lesson.
6. Time T Part 1: Okay, So in the last lesson, we talked about some blending. We talked about how we can jump from one word to the next word, for example, using a small y sound or a small w sound. And we also talked about how in compound words like lighthouse, we shouldn't say light house because it is one word. We should reduce the space between it so that there's no break. And if we can, we should continue the voice between the word, the two words. But now in this lesson we're going to be focusing on the letter T. Now, did you notice I just said the letter T. Did that sound like I said the letter T? No, it did not. It sounded like I said the lead der t It wasn't a strong sound, but it was a very soft sound. And we're going to be talking about when the T-H sound can become kind of like a d sound. We'll talk about that later. But first I just want to quickly talk about the problem with the t sound. The problem with the t sound is that basically it's a hard sound. It's not like ssh or VPU. It's a very hard sound. And because it's that kind of sound, it can reduce, in some cases, the fluent or natural sound of the whole sentence if you have to stop and say t very clearly every time. And so we're going to talk about situations where you should use the sound very clearly and where you don't have to wear, you can change the sound a little bit in different ways. Now, I'm actually not going to give you a very clear rule about when you must use that sound. Because I feel that while there are a couple of very general rules, there are so many exceptions that it's not very useful. An exception is a case in which it doesn't quite work or the rule doesn't follow. There are so many I feel it's confusing. And so I'll just give you a couple of examples in which we must say the t sound very clearly. And a simple example would be this word I have here. Stop, stop. We cannot say stop or another thing we must say that T sound very clearly, stop, stop. We have to say it. Okay? Now here it doesn't count exceptions because the t sound makes a different sound that it makes the SH sound. I'm sure you know that. So here we don't need to really worry about it, except shuns doesn't make the T-H sound at all. So that's a different case. Okay. Now what about this one? What if I say this together? Do I need to say the t sound clearly here? In fact, no. And we'll talk about why in a moment. But I just want to give you a feeling about places where the t sound is necessary. Stop is an example of when we must use the sound. And another example would be warranted wanted. Okay, so here we have a sound in which if we said we wanted, then that would not be very clear. So we have to say it very clearly wanted. If we say it without it, it sounds very strange. If you have, I can say generally a t followed by E, D. You're going to say TID very clearly. Okay. You're going to say TID. You're never going to say it without a very clear t sound. So TED, I can give you at least one rule. T d will be pronounced very clearly as TTD. It sounds almost like TID, TID, like that. Probably someone's name will have a clear T sound as well. There might be a couple of examples when you wouldn't use it. And there are cases where you could or not. And it depends on your personality and your speaking style. So I just wanted to tell you you should listen for places where the t sound very clearly is used. Examples wanted and stop. And focus on, focus on those examples and try to get a feeling for when you should use it. So next, then, and most importantly, we're going to talk about cases in which you don't have to make the clear T sound. And these we will call the stop. And the D instead of t, it's not exactly a D, but it's a kind of dy. Okay. Now, examples of the stop. What is the stop? The stop is a t sound where you don't pronounce the T sound, but you can't just not say the t sound. Instead, you have to actually stop your voice. Stop your voice very suddenly. And that can replace the T cell. But it's very, very important to remember that you cannot just skip over that, right? So let, let me do an example. So here we have an example, three words, hunt and dragon. That's a G, hunt dragon. Now we could say it if we wanted to hunt a dragon, hunt dragon, and that's fine. But because here, because here t is at the end of the word hunt, because it's at the end of the word hunt. We can often remove the t sound and replace it with nothing. But it has to have a nothing there. There must be a nothing there, a stop there. So we can say this as instead of hunt, hunt, hunt, hunt. Notice my voice is stopping very suddenly. Hunt a dragon, hunt, a dragon. Hunt a dragon rather than hunt a dragon. But we cannot just remove the T and say the n sound only. We can't say 100 dragon, Honda dragon, hun, a dragon. That sounds incorrect. It is incorrect. It's not clear. So you have to make sure in the cases where the T is at the end of a word and you want to remove the T, that sound, you must have a stop. Like that. You must stop your voice suddenly for a short time. Hunt a dragon. Hunt a dragon. Hunt a dragon. It's very important that you don't say a 100 dragon, okay, Now you can say hunted dragon. And that sounds pretty good as well. So it's kind of a choice in this case. And usually it is a choice. Usually if you want to say that T sound clearly, you can. But often when we remove it, such as when it's at the end of a word and usually when we remove it, it's at the end of a word. Usually when we remove the t sound and replace it with a stop, it's at the end of a word. Not always. It does make the sentence sound more natural. Okay. So 1111, do you want something? Do you want something? Do you want something? Something something sent. Sent. Sent sent I sent that yesterday. I sent that yesterday. I sent that yesterday instead of I sent that yesterday. That's more difficult to say. I said that yesterday. Sounds much more easy. I sent that yesterday. C. C. C. C. Could you help me find a seat, please? Could you help me find a seat, please? Could you help me find a seat, please? Instead of could you help me find a seat, please? Okay. Now, it's especially useful if the next word is a consonant like please PLE ASE. Because if I say seat, please, then there's a space here. And we don't like spaces in fluency. When we're working on fluency, spaces are not good. So if I use the stop here, if I use the stop here at the end of the word, then it's much easier to say these two words together. Seat, please. It's difficult to put together. So if I use the stub C, please, C, please. C Please, That sounds much better. Just be careful that you do not say C, please. C Please is wrong. You must stop your voice. Hooke. Who? Seat, please. Okay. Hat hat. Hat. Hat. I wear a hat every day. I wear a hat every day. I wear a hat every day. Okay, now we have two examples. And they're not really, really common, but fairly common, where the T can be stopped. Not at the end of a word, which is the most common example, but instead in the middle of the word, again, this is your choice. You could say fitness, fitness, certain, certain. And these are fine, correct pronunciation. But again, sometimes we want to sound even more fluent. Sometimes we're speaking really quickly. We can change this to a stop. So fit NUS, fit. Fit NUS this a sudden stop their fitness. Fitness. Fitness. I care about fitness. I care about fitness. Certain, certain. And here we don't say aim. We changed the sound instead of CRT 10. We say certain, certain, certain, it's certain disaster. It's certain disasters, certain, certain, it's cert disaster, cert disaster. Okay, Let's go through these really quickly again. One, set, c, hat fitness certain, certain. Okay, so for this, just keep in mind, usually that stop T comes at the end of the word and is especially useful if the next sound is a consonant sound in the next word. Sometimes we can put it in the middle of the word in the example of fitness and certain. But there are some cases, and you have to just figure out to those cases for yourself in which you have to say the t sound. We can say in some cases though the t sound must be said, for example, TED words, t plus ED, like weighted, right? So just keep those in mind and, and remember, when you do it, make sure, make sure, make sure that you stop your voice. You must stop your voice. Okay, now, we're going to talk about when we change t to d. Now, another thing which is very, very common, but you can't always do. For example, weighted. We can't do, We must say weighted, as I mentioned before, sometimes we can change the t sound to a sound which is softer than the T-cell, which is a kind of D sound. It's not exactly the d sound because it's not a clear sound. It's not a very obvious sound. But we can make it a kind of soft d sound, which we can use to replace T in many cases. And I would like to just give you some examples of this one. Here we have hurtle, hurtle. We could say this sound very clearly, hurtful, hurtful. But people want to say it very quickly and it's difficult to say told TO like this. So people will often say hurdle, hurdle, hurdle, hurdle, DO, DO, DO, DO. Almost like the Japanese. The Japanese sound. The Japanese are sound hurdle, hurdle, hurdle, hurdle. It's a very quick flick of the tongue. I'm not seeing her dole. My tongue is moving quickly out, hurdle, hurdle. It's very light. Daughter, daughter, daughter. I could say doctor, doctor, but most people would choose instead to say daughter. My daughter, my daughter did it in dadadada, done it at at at, at my daughter. My daughter. My daughter. My daughter. Okay. It's a kind of D sound there. And instead of cattle, the next one, kettle, kettle. Many people will say kettle, kettle, cattle. Cattle, CAD very soft kettle, kettle, kettle, kettle. Waiter, Waiter, I'm not saying wait to her weight, her weight her waiter. Waiter. Waiter. So I'm still saying a kind of very light d sound. Let me read through these. One more time. Hurdle, daughter, Kendall waiter. Hurdle daughter, kettle waiter. Okay. So try to listen for this sound. Try to listen for this soft d sound. When you hear people speaking and listen for cases where you see the hard te, cases where you hear the hard t sound in words and also places where you hear the stop. So next, we're gonna do some practice.
