Blog  #177 for Sat. Aug. 01, 2020

Feeling Stuck? 

Sooo, think about it?  Is your English pronunciation accuracy the same as  1 year ago, or 2, or 3 or? ??

Think back to the last time you took a class to improve your English speech pronunciation.

Are you the same now?

The same can be good!   Actually the same says that you did the work to get long term muscle  and brain memory.

But maybe your pronunciation and using clear talking techniques has slid backwards, and  it is not as good.

Or maybe you are still bothered or annoyed by some speech sounds which are still not accurate American English.

Of all the things you can do to make those sounds accurate, what should you concentrate on?

The answer is muscles and coordination of muscles. Notably, of greatest importance for pesky speech sound errors is coordination of the mouth muscles  and   neurological activation at the vocal folds in your throat and muscles attached to the vocal folds and action of the lungs.

It’s the coordination that is the critical key.

The scientific term is “coordinative structures.”

For example,  perhaps  people have trouble hearing and understanding your “v” pronunciation – especially at the ends of words or in the middle of multiple syllable words.  There are a couple of likely reasons for that.

Most likely is that you are not making a loud enough voice from your vocal folds in your throat at the same time you are pushing air out through your mouth in a ‘friction” manner. And you’ve got to have the right position of muscles.  Most accurate  for the mouth would be  while are making a loud voice  you put  your top teeth to  rest gently on your lower lip.

Ah… written English communication may be great. But  for speech, seeing and hearing all this coordination in  a  video demonstration  is even better.  So if you are interested go to YouTube.com/ClearTalk Mastery and search for our video speech tutorial for “v”.

Now do you understand? You’ve got to get the coordination exactly right.

If you are interested in one more example, then read this: The same thing is true for the “n” sound.  Do people who communicate with you have trouble like this: Listeners are not sure whether you said “thirty”  or” thirteen.” or “fifty” or “fifteen”?  The road to success  lies in making the “y” written letter pronounced as the English long  vowel ‘e” sound (like in “see”). Make that vowel sound  slow and loud enough  for the listener to hear easily. 

AND the secret lies in making the “n” sound slow and loud.  Push the tip of your tongue up to the roof or top of your mouth, just behind the front teeth, and with your  brain or mind, send the instruction to the vocal folds to be loud and make an enduring or lengthy”n” sound.

Alas, the poor sound “n” is an unfortunate sound.  It needs extra loudness because that sound  needs the air stream to go through the nasal passages and out through your nose.

Now do you understand?   You’ve got to coordinate the muscles in the mouth—the tongue, lips and jaw  — with the muscles at the vocal folds – and the lung muscles  — along with the neurological coordination of the brain  and nerves activating all of those muscles.

“N”  “n” a thousand times “n”.    Did you know that of all the consonants in English, the “n” consonant is the most frequently spoken!

Now for this– bad news and good news.

The bad news is… sooooo much coordination.

The good news is—your neurological and muscle system set up coordinative structures for this.  A coordinative  structure just means a coordinated group. Here is neurological—brain and nerves. And muscles.

That coordinative structure gets set up and is maintained by you as a human being  doing speaking with those sounds.

Just so you know, accented speech by definition is when you are using the patterns of your first or other language with English.  The “accent”  is where this is a mismatch.

Feeling stuck with errors you don’t like?  Do direct practice.  Remember it is not “practice makes perfect”  but “perfect practice makes perfect.”

Also remember that it takes perhaps 1000 up to 10,000 times of practice to change a habit.  And if you have a pesky sound or word you want to change, do the work.

Ack, this is one task you can not hire someone to do for you.

If you are interested in finding out more about pronunciation of  the “n” sound, here’s the link for “environment”, Tip #23 https://youtu.be/O2INjqtXTEY

And in case you want it, here’s the link for our speech tutorial for “v”, Tip #19 and “favorite” –https://youtu.be/ZbbN9cC2VcU

Copyright Clear Talk Mastery , Inc. 2020