Pronunciation Archives - Learn English the Smart Way

October 18, 2018December 29, 2023

How to Improve Your English Speaking Part 2 – A Deeper Look

This is an updated version of my Almost Everything You Need to Learn English post from 2017.

Today I am going to tell you what have I learnt (or learned) about the best ways to learn English (or any foreign language). For the last five and a half years I have been living in the Czech Republic, helping Czechs and Slovaks to learn English. Mainly, I have focussed on spoken English because my clients want to improve their speaking and there is no better way to do that than to simply speak. Or is there?

Here is a vocabulary list of the words in bold and their English definitions

During these last six years, I have learnt a huge amount about how to teach and how we learn. It is my intention, over the next few weeks, to tell you just what I have learnt and to go in-depth into each of the ideas. Today I will give you an overview of what to look forward to in the coming weeks and it is my hope that you can use this information to create some kind of personal plan for learning. First things first, have you read my introduction to Speaking Better English? Great, so now let’s take a look at the main areas I want to focus on…

Motivation

Before you even start to learn English, you need to have motivation, a reason for learning. This could be as simple as wanting to take a holiday in a foreign country, where you know English will be indispensable, or it could be because you want a new job and English is a prerequisite for getting the position. If you have a solid reason for learning it can help motivate you to learn. If you are studying English because your boss told you to, I recommend you find some real motivation to spur you on and give you a reason to learn English. To continue reading more about how to motivate yourself, click here.

Goals

Having difficult but attainable goals will also spur you on. Long-term goals are good but you also need more short and medium-term goals, which, when you achieve them, will give you a boost and show you that you are making progress. I suggest even making goals for each learning session and gamifying the tasks you have. Then there’s the Pomodoro technique. You can read more about that and other goal-setting ideas here.

Habits

Decide to have good habits. That is a choice you must make; to practise regularly and frequently. You simply must make time and prioritize your English. It doesn’t have to be THE most important thing in your life but it must have a prominent place. More on habits here. To get into the habit of improving your English regularly get my FREE English Habit Blueprint here.

Repetition and Review

I know this is one of the 150 year old schooling methods that I mentioned earlier but it does have it place within an ultimate learning method. There are two reasons why it has remained the mainstay of the mainstream school and that is primarily through laziness/conservativeness of the school system in general but secondly, because it does work as a way of fixing information in your memory. A future blog post will go into more detail on the pros and cons of how you can utilize this technique.

Confidence

Build your confidence right from the start. There are numerous ways you can do this, even if you are a really shy person or someone who is ashamed of their level of English. One quick tip for you today is to make a list of all the words you can find that are the same or similar in Czech and English. You immediately then have a ‘go to’ vocabulary. Start using these words as often as possible to send your brain the message that these words are OK! You can meet with a native speaker, read books and watch videos/TV/films; label everything in your home or office; Take risks and get out of your comfort zone. Take a holiday in a native speaking country and use what you know. Read more about confidence in speaking English here.

Make Mistakes

I am always telling people to STOP APOLOGIZING when they make a mistake. This is a terrible learned habit from your childhood when you were chastised for your errors by your parents and teachers. You were only trying to answer a question or do some task and because you got it wrong they shouted, scolded, punished, restricted, and withheld. It is difficult to overcome these feelings but it is possible. Visualization is the key, more on that later. Basically, be able to laugh at yourself when you make mistakes. Make mistakes your friend. RELAX, it’s OK, but DO LEARN FROM THEM. I also have a video course to help Czechs and Slovaks correct some of the most common mistakes they make when speaking English.

Grammar (Oh no!)

Don’t learn English grammar in the traditional way (unless you’re a polyglot and find it easy), use my Faster Grammar For Speaking method. I will explain more about this is a later post but essentially it is a mixed tense way of learning that focuses firstly on the grammar you need to speak about yourself. This is a system I have been developing for some time and I hope will be a massive help to anyone who considers themself a false beginner. For those of you who are struggling with the Present Perfect tense here is a little freebie for you. Just fill in your name and email address and I’ll send you the Easy Guide to the Present Perfect ASAP.

Jak se nejlépe naučit anglicky? — Easy Guide to the Present Perfect FREE ebook

Visualization

Without doubt, the biggest elephant in the room that the education system, the world over, is ignoring. Visualization is the best way to remember vocabulary, full stop (or period if you want to speak American English)

Learning Styles

I have written and spoken many times on the subject of learning styles and thankfully it is something that is creeping into education systems. Using as many learning styles as possible and finding your most prominent learning style will increase your learning effectiveness. I will write more on this later but for now, you can check out this older post of mine which will give you a basic understanding of what learning styles are for the uninitiated.