7. Time for T Part 2: So now let's do some practice. And I want to do some reading and hopefully get a feeling about the clear T sound. I want you to listen for that, the clear stop and also the light d sound. And I want you to really try to catch when these are used, in what situations you will find that often the clear t sound is used at the beginning of words. And the D, The D is often used in the middle. And at the end of words we often use the stop sound. But I don't want to say this is a rule. You must follow this rule because there are many, many cases, there are many examples that don't really follow that rule. So I don't want to say that is a rule. I want you to try to listen to people speaking, to me speaking and get a feeling for when these different things are used, in what situations. So let's practice this slowly. First one, I had to wait. So to hear very clear T-cell, I had to wait until t sound until he hit Stop, hit hit me before I fought, stop back, fought fought back. I had to wait until he hit me before I fought back. Wait until he hit me before I fought back. Okay. I had to wait until he hit me before I fought back. Natural. Next one I witnessed stop, I whip I witnessed a heap stop heat wave in August. August is always a t sound clearly, you must always use a sound for August. I witnessed a heat wave in August and spent stop spent spent the period with a wet cloth on my head. I witnessed a heatwave in August and spent the period with a wet cloth on my head and witnessed a heat wave in August and spent the period with a wet cloth on my head. Okay. Next one. I said stop my daughter. This is the D sound that light DSL. I sent my daughter, Tootsie, Tootsie to T, T to C to a T sound to a great school, great Stop, great school in Canton. And we could also say Canton, canton or Canton. People who live there say canton or Canton. They say both in Canton, Ohio or Canton, Ohio. Because I want one-stop her energy to be clear, to sound, to be put, put, put toward, put, stop, put toward t. Very clear T here to put, stop toward, put toward certain, cert, certain. And some people do say certain. Certain, a very quiet, very light d sound. Some people do say certain, sort of, I always say certain, certain. I usually pronounce the T very clearly, put toward certain subjects. Subjects, subjects, there's a t sound. It's like though she can't she can't can't stop Cat study elsewhere. I spent about 40 40, 40, 40, 40, 40 days trying to trying to hunt, stop for such hoops. To oops, sorry about that. That's a writing mistake. Forgive me. Forgive me. For such a place, for such a place. Trying to hunt for such a place. Okay. Let me read this again one more time. I had to wait until he hit me before I fought back. I had to wait until he hit me before I fought back, I had to wait until he hit me before I fought back. I had to wait until he hit me before I fought back. I had to wait until they hit me before I fought back. I witnessed a heat wave in August and spent the period with a wet cloth on my head. I witness to heat wave in August and spent the period with a wet cloth on my head. Next one, this one, I sent my daughter Tootsie, to a great school in Canton, Ohio because I want her energy to be put toward certain subjects. She can't study elsewhere. I spent about 40 days trying to hunt for such a place. Okay. About 40 days trying to hunt for such a place. Okay. So practice these many, many times. Again, you don't have to always do it the same way. You don't have to say 40 days. You can say 40 days. You can say about 40 days. And that's okay. And if you can say it pretty clearly in fluently, fine, go ahead. Sometimes I do it when I read this many times. If I read this 10 times, I will probably say it a little bit differently every time. I will say it differently each time slightly. The idea is, and the thing I want you to remember is to be more fluent. Generally, the t sound can change to reduce the sharpness of that sound. Okay, and you can use that as a tool to improve fluency, but that doesn't mean you must do that. I'm not saying you must do this. This is the clear rule. I'm trying to show you what is acceptable a tool for making the t sound more fluent. Okay, so just keep that in mind and don't think I'm telling you what you must do in this case. Okay. So that's all for the t sound. In the next video we're going to be talking about tone, okay, we're going to be talking about tone. So I'll see you in the next lesson.
8. Intonation Questions: Okay, So we've talked about how to blend words to jump from one word to the next. How to reduce or say the t sound to sound more fluent. But fluency is more than that. Fluency is more complicated than just mixing words together are making some sounds lighter when you want to speak fluently. And in order to speak fluently, you've got to have the right way of thinking. And the things that I've talked about so far are things that should become habits for you. And the more that you listen, as I mentioned, listening is very important, the more you will be able to get a feeling for these kinds of things. So now, I want to go on in this lesson and talk about another really important aspect of speaking fluently. And I hope you start to notice me when I start to use the T word. I said important. I didn't say important. I could have said important and sometimes I do, but that's time I said important. So try to be aware of me and what I'm saying. And also when you speak, try to be aware of yourself. Okay? And this lesson, we're going to move on to intonation. And the simple meaning of intonation is just the rising and falling of the voice for a sentence. But when we're speaking the rising and falling of the voice, usually we consider this to be a more general word. Tone, T O N, E is typically for one word. Not always, but typically for one word. And it's about how that word changes meaning based on the rising and falling of the voice. Intonation is generally for a sentence, how the voice goes up and down and when and why. Okay, so we're going to focus on this and this video, and I want to focus in this lesson about questions. Okay? So let's talk first about yes-no questions. Now, when you think about questions, you probably have heard of the question, the question tone, people sometimes call it where it's a rising tone at the end and goes at. But maybe you have also noticed that not every question in English uses this tone. So we can say generally, questions which are yes or no questions will more or less usually use the traditional, the normal question tone. At the end. Goes up at the end, it steps up toward the end, and we'll do some examples. Now there are some examples when it doesn't quite work, but we can say generally the yes or no questions have this kind of tone. And then we'll talk about the other kinds of questions after that. So first, what is the question tone? We'll say this word is lower than this one. This one continues to go up and continues to go up. It's sort of steps up word by word. It's not that each word usually goes up. If inside the word, each word steps up to the higher tone so that the end is really high. Have you seen this? Have you seen this? Have you seen this? So it goes up at the end like that and we know it's a question. Have you seen this? Have you seen this? Have you seen this? Have you seen this? Have you seen this? Okay. So yes or no question. The answer to this question could be yes or no. And that's what I wanted to explain. Usually yes, no questions or the answer to the question can be yes or no. Usually, these will be with this traditional rising voice. Okay. Can I help you? Can I help you? Can I help you? Can I help you? Can I help you? Can I help you? Have you seen this? Can I help you? It's the same basic idea. Next one, do you want some? Do you want some? Do you want some? Do you want some? Each one is stepping up. Do you want some? Do you want some? Do you want some? Each one is stepping up, but I also want to mention that if it is a yes, no question and the answer to this and this, and this can be yes or no. We don't always have to use the yes, no question words. We could we could say it without this. We can still ask a yes or no question without this, but we must keep the tone so that people know it's a question. So this one doesn't work. This one works. All right. We can just use tone to show it's a question and it has the same meaning seen this scene, this two words, but it must go up. If we say seeing this, it doesn't really have a meaning. Seeing this question, it means, have you seen this? I can understand that. So a lot of the time when we're speaking quickly, we say this kind of short question word just to save time to speak more quickly. But it's very, very important to use the right intonation to go whoo, like that. One some, once, some, once some means. Do you want some one, some. Okay. Are you going? Are you going? Are you going? We can also say just this. Going, going, one word, going, going. Now if we don't use that intonation, if we don't say like that, then it has a very different meaning going, going. So someone says, are you going? I can say going. That means I am going. So you have to be very careful and make sure that you're using the right one. Because if you don't, the meaning will be unclear going OK. Now, I think you can get the idea, right. We can ask lots of different questions in this way, Hungry, hungry, that means, are you hungry? It must use that tone. Now, there are a couple of examples. Or actually more than a couple of examples. Some cases where a yes, no question doesn't have this tone. Here we have one which is like I said, an exception, an example where we don't use it is that so this is something that you would say if you are a little bit unsure, if what someone said is right or wrong, someone said something, maybe you don't quite believe it. You are doubtful, unsure, and you just wonder maybe it isn't. So it's not a question where we always need an answer. Sometimes this question doesn't need an answer. I'm just showing that. I'm not so sure about that. So I say that. So is that so so it's just like a normal sentence. Is that so is that, so is that so this is not the tone, the intonation that we used for the last ones, right? The others were at the end. This one? No. But this one, we can say is the normal tone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that means really, is that true? Is that true? So is that so is like a special expression that's used when people wonder about something else. That's so if someone tells you something interesting, this is true and you say, oh, is that so that's sort of means I'm thinking about that. So this one is a special case, okay? But the others we can say and the most others, many others questions like this have this kind of Wu. Now let's talk about another kind of question. This kind of question typically does not have that same whoop question tone that we just talked about. This kind of question can often and usually is meant to get more information. Okay. What's your name? Notice I don't say what's your name? That sounds very strange. What's your name? What's your name? It goes down. What's your name? What's your name? So it is a question, but I want more information of My name is Luke. I'm Luke. My name is Luke. I'm Luke. Okay. So this is good. Where are you going? Where are you going? I will not say where are you going. We cannot use that tone here. Where are you going? Where are you going? It's going down at the end. Where are you going? Where are you going? I'm going home. Okay. So this one getting more information is falling down. Can you tell me what's going on? Can you tell me what's going on or can you tell me what is going on? I wrote here I should say what's usually I will speak what's okay. Can you tell me what is going on? Can you tell me what is going on? So you does go up because I want to focus on you. You can you tell me what is going on? Now? You may say wait a second, hold on. Can can. That's a yes, no question word. Right? Why is this sentence not? Can you tell me what is going on? Can you tell me what is going on? Why do we not use that tone? The reason here is because I'm still trying to get more information. Can you tell me what is going on? The answer to this question will probably not be. Yes. I can. The answer to this question will be hopefully, what is going on. You should tell me what is going on. Even though I said, can you if you say Yes, I can, then I need to say will you? Okay? So usually if I ask this question, what I really want is more information. So the answer to the question will be more than yes or no. So we use can you tell me what is going on? Different tone. Okay. So just keep in mind the difference between these two. And there are exceptions. There are cases in which one doesn't follow this general rule which I've given you. But what you can do is this. You can, when you're watching a movie or something like that, you can watch for examples where they're asking questions and see how do they ask that question. What's the tone they're using for the question? And try to figure out how you can do it. Also, you can write down a series of questions, would be five or ten questions. And then record yourself speaking those questions and try to follow the right general tone, intonation, sorry, the right intonation for those questions. So that might also help you to figure out and get a feeling for these and how they should be used. Okay, so in the next lesson, we're going to be talking about how tone, the tone of words can be connected to meaning. How the tone of words can be connected to meaning. So I will see you in the next lesson.
