WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:09.000 Hello, welcome to IELTS podcast. This episode is going to be all about pronunciation 00:09.000 --> 00:27.000 We're going to look at some of the components of pronunciation, goals, how to be understood, problems regarding being understood and some factors that influence pronunciation 00:27.000 --> 00:41.000 There's quite a lot of information here in this podcast. So I think to get the maximum benefit from this, you could take notes, improve your note-taking ability 00:41.000 --> 00:54.000 You're also going to improve your vocabulary. And also, you probably, if you implement some of the instructions or tips, you're probably going to improve your pronunciation 00:54.000 --> 01:04.000 Or at least find out where the problems are. Becoming more aware of what factors influence pronunciation 01:04.000 --> 01:08.000 So let's get started. Let's have a look at some of the factors to start off with 01:08.000 --> 01:18.000 Age. Now, unfortunately, at the moment, we cannot really influence this factor 01:19.000 --> 01:29.000 So what I mean by age is maybe the amount of time you've been learning the language or maybe the amount of time you've been living in the country 01:29.000 --> 01:41.000 And this does have an effect. Logically, the longer you are there, the more likely you are to speak with that accent 01:41.000 --> 01:48.000 However, this is quite, well, there's one thing I want to make clear here 01:48.000 --> 02:02.000 Obviously, you need to be integrated into that country. So what a lot of people can do is maybe go to a foreign country and only hang out with people from their own country, which is kind of ridiculous, really 02:02.000 --> 02:06.000 But this brings me on to the next point, which is exposure 02:06.000 --> 02:13.000 Exposure to the language is also going to affect how you, well, affect your pronunciation 02:13.000 --> 02:19.000 And this is a factor that we can have totally under our control 02:19.000 --> 02:41.000 So we might as well use it to our own advantage. And, for example, somebody who's living in Poland and listening to podcasts 24-7 is going to have more exposure to the English language than somebody, than a Polish person living in London and hanging out with Polish friends and working with Polish friends 02:41.000 --> 02:53.000 So this is what I was going to say about the exposure level. So because it's under your control, I strongly recommend you take advantage of this and just put your life in English 02:53.000 --> 03:04.000 And I've said that a million times before. Now, the other factor that's going to affect your pronunciation is your own language 03:05.000 --> 03:27.000 So if your language is rather similar to English, and these languages might include Dutch, German, some of the Scandinavian languages, I don't think Finnish, but definitely Norwegian and Swedish, these languages are similar to English 03:27.000 --> 03:38.000 In fact, English is a Germanic language and it's got a lot of Norwegian words, Swedish words, German words, and Dutch words, and especially Dutch and German grammar 03:38.000 --> 03:46.000 So this is why it's probably easier for people from those countries to learn English 03:46.000 --> 03:50.000 And it's probably why they've got better English writing skills and better scores 03:50.000 --> 04:02.000 However, you don't want to beat yourself up about this. You don't want to be comparing yourself to these people because they've just got a slightly natural advantage 04:02.000 --> 04:09.000 So for example, if you're Chinese and you want to learn Japanese, you've got an advantage there 04:09.000 --> 04:19.000 And the Scandinavians would find it much more difficult. So there's no point comparing yourself with the other people 04:20.000 --> 04:27.000 I've just made a note here that the race is long and it's with yourself at the end of the day 04:27.000 --> 04:37.000 And by the way, if you do start comparing yourself with other people, this is a guaranteed way to fail because the only comparison is with yourself and improving your own self 04:37.000 --> 04:42.000 So anyway, let's carry on. Now, the other factor is your phonetic ability 04:43.000 --> 04:53.000 This basically means your ability to distinguish between sounds. So it's like your ear for the language 04:53.000 --> 05:04.000 If you can hear the differences between boss and bus. If you can hear the differences between certain words and stresses 05:04.000 --> 05:13.000 And this is an ability that everybody's got. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to speak their own language or understand their own language 05:13.000 --> 05:22.000 So you've definitely got this ability. Now, the key is, can you improve this ability 05:22.000 --> 05:30.000 Can you adapt it? Can you make it? Can you become accustomed to other languages and other accents 05:30.000 --> 05:37.000 So this is also under our control. And I think one of the best ways is through exposure 05:37.000 --> 05:43.000 Let's increase the exposure. Start listening to IELTS practice tests. Start listening to stuff that we enjoy 05:43.000 --> 05:48.000 Material that we enjoy. Now, this brings me on to the next one 05:48.000 --> 05:54.000 I mean, on to the next point. What's your goal regarding English pronunciation 05:54.000 --> 05:58.000 Do you want to speak like a native speaker? And that's quite ambiguous 05:58.000 --> 06:05.000 I mean, because native speakers come from Liverpool, from Scotland, from London, from Yorkshire 06:06.000 --> 06:16.000 From all over the place. And maybe your goal wouldn't exactly be to speak like a Liverpudlian. Okay 06:16.000 --> 06:21.000 One friend said that if you want to speak like a Liverpudlian, you might as well sound like a criminal 06:21.000 --> 06:28.000 But that's a bit unfair. Hopefully, well, thankfully. Well, I doubt it that I've got any Liverpudlian listeners 06:28.000 --> 06:34.000 Anyway, so let's carry on. So what's a more realistic or what's a more intelligent goal 06:34.000 --> 06:44.000 That's probably to be understood. Okay? And this goes back to similar concepts in the essay writing. Okay 06:44.000 --> 06:53.000 With your essay writing, you want to be understood. You want to make sure that the examiner has understood that you've got the task response under control 06:53.000 --> 06:57.000 And likewise, when you're in that speaking test, you want to be understood 06:57.000 --> 07:02.000 Because even though you might be using the best vocabulary or the best grammar structures 07:02.000 --> 07:13.000 if you're not being understood, then the examiner can't give you any points regarding if you've actually answered the correct question 07:13.000 --> 07:21.000 So just bear this in mind. And here's some quick exam tips 07:21.000 --> 07:25.000 When we're actually in the exam, we sit up straight. I've just done that now 07:25.000 --> 07:32.000 I've reminded myself. We sit up straight. This helps the airflow. We breathe slower 07:32.000 --> 07:37.000 We talk a little bit louder. This also increases comprehension for the listener 07:37.000 --> 07:44.000 We speak a little bit slower. This also increases comprehension. And we also try and vocalize 07:44.000 --> 07:48.000 That means we don't swallow any of the end parts of the word 07:48.000 --> 07:54.000 Like I was talking to a student from Venezuela, but she's living in Toronto 07:54.000 --> 07:59.000 And everybody there in Toronto, in Canada, well, in Toronto, they say Toronto 07:59.000 --> 08:03.000 And that's just their accent, but they swallow the T. They don't bother saying it 08:03.000 --> 08:07.000 So if you're not familiar about that, it might be a bit difficult to understand it 08:07.000 --> 08:11.000 If it's the first time you hear it, you're like, what's Toronto? What's Toronto 08:11.000 --> 08:21.000 Obviously, the context is going to help you as well. But what I'm saying is that if you're vocalizing, then you're not going to swallow a single sound 08:21.000 --> 08:28.000 You're going to pronounce every part of the sentence. That just makes it crystal clear for the listener 08:28.000 --> 08:32.000 This is what I do a lot, actually, just from my teaching experience 08:32.000 --> 08:41.000 The class goes a lot faster if I'm vocalizing. And everybody can follow along there 08:41.000 --> 08:51.000 However, I've been teaching so long now that this vocalizing skill, vocalizing effect that I'm doing 08:51.000 --> 08:59.000 has now crossed over into my everyday speech. So some people say that I don't sound English anymore because I'm vocalizing all the time 08:59.000 --> 09:08.000 Whereas native English speakers will speak faster, closed, and probably use more colloquial language 09:08.000 --> 09:12.000 So, yeah, I remember actually just a few months ago, somebody in the train station said 09:12.000 --> 09:19.000 oh, you've got excellent English skills. Like, cheers. Thanks a bunch. Anyway, let's carry on 09:19.000 --> 09:31.000 So some quick tips there for improving your intelligibility. Now then, let's go on to some of the aspects of pronunciation 09:31.000 --> 09:51.000 So the rhythm. English has a certain rhythm. And it's got a tendency for some of the stresses or the strong beats in the sentence to actually fall on nouns, adverbs, adjectives, and verbs 09:51.000 --> 10:02.000 which are basically the words that are important to the sentence. So if you just go back, you'd have probably heard me when I said rhythm 10:02.000 --> 10:06.000 And I was saying one of the aspects is rhythm. I stressed the rhythm 10:06.000 --> 10:19.000 And I did it unconsciously. But this is just part of the language that it's got a tendency to put importance on these words, the nouns, the verbs, the adjectives, and the adverbs 10:19.000 --> 10:29.000 So if you introduce that into your pronunciation, you're going to improve your intelligibility 10:29.000 --> 10:35.000 Now, the stress. Stress is important. I've got a friend. He's from Paraguay 10:35.000 --> 10:41.000 And he always laughs at my pronunciation