Listen

Unfortunately, I find this to be the one area most neglected by Czech and Slovak English learners. You should try to listen to native speakers as much as possible. Radio, TV, films, podcasts, music, documentaries, and real people. If you are lucky enough to live in Prague you have an unending supply of native speakers. Teachers of course, but also on the streets, in the pubs, restaurants, shops, and cafes. Get out there and listen.

Immediate Action

When a word randomly comes into your mind, immediately (or as quickly as possible) find out its meaning, write it down, and visualize it. Start using your new words in your writing and in conversation frequently to fix them in your vocabulary.

Ask for Help

When you don’t understand something, write it down and ask your English teacher/helper to explain it. If you have no one, find someone or at least try to find some advice on YouTube.

Learn English language online with a personal native teacher! Register to italki now.

Get Creative with Your Notes

Write down anything interesting you find in English, new nouns, verbs, phrases, grammar rules, idioms, expressions, or just interesting facts in English. But don’t stop at just writing in the usual boring (school-taught) note-taking way. Get creative with your notes. Fill the page with your own drawings, cartooning the vocabulary and using different font styles, shapes and sizes.

Copy What You Hear

Imitate what you hear. Copy the speaker instead of just pronouncing words as you read them. If you really want to have something like a native speaker’s accent you need to copy what you hear. Don’t just say things the way they’re written or the way you learned them, listen to how a native speaker says it. Be consistent with your pronunciation though and choose a particular accent rather than mixing and matching because this will lead to misunderstandings for sure. There exists an idea of a generic or stereotypical British and American accent when there really is no such thing. Both countries have a multitude of different accents. If you are interested here’s a funny picture

Next week I will expand upon motivation to learn English and try to help you find yours and give you actionable steps to find it.

Do you have a plan for learning? A method? A system? Tell me how you learn English in the comments below.

October 11, 2018December 29, 2023

How to Improve Your English Speaking – Part 1 An Introduction

Bean can improve your English speaking

“The pen is mightier than the sword”, but is it better than the spoken word? In today’s article we are going to look at how to improve your English speaking.

If speaking English is more of a problem for you than writing, then you want to read this article. I explain the best ways to improve your speaking, from my own experience and from knowledge gleaned (got) from the highest authorities on the science of learning. And, there’s going to be one or two new idioms and phrases for you, so, as always, pen and paper at the ready to take notes. (Sketchnotes preferably) Read on…

Knowledge or Confidence?

First things first, do you lack knowledge? I mean vocabulary, tenses, how to pronounce things? Or, is it a question of confidence? If your reading and writing are good but you feel you are unable to communicate verbally then you may need to improve your English speaking confidence. As you are reading this article, you must have a decent level of understanding and because I believe it is much more inportant for communication than being a grammar expert, let’s start with confidence.

Confidence

Confidence is the key to beginning to improve your English speaking. Without it you will continue to struggle with self doubt and it will be a mental barrier blocking you from being able to effectively input, retain and recall new information. There are many ways you can increase your confidence in speaking English but they all require practice. Actually speaking, whatever level you are at, is the key. So, are you too shy to speak or have you not found the opportunity to speak English? The answer to the second question is easy (see my free tips sheet), but to answer the first question you will have to do a little personal psychology. Shyness comes from either a fear of failure or a fear of success. It’s therefore about mindset and how you think others percieve you. Try to start focussing on enjoying the journey of learning, ‘every day’s a school day’, and the results will take care of themselves.

Download this free list of practical ways to help you improve your English speaking.

Knowledge

On the other hand, we can all improve our speaking somewhere, so even if you are a very confident speaker, what else should you focus on to improve your English speaking? Without doubt I would argue that the most important area is your pronunciation. When you start to hear that you are sounding better, it will boost your confidence and enthusiasm. It will also make you more intelligable and less frustrating for others to listen to, leading to better conversations.

The best way to better pronunciation is to listen more, and I mean listen more in two ways. Firstly, actually spend more time listening to native speakers of English. Secondly, listen more intently and make real improvements to your English speaking by then copying what you hear. Take my free 5 day challenge on some of the basic English pronunciation areas to start to improve your English speaking. One great quick tip to check your pronunciation is to try using something like Google Translate’s microphone. See if it recognizes what you are saying.