9. Tone: All right, In the last lesson, we talked about intonation, and we talked about how different intonations are used for questions. For a simple yes, no questions, we use one, the rising tone and then for other questions that get information, it's usually a falling tone. So we're going to be talking about how simple words, particularly words like this. The first one is a thinking word, can change according to tone. First one, as I mentioned, a thinking word, a word that we use when we're thinking or in another situation, we would say as a flat hmm. I'm thinking about something or hmm, hmm, or whom. And when it's used like this, it's called a thinking word. I'm thinking Word. Hm, hm, totally straight and flat. But what if we add a question tone to it that goes up like this? Hm, hm. When you see something that's confusing or strange and you wonder, how can that be? You say to yourself, hmm? If someone says something totally crazy or weird, you will use that tone. And that tone means, I'm surprised. It's difficult for me to believe this or did I hear correctly? Hmm. Hmm. So it could be either one is I'm surprised. I can't believe that or sometimes. Can you say that again? I didn't hear you correctly. I didn't hear you clearly. So hmm, hmm. Okay. So tone here can change the meaning here. O. Always just a word to acknowledge something has happened to say. Okay, I understand that. I heard what you said. I got it. Oh, There's no emotion. They're not a good thing, not a bad thing. It's just okay. I I got it. It's in my brain now. Oh, similar to IC, right? But this one would be very different. A falling tone, very high to very low. Falling down. I suddenly realized something. It's not just I'm getting information, it's that suddenly I've got something and I realized I made a realization. Someone tells me something very interesting. Like that. It's a very different feeling. This one is just it's received or sometimes it means I'm Newt, just some information. I've got some information. Okay. This one very different. It's often in the excited feeling or a feeling of realization. And that's a very important word for this tone. The next 100, similar to this, I heard something and it surprised me a little bit. Maybe I did not expect to hear what you just said or what just happened. And maybe I want you to say it again to confirm that that's true. So I might say, Oh, similar to really, oh, really, hmm. So in this case, it's sort of like a mild surprise or I'm not sure I heard you clearly the next 1000 or 00. Bad news. You hear something, usually negative, something you don't want to hear. And when you get the information, It's the same as this one. It's about getting information. Not really realizing something. Very interesting. Getting information. But this information that we're getting is disappointing. It's information we don't want to hear. We feel a little bit sad about it. We can't go today because the weather is bad. So it's to show some disappointment. So these four, 0, 0, 0, 0, okay? They show very different feelings and actually have different meanings. So this one, SUR, could mean you're welcome. And it could mean, okay, a very positive. Okay. And could show excitement in this way when it's used as You're welcome, Someone says, Thank you. Sure. Sure. It's informal. But the tone is sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sort of a downward tone like this, but starts up. Sure. Okay. This one is very different. Very different. Sure. Sure. Sure. This one could be used to say, okay, this one means okay as well or yes, right? Do you want to do this? Sure. That means yes. This one could be that you want to do this? Sure. Sure. It's pretty flat. Sure. Sure. And it could be, yes. But it would show that I'm not excited. Sure. Or someone said something that I don't believe. I don't think that's true. I saw an alien yesterday. I don't think that's true. Sure. Sure. That means no, you didn't. It's not the same as this one. This one and this one from o means I can't believe what I heard. I'm surprised or maybe can you say that again? Really? Is it true like that, this one, you're not surprising me. You're just saying something maybe stupid and wrong. Sure. It just means I don't I don't believe you. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Simple, flat. Flat. It just means I agree. I accept or yes. It has a lot of different meanings. Yes. I agree. I accept. Okay. Okay. Very flat. Okay. I always say Okay, Before we continue to the next topic, okay. This one. Okay. Okay. It's sort of like this one, a negative, not very positive. Okay. Okay. I learn something new or I get some new information or I agree, but I'm not very excited about it and I want to show that there would be OK. Oh, OK, OK. Ok. So up and then down. Okay. Okay. Maybe you're right about something but I'm not happy that you're right about that thing. This one. Oh, okay. Well, okay. This one is the same basic tone as this one, but it goes, okay, okay. This might mean I am excited about something. You tell me something new and I say, Okay, and then maybe I'm going to participate with you in the discussion. We're going to talk together. You tell me a new idea and I think that's a pretty good idea. So I say, oh, okay, well, what about this? So it's like I'm showing excitement about something. Okay, so that's this tone, basically the same tone as this one, but more excited. Now, in English, we don't have formal tones. Like a Chinese, there are four tones. In English. We have tones that show meaning, but they're not formal. And so I can say this one is similar to this one, but this one is more excited. Okay. Brighter. This one is okay. Okay, okay, not so excited. And the way that it's expressed is very different. Okay, The next one, this one, I can write like this. Ok, OK. Ok. So if someone says something to me that makes me uncertain or I don't really agree with what they say, what they have said. Maybe I think they're wrong or I want them to continue, but I don't really agree with them. I can say OK, OK, OK, OK. So this is another one, and this one is to show some sort of doubt to show dealt. Ok. Ok. So I accept what you said, but I'm not really in agreement with what you said. And I express that feeling by using this okay. Tone. Okay. So let's go through these again, okay? Okay. Okay. Okay. This one. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Shows that I'm not very excited, not very happy about something, this one, okay? Okay. Shows. I'm very interested and want to participate in something, this one. Okay. Okay. Shows I'm thinking more about something or I doubt something is true. Okay. That's another one. You could also use it as a question. Of course, of course we could use it as a question. We can usually add questions to most of these. If I want to make sure you know something, make sure you understand something, I will say OK and add a question. Okay? Okay. And then you can say okay. You can say Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. It's a question. Do you understand is what it means? Do you understand? And then you can say, okay, that means you do understand. Okay? All right, so in the next lesson we're going to be talking about stress. That means focusing on a word with our voice within a sentence. And what that can do relating with fluency, okay, how stress can be connected to fluency. So I'll see you in the next lesson.