for Manchester. Because he says Manchester 10:41.000 --> 10:47.000 And he really exaggerates the chest. And that's where the stress is in that word, in that noun 10:47.000 --> 10:53.000 And likewise, to pronounce the capital city of England correctly, it's London 10:53.000 --> 10:59.000 OK, London. There's a bigger stress at the end there. Sorry, at the beginning, London 10:59.000 --> 11:10.000 But there's two stresses in the word. So this basically will come about through practice and through having a good ear, improving your listening abilities 11:10.000 --> 11:17.000 And like I said a million times before, a really good way to improve your listening abilities is to transcribe 11:17.000 --> 11:24.000 And you can even mark the letters and the words where the stress is falling 11:24.000 --> 11:33.000 There's plenty of online exercises to do this. Perhaps transcribing a song isn't the best idea 11:33.000 --> 11:43.000 Because the words are going to be bent and stretched and squashed to fit the music, fit the lyrics, fit the melody 11:43.000 --> 11:51.000 However, podcasts are really good. And I'm pretty certain you can find some online exercises for this 11:51.000 --> 12:01.000 Now then, sentence stress. This corresponds with the rhythm, what I was saying about before with the rhythm 12:01.000 --> 12:08.000 That the important part of the sentence will be the part that gets the most stress 12:08.000 --> 12:18.000 So if I say, there's a lot of people in town. The stress there was probably in people and in town 12:18.000 --> 12:35.000 There's a lot of people in town. Now, if I said another sentence, for example, there isn't anyone here to emphasize that actually today there isn't that many people here 12:35.000 --> 12:51.000 There's nobody. So depending on what's the important component of the sentence will determine or help to determine where the stress actually goes 12:51.000 --> 12:58.000 So perhaps, I mean this might be a difficult thing to practice and it might be a difficult thing to master as well 12:59.000 --> 13:10.000 But just being aware of it and start being conscious of it will help you to incorporate it into your own speaking abilities 13:10.000 --> 13:25.000 Now then, how could we use this in the IELTS exam? Well, if the examiner asks us, for example, part three and they're saying, what qualities do you find important in a friend 13:26.000 --> 13:36.000 Well, if we were going to answer this, we'd say, well, some of the aspects or some of the characteristics I like to see in a friend are blah, blah, blah 13:36.000 --> 13:42.000 But we've put a stress on friend there. We've reflected the sentence and we've put a bit of a stress on friend 13:42.000 --> 13:49.000 We'd probably do this naturally if we were an English speaker, a native English speaker 13:49.000 --> 13:53.000 So there's no reason why you can't put a bit of a stress there 13:53.000 --> 14:02.000 Just a slight stress. And this will make the examiner understand that you're answering the right question 14:02.000 --> 14:13.000 OK, now, if we were doing this for task one, the examiner might say, so where are you from 14:13.000 --> 14:21.000 So you say, well, I'm from Venezuela, a lovely town. The capital city is my hometown 14:21.000 --> 14:28.000 I've lived there for about 10 years, but I recently moved to Mexico, wherever you are nowadays 14:28.000 --> 14:33.000 So it's just a case of recognizing the important part of the sentence 14:33.000 --> 14:42.000 And this will also help you understand other people as well. If you're having difficulty understanding native speakers, especially English speakers, who tend to speak a little bit faster 14:42.000 --> 14:50.000 then you just listen for the key nouns, the key verbs, and you can get the gist of the sentence 14:50.000 --> 15:02.000 So those are some of the aspects. Now then, let's move on to the next component, which is being understood 15:02.000 --> 15:15.000 So some of the issues or some of the problems that we might have when we're being understood could relate to about three or four issues 15:15.000 --> 15:30.000 First one might be the stress, where we're putting the stress. OK, if we're putting the stress on the connectors or some of the less important fragments of the sentence 15:30.000 --> 15:36.000 then we're going to make it difficult for the actual listener because it just doesn't sound right 15:36.000 --> 15:43.000 And so some of the other problems might be related to your own language and where you put the stress 15:43.000 --> 15:51.000 Or maybe you carry over some of the components or aspects of your own language into English 15:51.000 --> 15:58.000 And this can make it really, not really difficult, but it can make it more challenging for the listener to understand what you're saying 15:58.000 --> 16:05.000 I'll give you an example. I have an Italian friend and she always calls me Ben 16:05.000 --> 16:12.000 And I have to tell her, obviously jokingly, I have to tell her, I say, look, Ben has one syllable, Ben 16:12.000 --> 16:26.000 It's not Ben now. Yeah. And Italians do this quite frequently. They'll put an A, a vowel sound in the middle of the sentence, in the middle, between words where it's not necessary 16:26.000 --> 16:33.000 I think another funny example of this is the Italian man in Malta or the Italian man in London 16:33.000 --> 16:38.000 It's quite a funny YouTube video where it just takes it to the extreme 16:38.000 --> 16:42.000 I'm laughing now because I'm thinking about it. But yeah, if you've got a few minutes, you might want to check that out 16:42.000 --> 16:51.000 If you're just bored of preparing for IELTS. Anyway. And yeah, it's always good to laugh at other people's problems 16:51.000 --> 16:58.000 So anyway, moving on. What I remember when I was in Taiwan, there's another incident 16:58.000 --> 17:05.000 I had a friend. I can't remember what his name was now, but he always used to put La after it 17:05.000 --> 17:12.000 And I think this is from Chinese where they just put La in between words or at the end of words 17:12.000 --> 17:20.000 So it'd be like Ben La, are you going to the swimming pool today? I'd be like, what? Ben La? Is this a nickname 17:20.000 --> 17:24.000 But then I heard him talk with other people and he'd be doing it all the time 17:24.000 --> 17:34.000 Are we going to the swimming pool, La? Yeah. And what I'm saying is that you just need to be aware of that 17:34.000 --> 17:42.000 If you are bringing any of your own, any characteristics of your own language into your target language, which in this case is English 17:43.000 --> 17:56.000 Now, another interesting issue or challenge that we may have when we're trying to be understood is we might actually delete some of the sounds that are necessary 17:56.000 --> 18:06.000 And this is very frequent with the simple past. So a lot of students do miss the ED sound 18:07.000 --> 18:18.000 OK, so I watched a game last night. The ED sound is incredibly important because it dictates the tense 18:18.000 --> 18:31.000 So, yeah, if just being aware of it, hopefully we'll be able to avoid deleting that sound, missing it completely 18:31.000 --> 18:45.000 Now, the next issue is called substitution. And this happens when we might not have the sound in our own language, in which case we'll use a sound from.. 18:45.000 --> 18:53.000 Sorry. Yeah. I'm just getting mixed up now. So what I'm saying is that substitution 18:53.000 --> 19:00.000 And this will happen when we don't have the sound that they use in English or we use in English in our own language 19:00.000 --> 19:04.000 So we'll substitute it with a sound that we do have in our own language 19:05.000 --> 19:13.000 Now, I'll give you a clue. I'll give you an example from Spanish 19:13.000 --> 19:23.000 A lot of Spanish speakers of English will say DA instead of THE or DE 19:23.000 --> 19:33.000 The birthday is tomorrow. And that's because they don't really have the TH, the TH, but they have the V or the D 19:33.000 --> 19:47.000 So they say THE. The birthday is tomorrow. OK. And although it's legible and you do get used to it eventually, however, it's not.. 19:47.000 --> 19:56.000 It could be difficult for somebody who's not used to it or for a German speaker of English to understand the Spanish speaker 19:56.000 --> 20:01.000 Whereas if everybody learnt the correct sound, then obviously it's going to be easier 20:01.000 --> 20:14.000 OK. So you might want to record yourself and just try and record yourself reading a text and then compare it to a native English speaker reading the text 20:14.000 --> 20:21.000 And this way you're going to be able to just see if there are any differences 20:21.000 --> 20:34.000 And this goes back to what I was saying before about improving your phonetic ability, your ability to understand other sounds and components of the language 20:34.000 --> 20:47.000 Right. So that's everything. And if you want to take this a bit further, if you are serious about improving your language and you've got these goals to be understood 20:47.000 --> 20:54.000 or you want to speak like a native English speaker, then there's a few links for more resources actually on the blog 20:54.000 --> 20:58.000 If you just find this blog post, just put IELTS Podcast Pronunciation 20:58.000 --> 21:05.000 And there's also a course there. And of course, if you get the Speaking Confidence course at SentenceGuide.com 21:05.000 --> 21:15.000 there's quite a lot of videos there showing you not only how to attack the exam and how to get the confidence you need and improve your fluency 21:16.000 --> 21:24.000 but also to working on technical aspects such as pronunciation and being understood by the examiner 21:24.000 --> 21:30.000 OK, so I hope you've enjoyed this podcast. If you've got any suggestions, send me an email 21:30.000 --> 21:42.000 I'm always looking to improve them, improve the site. And yeah, if you did enjoy it as well, you could leave us a review at iTunes 21:42.000 --> 21:44.000 That'd be fantastic or Google Play, wherever