How to Improve Your English Speaking – In a Nutshell

By listening more, you will improve your English speaking vocabulary and pronunciation. By asking yourself some deep questions and forcing yourself to practise speaking more (with a constantly improving pronunciation), you can increase your confidence.

Take action now: Download this free list of practical ways to help you improve your English speaking confidence and knowledge and take the 5 Day Basic English Pronunciation Challenge

Next week: Part 2 – A Deeper Look at how to improve your English.

November 30, 2017October 1, 2018

Jak Mluvit o Fotbale v Anglictine – Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham

How to avoid sounding like a football novice

jak mluvit o fotbal v anglictine — Be Cleverer Than These Two

How to pronounce English football team names properly (jak mluvit o fotbale v anglictine). A quick guide to not sounding stupid in the pub. I bet you think you know how to say Chelsea, right? What about Aresenal and Tottenham? Easy? Read on…

Instead of trying to read the letters you see in the English spelling, try to pronounce what you see from the Czech spelling (including some phonetics). I have also added an audio file for each club name so you can hear how a native (northern British, English, Yorkshire – West, Leeds – North Western) speaker says it.

Arsenal

ásnl – We don’t pronounce the e or the a at the end.

Bournemouth

boónməth – Some people may say the mouth part like the word mouth but most of us replace the vowels ou with the short schwa sound ə.

Brighton & Hove Albion

brajnənhouvalbýən – To be honest most people just call them Brighton so you don’t need to learn the whole name (only f you want to sound really clever). Some people, those who have better (more standard) pronunciation will say the letter T in the middle but in my accent and for many others, we drop the T but leave a glottal stop.

Burnley

bɜnli – The schwaa sound that replaces the UR is the long version. It sounds like the noise we make in English urrgh when in Czech you say fuj (something is disgusting).

Chelsea

čelsi – The most common error I hear is people pronouncing the S as a Z. It should be pronounced as an S.

Crystal Palace

kristəlpaləs – Again, change the letter A at the back of both words to a short schwa.

Everton

evətən – As with Brighton, the T in the middle is optional but remember to replace it with a glottal stop if you omit it.

Huddersfield Town

hudəzfíltawn – Many speakers with my accent (West Yorkshire) would actually drop the H from the beginning and as well as the D from the end of HuddersfielD and as Huddersfield is also in West Yorkshire, you’ll sound like a real local if you pronounce it this way.

Leicester City

lestəsiti – Or just lestə. A perfect example of the letters in the word being more confusing than helpful.

Liverpool

livəpůl – Try to take out your rolled R from the middle and replace with a schwa. Also, the double O is a long sound like in the word ZOO not short as in look.

Manchester City

mančestəsiti – Not so hard but do try to replace the rolled R at the end of Manchester with a schwa.Or just simply ‘site’ to their local supporters.

Manchester United

mančestəjůnajtid – Or just simply jənajtid (optional T/glottal stop) to their northern born supporters. With united you can also pronounce it jənajtəd.

Newcastle United

ňůkasljůnajtid – The N in Newcastle is said more like an ň or nj, something called an intrusive j sound. It’s the sound of a letter that we don’t write. It’s the same sound you make when saying words like, you, universtity and Europe. (Jolanda and Jachim)

Southampton

sawthamptən – The OU part of SOUTH is said in the same way as when we hurt ourselves and say OW! (cow, coward).

Stoke City

stouksiti – This has been the most difficult one for me to work out how to pronounce using Czech sounds so listen carefully.

Swansea City

swonzisiti – Ok, so the word SEA is a soft S sound and yes, it looks the same as in ChelSEA but here it IS pronounced like a Z.

Tottenham Hotspur

totnəmhotspɜ – This club has the unfortunate title of ‘Most Overpronounced Football Club Name in the World’. You do not need to pronounce every letter you see, if you do you will sound quite ridiculous. To sound more like a native, remove the E from the middle of the word, don’t pronounce the H in the first word and if you REALLY want to sound good, replace the TT with a simple glottal stop. If this is all a bit much for you, try calling them just SPURS (spɜz).

Watford

wotfəd – Simply right? Optional T, replace with glottal stop, the A sounds like an O and the OR becomes a schwa.

West Bromwich Albion

wesbromičalbíjən – NEVER EVER, I repeat, EVER pronounce the W in BromWich, the same can be said for Norwich City or Harwich. However, you do say it in Northwich Victoria (8th level of English football league system). Also drop the T from WesT.