10. Stress: Okay, Previously, we talked about intonation and tone. That means the rising and falling of our voice. And how that can be connected to meaning and how it can be connected to, for example, Questions, how different questions have different intonation and how tone can change the meaning. Like if we say Okay Or okay means one. Do you understand me or I do understand you, right? And the tone can make the difference. And this one we're going to talk about stress. Stress is different from tone. What is the difference? Stress just means focusing on the word, making it stand out. To stress something is to make it stand out. Or to focus groups. To focus on that so that it can be heard more easily than the other words in the sentence. That's basically what it means. It's not really related to the tone of the whole sentence, the intonation of the whole sentence or the tone of the words. Then it's not really related to that. It's more about focusing on it with our voice. And that could include two things. One would be stretching, and two would be to say more loudly. So if we want to stress a word or even part of a word, we can stress parts of words. We can stress words themselves. We could make it longer. That means stretch, good, Make the word longer, longer instead of sync, longer, longer. And we can also say it a little bit more loudly sometimes than the other words. Okay, So that's really what stress is about, and we use it connected with meaning and also to make the sentence sound more fluent. Now, why is stress important for fluency? One thing is if you say, if you stress every word exactly the same, the sentences that you say will be incredibly boring. If T2 and interesting have the same stress exactly in the sentence and every word does, then it's going to sound like a robot sentence, right? Usually, robot voices don't have the ability to stress words and you can hear that very easily. And when we hear that we think, well, that's weird. That's obviously a robot, obviously a computer voice. Okay? So humans are able to stress things more easily. That's what we do, and that allows us to emphasize, to emphasize certain meaning and also make our sentences generally more interesting. Okay, so we'll talk about that really quickly. Now. There are some kinds of stress that are just common for different situations. But we can say in general, and for many cases, you can choose your stress. Usually we will stress important. Words. In the sentence, we'll stress important words in the sentence. And this is often our choice, although there are some cases where it's just common to stress it this way and not this way. And for individual words, they're actually very clear rules about when things should be stressed and when things should not be stressed. But I'm not going to focus on the stress of individual words in this course. That will be for another course, one example of a case where there is a sort of common stress that most people will use in that situation Is a customer service. Customer service is a department in a company that will help customers help them with problems and how to maybe fix some certain thing that they don't know how to do. Anyway. I want to show you a quick example of a kind of stress in a sentence that is common for most customer service. If I'm the customer service person on the phone, I might say, thank you for calling. This is Luke. How may I help you? Thank you for calling. This is Luke. How may I help you? So, calling Luke, How may I help you? These three words are stressed in the sentence. Now to be totally honest with you, uh, not very sure why this is a common stress for this situation, but it is. And there are many other examples like this. But there are so many of these examples. And these are not clear rules that you will have to just listen for these kinds of stress in these different situations. I want to focus on some general things about stress that you can use for everyday situations that can help you speak more fluently. That's what I want to focus on now. So one thing that I would really like you to remember for using stress to speak more fluently, is that often we will say small words, especially words that are used only for grammar. For example, simple verbs like can and is B. These words won't be stressed because their grammar words, and they're not really, really important to the whole meaning of the sentence. Well, they can be. In fact, they can be, but we can say they're not words that have a lot of information in them. And so we don't really focus on them. Usually when we're speaking quickly, we say them very fast. We don't stress them. Move past them very quickly. And also we can say prepositions are like this. Two prepositions are words like of, and to, and from. These words we usually don't stress either unless these words are important for the meaning of the sentence. If it's very important to focus on that word, because it's important for the meaning of the sentence. Then we can, but we can say generally these words. We just move past them very quickly and we focus more on the important words in the sentence. Okay, so let's just go over a couple of examples. Here we have to do together. Instead of saying todo, we can say. To do very fast to do, to do, to do, to do, to do to do. I don't want to do anything today. I don't want to do anything today. Notice to do very fast and I don't stress it at all. I don't give any stress to do to do to do I don't stress, want to do anything today, so I stress, don't add anything. Now maybe, maybe I want to focus on the do part. So I would stress do. There's nothing to do. I don't stress too, but I stressed do there's nothing to do today. There's nothing to do today because that's important to the meaning of the sentence. So if you want to focus on the meaning of the sentence, then stress it. If it's just grammar and it doesn't really have to be focused on. It isn't important for the meaning of the sentence. Don't stress it. I don't want to do anything today. Next one is it is it is it is it, what is it doing? What is it doing? What is it doing? What is it doing? Is it very fast? Doing is stressed. Doing is an important part of the sentence. What is it doing? So, don't stress is it here because we're not interested in the IS or the it. It's not important for the sentence. But in some cases we'll focus on is, if we want to know about the being of it, what is it? What is it? What is it? Okay, So this is different than we would focus on is here because that's important for the meaning. You know, in a, in a, in a very fast, unstressed. Fast and unstressed. I mean, a band. I'm in a band. I'm in a band. I'm in a band. I'm in a band. I mean a band. I'm in a band. I focus on band. Band is more important. I'm in a band. Okay. With, uh, with, uh, with, uh, with, uh, with, uh, with, uh, I'm going out with a friend, I'm going out with a friend. I'm going out with a friend, out friend. I use these because they are important. They're important for the meaning. With a non-important, I move past it quickly. If I say I'm going out with a friend, everything is flat, nothing is stressed. It's possible to get the meaning still, but it won't be so obvious. So it's actually very helpful if you would stress the important things in the sentence and put less stress on the unimportant things in this situation. With okay, going out with a friend. Okay. Next one, duo, duo, duo, duo, duo. Don't focus on it. No stress. Do I do it very fast? Do it, do it, do it, do a do a very quick. Okay. I was so happy I wanted to do a dance. Do it, do it very fast. That was so fast, you probably didn't even hear it very clearly. I was so happy. Focus on that. It's important in the sentence. I was so happy I wanted to do a dance. I was so happy I wanted to do a dance. I was so happy I wanted to do a dance to do, uh, to do a, to do so fast. Actually, two is also very fast. I have two in there as well to do a to do, to do, to do a to do. Uh, I was so happy. I wanted to do a dance. To do a dance. I was so happy I wanted to do a dance. So this one, again, we don't focus on words that aren't important. So to do or do a, in this case, not important. Next one had to, had to. I think you've probably noticed that when I'm speaking really, really fast, I actually changed the sound of two. I don't say to two. I say it sounds like took to had to had to had to had to had to had to. Had to. Had to had to had to. Okay. And this one also to due to, due to, due to, due to, due to due to do a to do a to-do, to do a to do a to do, to do had to, had to. So these are really, really quick. Okay? And because they're so quick, we usually, when speaking quickly, change the sound. So this one I didn't know what I had to do. I didn't know what I had to do. I didn't know what I had to do. I didn't know what I had to do, had to do. I didn't know what I had to do. I didn't know what I had to do. I didn't know what I had to do. Had has a little bit of stress there. There's a little stress on hat, but not very much the main focus, the main stress in this sentence is what? I didn't know what I had to do. I didn't know what I had to do. So just keep this in mind. When you're speaking, when you're talking quickly, It's okay to say these small grammar words. We can say grammar words very quickly, so long as they're not that important for the meaning of the sentence. However, if that's something that we need to focus on, I had to do it. So sometimes this could be stressed. If had is very important in the sentence, I had to do it. That's a very important part of that sentence. Then we do need to stress it. So I just want you to be aware of this relationship. Unstressed if it's unimportant, stressed, if it is. Typically also the sounds of these words, like with change in different situations, especially if we say them very quickly. Okay, so keep that in mind. And in the next lesson, we're going to be also talking about stress, but we're going to be focusing on the relationship between stress and meaning, okay, the relationship between stress and meaning in sentences. So I will see you in the next lesson.
11. Stress and Meaning: Now, in the last lesson, we talked about how we don't stress certain words if they're not very important. And usually those words which are not very important are words that are used for grammar. Or I like is and some preposition words like too. But that sometimes if those words are important to the meaning of the sentence or something that we need to make sure is understood. That we should stress those. And remember, stress means the way that we focus on words within a sentence. And actually, it's also related to how we focus on different parts of the word. But I'm not going to talk about stress within words in this course. I'm going to talk about stress within a sentence. I want to focus on speaking sentences in this course. That's what this course is about. Fluency in speaking sentences. Okay, now, I want to go on then and build on the idea that we talked about last time. The idea about meaning unstress. I want to talk about how we stress certain words. If we want to focus on a certain meaning and how that actually can change. I mean, the meaning can change according to the stress that we use. That means that we can use our stress to express different kinds of meaning. And I'm sure you probably know this, but I wanted to give you a feeling about how we can do this and how if we're able to do it easily, we will be able to sound more natural and be understood more easily by others. Now, I do want to say something. You can't just randomly stress words. You can't just stress or stress this one and this one. Usually you have to choose to stress the words which gets your meaning across in the way which is clearest. Now there is some choice there. You could stress this one more than this one sometimes there. So there is some personal choice and people stress different words in sentences in different ways. Fine. But it's not totally random. I mean, you can't just stress I for no reason. And you have to know why you're stressing I, and that's what we're going to talk about in this lesson. We're going to talk about when we stress things, why we stress things, the reason, Stress things, and how that can affect or change the meaning of the sentence. So let's look at this sentence. And I didn't say we should go back. I didn't say we should go back. I didn't say we should go back. That's the meaning of this sentence and I'm sure you understand it. Maybe we're in a place. And I want to express that. I didn't say we should go back, but it can have different feelings in different meanings for different stress. So let's go through some of those different stresses. If I stress the first letter of this word, I didn't say we should go back. I didn't say we should go back. What does that mean? I didn't say we should go back. I focus on I stress I that basically means that someone thought, maybe I said we should go back and I want to focus on saying that they are wrong, that maybe it was another person, not me. Maybe maybe he or she said, Let's go back. It wasn't me. Wasn't me. I didn't say we should go back. So we will focus on AI because that's what we want to express. Now. What about the second one? What if we want to focus on didn't I didn't say we should go back. I didn't say we should go back. This one clearly means okay, not who said it, as in the last one, which is usually about who said it. But maybe someone heard me say we should go back or they thought they heard me say we should go back. And you say you said we should go back. And then I want to focus on the fact that I did not, It's not about me or others. It's focusing on the fact that I did not I didn't say we should go back. You said we should go back. I didn't say we should go back. I didn't say we should go back. Focus on stress, didn't. Okay. And the other one, the last one, I didn't say we should go back. Could mean that as well. But again, it has that other meaning where it could be me or someone else who did say it. So this one, I didn't say we should go back has one very clear meaning. The next one. I didn't say we should go back. I didn't say we should go back. And now this one has a kind of strange meaning. This one means that maybe I want to go back. But someone got the feeling that I want to go back. Not from my words. Maybe we're at a party and I'm sort of just like this. And someone says, so you want to go back? You want to go back? And I say, I didn't say I want to go back. I did show I want to go back though. My body language did show that I want to go back. And so someone guessed that I want to go back. But if they asked me this question and I want to remind them that I did not say let's go back. Then. I will say I didn't say I wanted to go back. And then they might reply, Well, yeah, but you look like you want to go back. I can see that. So that would be the meaning in this case. I didn't say we should go back. Okay. I didn't say we should go back. I didn't say we should go back. I didn't say we should go back. Now this one has a very obvious meaning. Me and some friends, me and him and her, three friends. Maybe I'm talking about someone else. And I mentioned that those people should go back. I don't know why I would say that, but it's possible those people should go back. And then someone says, So do you want to go? And so I didn't say we should go back. They should go back. Maybe someone forgot something at home. Right. And I want to still stay here. I don't want to go home to get it. I want those people to go home and get it. Maybe another group of people who live in the same place. I didn't say we should go back. They should go back. Okay. I didn't say we should go back. And I didn't say we should go back. I didn't say we should go back. Now, I think you can probably guess the meaning here. I didn't say we should go back. This one means that I think we really, really must go back. Have to go back now, some emergency. Right? So maybe I really, really need to go to the bathroom because I too much Indian food. I didn't say we should go back, we must go back and we have to go back. Now, I didn't say we should go back. Okay, So this one is focusing on the meaning of should. The meaning of should is not we have to. The meaning of should is it's the best choice. It's the best choice. And 2.5 is stronger than that, must is stronger than that. I didn't say we should go back. We must go back. Okay. Now, I didn't say we should go back. This one doesn't really have a clear meaning, so I'm going to pass this one. It didn't say we should go back. We could say that, but the meaning here is not very clear. What does that mean? If we, if we mean go back, we can't really have any other meaning there. So we'll pass that one. I want to focus on the last one though, because that does have another meaning, but has a special meaning. I mean, I didn't say we should go back. I didn't say we should go back. So we're at a party, for example, at a friend's house. And maybe I mentioned that we should go. And someone says, Oh, you want to go back, back home? I didn't say we should go back. Going back means going to where you were before. That's the meaning of back. You were in one place and you went to another place. And when you go to that place again, you go back to that place. But maybe I wanted to leave here party and go to a different place, not back to where I was before, but maybe go to a different party. So I didn't say we should go back. I said we should go to that party. Someone said so you want to go you want to go back, you want to go home? No, no, no, no, no, no. I didn't say we should go back and said We should go there. Then I can focus on there because that's what I want to express clearly. Okay, So I just want you to keep this in mind when it comes to stress. Don't stress things that aren't very important. And for fast words like to do that we talked about, we can actually change the sound a little bit because we want to very quickly say them. And then for those words which are important to the meaning of the sentence, we stress. And the meaning of the sentence can change according to the stress we give. I didn't say we should go back. I didn't say we should go back. Those have two different meanings to different meanings. And it comes not from the words, but again from the stress I give it. And that's something which is very important. And I want you to keep it in mind and it can help you a lot to express yourself fluently. And actually stress is a very important part of English fluency. The words you choose to focus on. And I don't want to tell you that it's a must. You must focus on this word. There is some freedom and people stress things differently. As I mentioned, you can choose to stress this one more than this one sometimes, usually in fact. But it is also important to remember that you shouldn't just randomly stress things randomly means you don't know what you're doing. I'll stress this one. I'll stress this one. I don't know why I'll stress them just because you shouldn't do that. You should know why you're stressing it. The best way to think about this is to say, I'm going to stress this word back because I want to focus on that meaning. And this is something that needs to become natural for you. So you have to practice it and practice it and practice it until it becomes really easy. So one thing that you can do is to practice this sentence with the different meanings and the different stresses. I didn't say we should go back. I didn't say we should go back. I didn't say we should go back. I didn't say we should go back. I didn't say we should go back. I didn't say we should go back. These practice saying these and make sure you keep in mind what the meaning is and how stress can change that meaning. Okay, So we're going to do a little bit of practice next. Okay. So I hope that it hasn't been too difficult. I don't think this is too hard. It just has to become a habit for you in order to become more fluent. So let's go on to some practice. All right, now, for a little bit of practice about stress, I'm going to read this short paragraph, kind of a long short paragraph, a couple of times slowly and then quickly. And I want you to listen to how I read it. Now. I'm going to read it like this, but that doesn't mean you must read it exactly like me. I might be making a couple of personal choices, things I want to stress more than others. And so I want you to just remember that and that some things will be related to meaning. Those are important. Others might be some personal choices I make based on my speaking style. So I'm going to read it first slowly. I can't believe you want to do this so much that you're willing to risk your life. Now, I could have said you're willing to risk your life and that would be okay. I could say you're willing to risk your life or you're willing to risk your life, both of those would be fine. It's a personal choice I want to make I want to focus on one of them. What is it for? Now here? You wouldn't want to say, what is it for? That sounds very strain. Again, we have these grammar words, isn't it? We usually don't focus on them. Usually we do not. What is it for? What does it for? Four, we want to focus on purpose, right? So we focus on four. What is it for? In my opinion, you're in a hurry to do it and you haven't thought it through carefully. You're in a hurry to do it, and you haven't thought it through carefully to do it, to do it very fast here, to do it. And you haven't thought it through carefully and went to focus on those two. But and usually before a comma like this. Have a one word at the beginning of the sentence and you have a comma after it, we will focus on it and I'll stress it, but well. And also so we usually focus or stress that one. But because it's so dangerous, I focus on so because so is a very kind of important thing I want to stress, right? Very, I want to emphasize that it's very much not just dangerous, very dangerous. Because it's so dangerous, you really need to take some time to consider what you're doing and what the potential risks are. Is it worth it? Or I could say, is it worth it? Now remember what we talked about for question tone, right? We have a yes or no question. If I say, is it worth it? This is what's called a rhetorical question. A rhetorical question is a question that doesn't need an answer. So if I say, is it worth it this downtown, it's not the normal question tone. I don't need you to answer. It's not a real yes, no question. It's not for you to say yes or no. It's a rhetorical question I'm using to make you think about this that I'm talking about. Now if I say, is it worth it? Maybe that is a real question. Maybe you really need to answer. Yes, it's worth it. Maybe not. No, it's not worth it. So it depends on if I want to make it a rhetorical question, Just a question to make it more clear. Or if I want to make it a yes, no question. Let me read it again. I can't believe you want to do this so much that you're willing to risk your life. What is it for? In my opinion, you're in a hurry to do it and you haven't thought it through carefully. But because it's so dangerous, you really need to take some time to consider what you're doing and what the potential risks are. Is it worth it? So here might be a little bit different than the last time I read it. Again, that comes back to the idea that there is some freedom of choice here. You're not a robot. This is a human language. It can change. It's not always the same. I will read this ten times, and each time I read it will be slightly different. But there still are some common things to keep in mind. Things we've talked about, about intonation and about, for example, stress with small words and stress with important words. But you can still make your own choices. The important thing is not to read it flat. I can't believe you want to do this so much that you're willing to risk your life, okay, Now that is a mistake. That is a mistake. Another thing that I want you to really notice here is that when I reached the end of a sentence, and this is something I didn't really talk about much before. When I reached the end of a sentence, my voice goes down. Usually when you get to the end of a sentence the voice falls. So keep that in mind. I can't believe you want to do this so much that you're willing to risk your life. What is it for? In my opinion, you're in a hurry to do it and you haven't thought it through carefully. But because it's so dangerous, you really need to take some time to consider what you're doing and what the potential risks are. Is it worth it? So try to practice this many times. Tried to get it down, do it slowly, slowly, slowly and then speed up. Alright, in the next video, we're going to be talking about some common problems that learners of English as their second language have when they're learning to speak, we're going to be talking about some thinking sounds and we're going to be talking about some common difficulties. Okay, so I will see you in the next lesson.