West Ham United

westhamjůnajtid – Here we do pronounce the T in West but sometimes drop the H from Ham to make Westam.

And so to the end of this piece on how to pronounce English football club (Premier League) names. The final recording is a reading of the English Premier League results from the weekend of Fri-Sun 24-26th November 2017. You can hear how I naturally read them. Note, this is slightly different to how I would pronounce them when I talk. During this reading, my pronuncation is more of an attempt at a BBC standard.

Here are the English Premier League fixtures for the weekend of December 2nd 2017. My challenge for you is to see if you can pronounce the names a little beter than before. If you’re feeling really brave, make a recording of yourself and send it to me :-). Remember I love to read your comments so please, post them below. If you want more help with pronunciation, take my free video course.

Richard.

Chelsea v Newcastle
Brighton v Liverpool
Everton v Huddersfield
Leicester v Burnley
Stoke v Swansea
Watford v Tottenham
West Brom v Crystal Palace
Arsenal v Man Utd
AFC Bournemouth v Southampton
Manchester City v West Ham United

March 29, 2017December 28, 2023

Almost Everything You Need To Learn English

Here is a vocabulary list of the words in bold and their English definitions

During these last five years, I have learnt a huge amount about how to teach and how we learn. It is my intention, over the next few weeks, to tell you just what I have learnt and to go in-depth into each of the ideas. Today I will give you an overview of what to look forward to in the coming weeks and it is my hope that you can use this information to create some kind of personal plan for learning. First things first…

Motivation

Goals

Habits

Repetition and Review

Confidence

Build your confidence right from the start. There are numerous ways you can do this, even if you are a really shy person or someone who is ashamed of their level of English. One quick tip for you today is to make a list of all the words you can find that are the same or similar in Czech and English. You immediately then have a ‘go to’ vocabulary. Start using these words as often as possible to send your brain the message that these words are OK! You can meet with a native speaker, read books and watch video/TV/films; label everything in your home or office; Take risks and get out of your comfort zone. Take a holiday in a native speaking country and use what you know.

Make Mistakes

I am always telling people to STOP APOLOGIZING when they make a mistake. This is a terrible learned habit from your childhood when you were chastised for your errors by your parents and teachers. You were only trying to answer a question or do some task and because you got it wrong they shouted, scolded, punished, restricted and withheld. It is difficult to overcome these feelings but it is possible. Visualization is the key, more on that later. Basically, be able to laugh at yourself when you make mistakes. Make mistakes your friend. RELAX, it’s OK, but DO LEARN FROM THEM. I also have a video course to help Czechs and Slovaks to correct some of the most common mistakes you make when speaking English.

Grammar (Oh no!)

Visualization

Learning Styles

I have written and spoken many times on the subject of learning styles and thankfully it is something that is creeping into education systems. Use as many learning styles as possible and finding your most prominent learning style will increase your learning effectiveness. I will write more on this later but for now, you can check out this older post of mine which will give you a basic understanding of what learning styles are for the uninitiated.

Listen

Immediate Action

When a word randomly comes into your mind, immediately (or as quickly as possible) find out its meaning, write it down and visualize it. Start using your new words in your writing and in conversation frequently to fix them in your vocabulary.

Ask for Help

When you don’t understand something, write it down and ask your English teacher/helper to explain it. If you have no one, find someone or at least try to find some advice on YouTube.

Learn English language online with a personal native teacher! Register to italki now.

Get Creative with Your Notes

Write down anything interesting you find in English, new nouns, verbs, phrases, grammar rules, idioms, expressions, or just interesting facts in English. But don’t stop at just writing in the usual boring (school taught) note-taking way. Get creative with your notes. Fill the page with your own drawings, cartooning the vocabulary and using different font styles, shapes and sizes.

Copy What You Hear

Imitate what you hear. Copy the speaker instead of just pronouncing words as you read them. If you really want to have something like a native speaker’s accent you need to copy what you hear. Don’t just say things the way it’s written or the way you learned it, listen to how a native speaker says it. Be consistent with your pronunciation though and choose a particular accent rather than mixing and matching because this will lead to misunderstandings for sure. There exists an idea of a generic or stereotypical British and American accent when there really is no such thing. Both countries have a multitude of different accents. If you are interested here’s a funny picture.

No photo description available.

Next week I will expand upon motivation to learn English and try to help you find yours and give you actionable steps to find it.

Do you have a plan for learning? A method? A system? Tell me how you learn English in the comments below.