12. Common Problems: Now, in the last lesson, we talked about stress and we talked about the relationship between stress and meaning. But now I want to go on and talk about some common problems that people have when trying to become fluent, that can actually keep them from becoming fluent. And the first one is about habits, and it's something I mentioned at the beginning of the course. Habits are deep within us. We can say they are sort of dug into our minds. And there's a difference between knowing something and then making that thing, you know, a habit. A very simple example, okay, maybe you say for example to yourself, I am going to start getting up every morning at 06:00 AM because I know that's good for me. I'll be able to get more work done. And I know that I will be able to be more productive, for example. So that's knowledge, you know, that's going to happen and you decided will happen. But doing it in practice is much more difficult. Day 1, 6 AM, so early, can't sleep more. So you'd give up. But one day you do it. And then you start to get used to it day after day. By the end of that, you'll find it's easy. After you do it many, many times you sort of get used to it because it becomes a habit and because it becomes a habit, then it becomes something that you usually do. So I want to emphasize our stress the importance of habits when we're speaking and trying to be fluent in English. Very important. Okay? Now, what are some bad habits? What are some habits that we need to change? Well, one that is quite common is that when you're speaking in English, you have to think and speak at the same time, right? You have to be thinking about what do you want to say? And you have to think about how to say what do you want to say at the same time? And so when you're trying to do both of those things at the same time, one thing often happens. You will repeat the same word or phrase over and over again. My opinion is that is that is that, is that, okay? This is distracting for people listening to you. And this is a bad habit for speaking fluency. Okay, now I know everyone does it sometimes. But you want to get out of the habit of doing it for every sentence. Everyone sometimes stumbles. When they're speaking. They sometimes say like that when they're speaking. I do it. Everybody does it. But if we always do it, when we're trying to make a sentence, the flower is very beautiful and it has, has, has, it has, because you're trying to think of the next word, right? So you want to avoid it. So how can you avoid it? Let's very simple. The way to avoid it is to slow down. Don't give yourself the pressure to say something. Right now. It's much better if you say nothing at all. Then if you repeat, it has, it has, it has flowers, very beautiful and it has pink petals. Isn't that much better than saying the flower is very beautiful and it has, it has, it has, it has it has, it hasn't has pink petals. It's much better that you just stop for a second, pause. And then say what you want to say, right? So if you have to think and speak at the same time and you need to stop to think for a moment, which is very natural, right? It's not your first language. You're, you're learning it. And so it's difficult sometimes you have to find that word that you want to use or figure out the right tone you want to use it, the stress or the grammar, which grammar is right? So many things to think about. It's understandable. If you have to stop, sometimes, just stop because it makes you sound less, much, much, much less fluent. If you repeat yourself many times, it sounds like a mess. If you speak like that and you always repeat words, the person listening to you will think, Well, hello, what's going on? And they will give up. But if you stop for a moment, they will be able to understand. Okay. They're stopping. I remember what they just said. It's still pretty clear and wait for what you will say next, that is much, much better. So here is a habit. If you have this habit tried to change it, all you have to do is force yourself to here when you are repeating a word many, many times. And then instead of just stop, and that's an easy habit to get. But it's a very, very useful one, especially if you find it difficult to think and speak at the same time. Now, another one, which is really important and connect it to this is thinking words. Thinking words. What is the thinking word? Thinking word is a word we say when we are thinking. And there are several different thinking words in English. We have a lot of thinking words in English. And I want to just go over a couple of them and say that while you can use them, I don't want you to overuse them because using them too much is again, as I said, distracting, can distract people and make them confused. If you say too many thinking words, thinking words like, well, hmm. Her and Americans will often say it like, really don't like that one. These words, everyone does it. Everybody uses them. So I'm not saying don't use them. I'm just saying tried to reduce it. So let me see what I want to say. There. I used one. Alright, I said and that's okay. But if I say, well, let me see. Well, if I do it too much, the person listening might become confused and forget what I was talking about. So I just want you to think about your habits and don't get in the habit of using either way too many thinking words like well OR. And Americans sometimes use like, like, like, don't use like as a thinking word please. Or repeating the word that you want to, or you just said many, many times until you find the word that you want, just try to reduce it and make this a good habit. Make this a good habit. Okay? Another thing that I want to mention is about habits as well. And it is that everything that we're talking about in this course needs to be a habit. When you're speaking in English, you should not be thinking about his mind. Tone rise my if my fluency right, my blending words in the right way as this. All right, because if you're focusing on those things, There's no way you will be able to focus on grammar. There's no way you will be able to focus on what you're supposed to be talking about the best possible situation. The ideal situation is that you focus on what you want to say and how you say that is a habit. So whether it's pronunciation or fluency or whatever, all of these things should become habits on those. Then support, what do you want to say? And if you just have to think about what do you want to say, you'll be able to say so many things and your language will support you to help make that very clear to other people. And everyone will say, ah, it's so clear. But if your fluency and you're in bad grammar gets in the way of these things, then the thing you want to say, the what is blocked is lost behind a lot of these other things that are confusing the person listening to you, right? And so for fluency, all of these things in this course work on them and practice them over and over and over and over. Don't just watch this course, repeats this course several times, and do some of the exercises that we're going to talk about until everything is easy, until it's natural, until it's a habit. And that is probably the most important thing I will say in this course. Okay, the power of habits, the power of repetition and repeating and doing things many times until you get so comfortable with it that it's no big deal. Easy, no problem. Then you can focus on the what that is. The main issue for a lot of people who wants to be fluent but are not great. So I just want to give you that general tip. Now, an exercise you can do, a very simple exercise you can do to improve fluency and practice this and find your habits, your bad habits, and fix them. It's to write down a very simple question. Any kind of question. Well, not a yes, no question, any kind of interesting question, and then just answer it. Don't plan your answer. Do not plan your answer. Just speak your answer and record yourself on your phone perhaps, and listen to it and try to find the mistakes and problems. So here's an example of a question. What is the craziest thing you'd like to do someday? Any kind of question like this, okay? This is not a special question. There are thousands and thousands and millions of questions that you could ask yourself. So there's no limits. Just writes down to question something like this, something very different. And then directly answer the question. It's all you have to do. Record yourself and listen to it, and try to fix your habits based on the things that we've talked about in the course. What is the craziest thing you'd like to do someday? The craziest thing I would like to do someday probably is to go to the moon. Now a lot of people, when they hear me say this, they think you're crazy, but I think it's actually a very possible and reasonable dream. I'm totally serious when I say it. I actually want to go to the moon. Not only do I want to go to the moon, I would actually like to live on the moon for awhile. If someday humans can easily go to the moon and visit the moon. And maybe there's a moon city on the moon. Maybe I will live there for six months or a year. And I hope, I hope that I will be able to go to the moon at least before age 60. It's my dream to visit the moon and maybe lived there before. I'm 60 years old. Okay. So this is the kind of answer we can give. This is my answer to this question. I didn't think about it at all. I just answered. And that's what you need to do as well. If you plan everything in your mind and you say, I'm going to say this and this and this, then you're not pushing yourself enough. So you have to really challenge yourself. In the next lesson, we're going to be doing some serious practice. I'm going to be reading a short passage and I'm going to read it several times. And then I would like you to also try to follow it. So in the next lesson, we will be doing that. So I'll see you, see you in the next lesson.
13. Practice Makes Perfect: Okay, So in the last lesson, we talked about some problems that people wanting to become really fluent in English often have. And we also talked about the importance of habits and how habits aren't just what you know, but what you do naturally based on what's, you know, sort of like the action of knowing in some sense. And how habits, if you're going to be actually fluence, the right habits must be something as is the meaning of habits. You don't think about at all. You just do it totally natural. So in this lesson, we're going to be talking about and doing some practice. We're going to be talking about at the end, how we can practice fluency. And at the beginning we're going to actually be doing some practice. We're going to be actually going through this passage here, which was actually written by me long, long ago, are going to actually be reading this together. I'm going to read it a couple of times and I want you to listen to how I read it. Listen for some of the things that we talked about so far in the course. And then I want you to try to do it yourself slowly, slowly, slowly and then get faster if you can. Okay, So we're going to start just with this. Reading is actually a great way to practice pronunciation. It's a great way to practice fluency. By reading. First, you pick up and you start to notice how things should sound. And you should be able to pick out those things based on what we learned by yourself when you're reading. Second, it's simply a matter of practice. The more you do something, the better at it you will get. This is something that is true from sports to learning a new skill to fluency. So I'm going to read this very slowly and it's going to take a little while, It's going to be a little long. And then I'm going to read it more quickly. And then we'll talk about some other exercises you can do. Here we go. Again. Dirt was born September 19th, 1928. At age four. He started hanging around meanss field Senior High School near his home. The atmosphere enthralled him. He did whatever he could to be part of the action. He went to track meets, clean trash after football games, and carried water. Sports have always been a part of my life. He said, gander thrived in the Mansfield senior Sports Program. Thrived. The Mansfield senior Sports Program. He excelled. He he he excelled at football. Playing center. He Excel. He, he, he Excel that football playing center. Later, attending Brown University. He was offered a position on the football team. After three years in college. Gendered entered the military. Gender entered the military. Again, dirt. Gander. Gander entered the military and entered the military Terry military. Upon his discharge, he joined the family business at gender door at at at gander door company. He married, started a family and became known as the guy with the camera. Can now I'll read it two more times, this time without any stops, still slowly the next time, very quickly. Gender was born September 19th, 1928. At age four, he started hanging around men's field Senior High School near his home. The atmosphere enthralled him. He did whatever he could to be part of the action. He went to track meets, clean to trash after football games, and carried water. Sports have always been part of my life. He said, gander at thrived in the Mansfield senior Sports Program. He excelled at football, playing center. Later attending Brown University. He was offered a position on the football team. After three years in college. Again, dirt entered the military. Upon his discharge, he joined the family business at gender door company. He married, started a family and became known as the guy with the camera. Now, finally, very quickly, gander at was born September 19th, 1928. At age four, he started hanging around Mansfield Senior High School near his home. The atmosphere enthralled him. He did whatever he could to be part of the action. He went to track meets clean trash after football games and carried water. Sports have always been part of my life. He said, gander at thrive in the Mansfield senior Sports Program. He excelled at football playing center. Later attending Brown University, he was offered a position on the football team. After three years in college, gender entered the military. Upon his discharge, he joined the family business at gander door company. He married, started a family and became known as the guy with the camera. All right. So I hope you can get out of that. Some of the things that we talked about, the practical things that we talked about so far in the course. And I want you to try to use this paragraph thesis, sorry, these two paragraphs as a way to practice those things, as a way to really, really master those things and make them habits. Now I want to talk about a couple other things that you can do and that some people do to improve fluency. And I don't want to do examples of all of those things specifically, but I do want to talk about them. We did one before where we did a question, asked any kind of question, an open question, and then we answered it. Simply answer the question out loud. Recording What we said. Now this is a great way to practice and we did an example of that in the last lesson. In this lesson, now we're reading something, a passage. This is another great way to practice. It's a great way to practice because you don't have to think so much. You can focus purely on fluency. And the last one with the question you have to think about what to say and how to say it. In this one, you just have to focus on the fluency, saying it clearly. You don't have to focus on the grammar and what do you want to say? Now, a couple of other things we can do and some very common things. One that you might have heard of and that some people do to improve fluency is called dubbing, and it's fairly new. It's kind of a new thing. But it's pretty cool. Dubbing and there are some different apps that allow you to get video clips, is where you take a piece of a clip, maybe from a commercial, maybe from a movie, maybe from a TV show, just a short clip from that. And you study it a lot. You listen to the pronunciation, you memorize the pronunciation, and then you replace your voice with the speaking in that video, with the person speaking the actor in that video, you replace your speaking with it. And by doing this, you have to copy that pronunciation. And this is actually a pretty interesting way to improve. Because once you finish it, you then match, match. What you did with the original. You match the two and you can see the obvious differences between them. Have you got it? Does it sound the same? Does it sound basically the same? Or there's some big differences? Do you have a pronunciation problem here? Or you're not stressing words enough, can you not quite get the sound that they have? So this is a great way to do a sort of side by side comparison of fluency and other pronunciation. So I actually recommend this one if you can find a good app or figure out a good technical way to do it. Dubbing, you replace your voice over another person's voice from a video. Another one is to do a combined exercise for both listening and fluency practice. Now remember I mentioned that one of the keys to fluency is listening. If you can't listen, if you don't have a sharp ear. If you don't have a sharp ear, then it will be very difficult for you to master fluency, to be good at fluency, how to be good at listening to. So one thing you can do is this. Find a short MP3 that's quite difficult and you can't understand completely. Maybe you can understand 40 percent, not easy. 40% are really tough. One. Mp3. When I say mp3, what I mean is an audio clip. Whoops, an audio clip. Clip. And make it short. It should be a short one, maybe 45 seconds, 50 seconds, maybe one minute. Okay. Then listen to it again and again and again over and over and over with a piece of paper and try to write down every word that you hear. Every word. You may spend two weeks just on one one-minute short clip. You may spend two weeks trying to figure out what is this person saying. So difficult. Okay, it will be quite challenging for you. But going through it and doing it will really sharpen your ear. And through that sharpening your listening skill, your ear. You will also notice and begin to pay attention to a lot of these aspects, these parts of fluency that we've been talking about and others which we haven't talked about. And you will be able to get the feeling for natural pronunciation, for speaking naturally fluently. Once you've then got it, you've written down every word that's in this clip, then try to copy it, then tried to read it, then record yourself speaking this thing that you've been listening to for two weeks and see how you do. Because you've been listening to it so much. You will have remembered a lot of the tones, a lot of the stress that the original used. You will have sort of absorbed that. And so you will find that you have got the feeling for the fluency of this particular clip. And that can generally help your fluency ability, your ability to speak naturally, just speak fluently. Okay, so these two exercises, reading and dubbing, and actually this one as well, listening, this listening exercise can all improve fluency. So you have to work at it. You have to work hard. But if you do, you will see results. Practice makes perfect. That's why I wrote this at the top. Practice makes perfect. The more you practice, the better you get. Learning is not enough. This course is to show you a few things. You should do this. You should do this, but just knowing it is definitely not enough, have to practice it a lot. Now, one more thing that you can do to practice your tongue, your mouth for fluency, for speaking quickly, especially is called a tongue twister. And a tongue twister is something that you say very quickly, which is difficult to say. And it can really help you to get used to saying English sounds. And so in the next lesson we're going to go over a couple of tongue twisters. So I'll see you in the next lesson.
14. Tongue Twisters: So in the last lesson, we talked about some different exercises that we can do to improve fluency. We did some reading as practice. We've also talked about asking a question and answering directly. We talked about dubbing, and we also talked about a listening and fluency practice that's combined, the combination of listening and fluency together. Now I want to focus on something very specific related to your tongue. Because fluency also involves the ability to use your tongue, especially over time, more quickly. At least, to be able to make these sounds when you need to quickly. Now, fluency doesn't exactly mean quickly speaking quickly, as I mentioned before, you can be fluent and speak slowly. But doing this exercise that we're going to do today is a great way to build up the skills that you need. If you want to speak quickly and can help you get used to the English sounds. Okay? So a tongue twister, a tongue twister tongue. This is your tongue. Twister to twist something is to bend it in this way, right? To ring it in a circular way in opposite directions. Now you're not really twisting your tongue, but these are meant to be a little bit difficult to say. And so if you say them many times and you get used to doing it fast, then naturally you'll be able to speak quickly if you want to. And you'll be very used to and feel very comfortable with a lot of English sounds. So this one is the most famous tongue twister. The most famous tongue twister. Most English speakers know it. And it's called Peter Piper. And I'd like to read it for you, and I'll read it a couple times. And notice that I'm going to increase in speed first, we master it, right? Mastery first, and then increase speed. Here we go. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. A peck of pickled peppers. Peter Piper picked. If Peter Piper picked a peck Of pickled peppers. How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick? Now the whole thing slowly. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. A peck of pickled peppers. Peter Piper picked. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, how many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick? Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, a peck of pickled peppers. Peter Piper picked. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, how many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick? Now let me try to do it fast. Peter Piper picked a pic of pickled peppers, a peck of pickled peppers. Peter Piper picked, if Peter Parker picked a pickup pickled peppers, how many people peppers did Peter Piper pick? Okay, that's a little difficult for me. But you get the idea. You don't have to do it that fast, but that's the idea. Okay, So if you were able to do these quickly, you will feel more comfortable with English sounds, okay, now I want to do one. I wrote, this one is written by me, not famous, okay, but you can still use it to practice. Here we go. Stella's bombshell. Sales skills still shock. Stella's sister, Ella. Ella has sales skills. Still don't come close to Stella's killer skills in sales. Even though Stella and ELA or sisters, their skills definitely differ drastically. Ella excels at whispering tongue twisters, while Stella still excels in sales skill. The meaning is really stupid. Let me try to read it faster. Stella's bombshell sales skills still shocks Stella's sister Ella. Ella sales skills still don't come close to Stella's killer skills in sales, even though Stella and LR sisters, their skills definitely differ drastically. Llc sells at whispering tongue twister as well. Stella still excels in sales skill. That was tough, that was a hard one. I've met an ahead haven't read it quickly before. That one's actually a little harder than P or Piper, maybe because I have said Peter Piper for my whole life. And this one is new. Anyway, you can practice these. They're fun. They're not a big deal. They're just a way for you to get used to speaking a little more naturally. Now, in the next lesson, we are going to be doing another exercise that you can do to practice and improve fluency. Okay? And it will be the last lesson for this course.