September 30, 2015March 1, 2017

The Easy Way To Pronounce TH. (The, These, Think, Thursday)

How to Say Th, the, these, that, those, and Thursday

When I started to learn Czech (I’m still learning, albeit very slowly!) I had to learn some new letters and with them some new sounds. Č was not too difficult, neither was Š or even Ž. You know where this is going right? But when it came to Ř it was another story.

I can remember just after our first daughter Daisy was born, practising the sound over and over while she looked at me from her cot as though I was a crazy person. (She’d thank me now though as her pronunciation is perfect!) Indeed it took me many, many months to get something sounding close just from listening to you native speakers. I was fortunate enough to have my future wife and all her Czech friends to help me, though somehow I still wasn’t able to get my tongue around it. “It’s like a rolling R with a Ž at the same time“ they’d say. Rolling Rs is difficult enough for many British people, the Scottish excepted of courrrse.

So it wasn’t until a visit to Prague a few months before we moved lock, stock and barrel (idiom explained at the end) to the Czech Republic that Radka’s sister showed me how it should be done. Letting me look closely at her mouth (she’s very trusting!) as she curled her tongue behind her teeth, rolled the R and blew air from her windpipe. This was the moment I finally understood and made the leap from something that sounded like a sneeze to something much more pronounced and close to what I was looking for. Now I am told I have a super sounding Ř. Test me on Křivoklát, křižíkova and řeřicha! Ok maybe not perfect but better than a Slovak’s! Sorry Ivana 😉 That said I still have trouble with pronouncing a simple rolled R when it follows a T or D for example. That makes it pretty hard for me to pronounce my own sister in law’s name Petra.So why am I telling you this?I’m telling you this because I want you to know that I understand how hard it can be to master a new sound that is not of your native tongue. I’m talking here about TH. Many of you have a problem with this sound as it doesn’t exist in Czech. Neither does our English J (as in juice) but you can easily compensate for it with a DŽ. However there is no way to make the TH sound using other Czech letters so I’m afaid you will just have to learn it.

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Here is my best explanation of how to position the various bits of your mouth in order to make a good attempt at it and below you will see a link to a video with a close up of my mouth (I apologize!).

But first are you aware that there are two TH sounds? One we call a voiced TH and the other unvoiced or voiceless. Let’s start with this unvoiced sound as in Thursday, a word which I know causes considerable discomfort and embarrassment as well as missed meetings and dates down the pan. And believe me I know what it’s like because I had to learn how to put five consonants in a row when I learnt čtvrtek. In English we like to use a vowel every now and again!

So the TH as in Thursday is produced by:

a) placing the tip of your tongue behind your slightly parted teeth. (If you put your finger to your teeth you should just feel your tongue between the gap.)
b) simply blowing air through the gap in your teeth over your tongue.

Click here to see the video.

Some explanations will tell you to stick your tongue out a bit between your teeth. While you do get an almost identical sound I think keeping your tongue back a bit makes the sound much cleaner and clearer.

At no point do you need your lips in this process. You can even hold them out of the way while you are practising to get the correct sound. I don’t want to hear any DZZZ or SSZZZZ o r SSS or T ok?!

Right, now you have mastered the unvoiced sound (Thursday, think, thought) you can move onto the voiced sound as in The, This, These, Those. The instructions for this sound are exactly the same as for the unvoiced sound but with one addition. You are also going to use your vocal chords/voicebox to produce a sound. That sound is the same as when you can’t think what to say and you ERRR as we say in English. For example “I don’t know anything about Van Gogh, eerrrr, maybe he was French? Eerrrr, I really don’t know.” So follow theses instructions as follows:

a) place the tip of your tongue behind your slightly parted teeth.
b) make the eerrrrr sound and continue making it as you start to…
c) blow air through the gap in your teeth over your tongue.

Click here to see the video.

And there you have it. The perfect TH sound, both voiced and unvoiced. Congratulations. I can’t wait to here the improvement the next time we talk. Here are the two idioms I used explained.

Idioms:

lock, stock, and barrel

The entirety; all of something. For example, Richard moved out of the house, lock, stock, and barrel. This expression alludes to the three elements of a firearm (gun) -the lock or firing mechanism, the stock or handle, and the barrel or tube. [Early 1800s]

down the pan

Completely and irreversibly wasted, lost, or destroyed. Primarily heard in UK. In an instant, we saw all our hopes for our business go down the pan. All those years of research down the pan. I guess it’s back to the drawing board.

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