15. Improvisation : Okay, Now in the last lesson we talked about tongue twisters. A fun way to practice pronunciation and fluency. To get faster and faster is a good way to improve your fluency and speak more naturally. Now I want to give you one more exercise that you can do to improve fluency. And this one involves thinking more than the other aspects that we talked about. Remember when we talked about reading and we did some reading practice, we focused on pure fluency using things like blending and stress, things that we've talked about to improve fluency, to sound unnatural when we speak, right? But that's pure fluency because we don't have to think too much when we're reading. But another aspect of fluency is the ability to think quickly in English as well as speak naturally with the right tone and the right stress. So I want to give you a very simple exercise that you can do to improve thinking and fluency. And it involves improvisation, or some people just call it improv. Improv or improvisation just means making things up suddenly with no plan at all. And this is a key, key skill in speaking a language. When you walk around on the street, you don't know what's going to happen. You don't know what you're going to have to say next. You don't know who you're going to run into, or C, right? Or have a conversation with you don't know what's going to happen. And so being able to suddenly say something, talk about something without some previous plan is really important. And this simple, simple, simple exercise can help you work on that. All you have to do is write down a word, write down a word on a piece of paper, and then start talking about it. Immediately start talking about it without thinking, just go, go. There doesn't need to be a plan. You don't have to say something amazing or very smart. Just start talking. You don't have to stay on the topic of the thing you write down. You can go off, but to just start talking and challenge yourself to speak for one to two minutes. Now I'm going to do this as an example. I'm not going to speak for one to two minutes. I can, but I'm not going to because it will be a little boring for you. I think. Just watch me rambling about something for one to two minutes. Not useful. But I wanted to just give you the idea of this exercise. So write something down and then immediately with no delay or hesitation, no delay. Just to start. All right, so let's try this. I'm going to write down a word and then I'm going to just start talking about it. Okay. I'm just going to begin talking about it immediately. I have not planned this. This is not part of my course plan, just to let you know I'm really going to improvise. I honestly have no idea what I'm going to say. Okay, so here we go, write down a word. Okay? Onions. Onions come in many varieties. There are red onions, there are green onions, there are long thin onions. But the thing that onions Usually have in common is that they have a very strong taste. We could say a pungent taste. And one of the defining features of an onion is that when we cut it on unit actually can make us cry. Onions make us cry. Now, there have been many jokes about onions and that they make us cry. And one of the things that we can do that actually stops onions for making us cries to actually suck on a lemon while we're cutting an onion. And if we do that, it cancels out the effect of onions making us cry. In my opinion, onions are delicious. Some kind, some kind of onions. I don't really like some kinds I really do like my favorite kind of anemias probably read on the, and I prefer red onion and Mexican food. It's particularly good in guacamole. Guacamole is a kind of Mexican food that involves avocado, red onion, lime, and salon tro and is mixed together with a little bit of salt and milk and it's delicious with tortilla chips. All right, so I could go on and on and on. And I didn't make I think I've made one mistake there. Maybe you can catch it, but I'm trying to speak as quickly as possible. And I'm improvising. I'm not focused on being totally correct. I'm not focused on being perfect. I'm really focused on continuing talking. And this is an aspect of fluency and you can use it to practice anytime, anytime. And as I also mentioned earlier in the course, you can do this kind of thing in your mind. It's better if you do it out loud. If you record yourself. If you record yourself doing it on your phone and listen to it, because then you can point out, and this isn't very clear, I need stress here and here. You can more easily find the mistakes by listening to it and fix many of your habits. But it is possible to do this kind of exercise in your mind. And actually, I would encourage you to start thinking about things in your mind. In English, instead of having thoughts in your native language, you need to be having thoughts in English. And the more you begin to have thoughts in English, the more you will be naturally able to speak your mind to say what you want to say, and importantly to say it more fluently. Okay, so develop an English brain. And we haven't talked about that really in the course because we're focusing on the speaking fluency aspect part. Um, but it is really important to begin to think in English. And there are many things we can do to think in English. Perhaps we can talk about that more in another course. So anyway, in the next lesson, we're going to be just doing a quick summary, a quick conclusion of the course. And so I will see you in the next video.
16. Summary: Well, there's an expression, an idiom in English, and EDM is a common phrase that most people know. And the idiom is, all good things must come to an end. And so we come to the end of this course on fluency. I hope that you've learned a lot from this course and have got a lot of good ideas about how to improve your fluency. What you can do to improve your fluency. And hopefully you will use the things that we talked about to practice and practice and practice to become more natural English speakers. I really hope that I went to quickly go over what we talked about in this course. We first went over blending. We talked about how one word can go into the next word. For example, if a word ends with d and the next word begins with D, these two words can be sort of smacked together. And when we smack them together, it sounds much better. And we don't have to have a space between the words. And we also talked about jumping, where we can go from one word to the next word. Pretty naturally, pretty fluently, even if the sound is not the same, right? So for example, go wonder, if we add the small w sound. Go wonder, we can put these two words together and to remove the space between two words, particularly compound words, which we talked about. We can actually make our sentences sound more natural, even if it's not fast, we can make our sentences sound more natural. And we also talked about the T-H sound. We talked about how T is tough because it can sort of stop you sometimes. And we talked about how you have to say sometimes, but other times you can say the small sound or a stop sound. I want I want to know, I want no, right? I want some, I want some words like this. We can actually stop, right? And words like daughter, daughter, we use the small d sound. We talked about these examples. We then went on and we talked about tone. We talked about tone, and then we talked about stress. These two are different, but they are connected in some way. Tone is the rising and falling of the voice for a sentence, we talked about the core question tome, the intonation of the sentence, and how yes, no questions have a Whom do you want to go? Whereas other questions where we get information, the tone goes down. All right? Which one do you want? Which one do you want? This one doesn't go up. We also talked about the tone of individual words and how the words, the tone we use for words like Ha or four. This can change the meaning of the word. So the tone of the word can change the meaning of the word. Then we went on to stress and talked about the same things for stress. We talked about how the meaning that we want to focus on, we should stress and that makes the sentence more clear. And that if every word has the same stress, the sentence will be very boring like a robot, we shouldn't do that. Alright, that's not very good. We have to have focus on important words, but we do have some freedom. And we also talked about how a lot of grammar words like two and b. And can, we often don't focus on them, but we can focus on them if it's very important. If they're important for the meaning, we want to express what we usually say them very quickly and sometimes they even change in their sound like to go, to, to go. Right. Then we talked about some common problems. And the important thing to remember about those problems is to slow down when you need to. If you find yourself repeating the same word using too many thinking words, slow down, stop, and then speak. And that's fine. That actually is much better. We also talked about the importance of habits, and that's what I really want you to remember from this course. Habits are everything. If you learn, if you understand everything in this course, but you don't know how to do any of the stuff in the course. If the stuff that you've learned in this course doesn't become a habit. Your fluency will not improve. It all has to become a habit and has to be all there with practice, lots and lots of practice. So that when you want to say something, it comes out very nicely. So habits are everything. Then we actually talked about some different exercises we could do. We talked about dubbing. We did some reading practice which is very important for pure fluency. And we talked about also, which is also very important, improvisation. And improvisation is when we make up something, suddenly, suddenly make up something. So go over a lot of those exercises that we talked about and do that many, many times. Make your own like the ones we did. And do that many times to improve your habits and improve your fluency. And remember, it's also very important to improve your listening. Listening is connected to fluency. If you can't hear what other people are saying, how can you know if you're fluent or not? So listening and awareness are really, really important. Also, we did some examples of tongue twisters and some reading. So you can go back and watch those lessons again and get those examples and continue to practice them. The tongue twisters, we talked about Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. We talked about that one, and we also did some other reading passages and some small examples as well. So anyway, I hope from this course you've learned a lot. I hope you continue to practice and practice is everything. Okay? So I wish you luck in the future. I hope that you all become extremely fluent in English. And I think you're well on your way. If you take the basic points of this course and you really, really focus on it and practice. You're well on your way to becoming fluent. Anyway. That's all for me. Thank you very, very much for taking this course. I'm really happy that we could go through this long journey of fluency together. And I hope you can continue to take courses with me and recommend them to your friends if you enjoyed this one. Okay, so anyway, I will see you next time. Bye bye.
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