Speech Tips
English Communication Skill- Do Your Best Listening
English Communication Skill: Do Your Best Listening
Communication is connecting with people, making relationship. Half of the story is listening.
Do you want to be a better listener so the other other person knows you are truly in the same space with them?
What to do? First, clear away the clutter. Noise clutter, desk clutter, even mind clutter.
- When you talk to someone, don’t just mute the device, turn it off.
- If you have something else on your mind, write it down before you enter a conversation. Thus you won’t worry about forgetting to address the issue – and you’re free to focus on the rest of the conversation.
- Clear your desk of whatever is between you and the speaker – -so you concentrate on what the speaker is saying.
- Don’t accept phone calls or texts while you are talking with someone else. Interrupting a conversation to take a call or review a text makes the person in the room with you feel unimportant – and makes what you have to say seem unimportant. If you think the call is an emergency, state it might be an emergency or family member, ask the person on the other line if it is OK if you call back after your meeting. Then get back to the person you are with,
Second tip, count to three.
This slight delay enables you to absorb and understand the last statement before you respond. You absorb the message, and you give the other person one last chance to modify the statement or question. Even if your response is simply that you must consult with your client, spouse, or boss, pausing for three seconds helps you better understand and remember what the other person said.
Be sure to watch our English Speech Tips videos and Accent Reduction Tip videos for more English pronunciation and accent reduction exercise.
Reach Out and Touch Someone
Reach Out and Touch Someone.
Everyone has a network of relationships– some are close friends, some are friends you don’t share “close to your heart” details, some colleagues or neighbors, associates in other organizations, and family.
Reach out.
Coming out of the worst of Covid (we hope) makes impetus for reconnecting. Purpose? Growth, action, interaction.
“N” Most Frequent Consonant- Do Vocal Strength Exercise
The consonant “n” is the most frequent consonant in English. Recall all those prefixes and especially suffixes— en, an, in, ment, tion, sion, cian, etc.
American positioning of the tongue for “n” requires muscle stiffness of the tip of the tongue, and extending the voicing at the vocal folds and speech volume are all critical.
So to strengthen exactly the right muscles for pronunciation of “n,” do this: Take a deep breath, push the tip or end of your tongue up to the top or roof of your mouth, right behind the top front teeth — press hard. Then say “nnnnnnnnn” for as long as you can. For our coaching, we recommend three times for as long as you can at least 5 days a week. This exercise will literally make your body grow muscles that you need for this “n” speech sound.
You will hear the nasal sound– vibration of air through your nose.
ust so you know– many languages have a nasal sound which is associated with the written letter “n,” but do not position the tonge in this manner. Get perfect pronunciation of “n” in English when you do this. “N” is twice a slow as the quick consonants such as “t” and “d.”
Accent Reduction: Top–BESTt–Strategies for How to Learn Accurate Clear English
Accent Reduction: Top–BEST– Strategies for HOW to Learn Accurate, Clear English
These are strategies that work for both efficient and quick and also long lasting change:
- It takes 70 days of practice every day to change habits– in this case, from accented English to clear easy to understand American English. That is 10 weeks of learning.
- Do a full diagnostic assessment to know what you already know, such as accurate speech sounds, and to know what your errors are. That way you can focus on what you need to change. That’s efficient learning!
- Do daily practice of a minimum 5 days a week, at least 30 minutes of English speaking exercises. To get long lasting change in speech patterns means engraining movement memory in your brain and muscles.
- Take every opportunity in daily life to practice the skills for clear English pronunciation and other intelligibility skills. This way you learn to adjust your mouth movements (tongue, lips, teeth, jaw) and loudness of your voice to the circumstances. And you learn to think and talk clearly at the same time.
- Use clear talking visual learning and visual models (for example, video lessons using a human teacher not cartoons or drawings) in addition to voice only recorded lessons to give you the biggest gain. Positioning of the tongue, lips, teeth and jaw for accurate English sounds is critical. Wrong position, wrong sound. Speech sounds too quick or too slow for American English means wrong speech sound.
- Get periodic checks from experienced teacher to be sure you are using your speech muscles in exactly the right way. For most people, once or twice in a week feedback during coaching works perfectly.
- Get specific training advice on exactly what to do with your speech muscles. Remember, it is not practice makes perfect, but perfect practice makes perfect.
Remember that neuroscientists report it takes 1000 times of doing a new skill to form a mental trace in your brain and 10,000 practices to make that new learning a long lasting habit.
Be sure to watch our English Speech Tips videos and Accent Reduction Tip videos for more English pronunciation and accent reduction exercise.
/d/- Vocal Strength Exercise
Most common pronunciation error for grammar is the consonant [d] for past tense verbs. (Today I play; yesterday I played.) Here’s a vocal strengthening exercise to get that /d/ right.
—Take a deep breath and pronounce /d/ consecutively for as many times as you can. Do this exercise 3 times a day for at least five days a week and for one month.
Positioning of the tongue is crucial. Press the tip or end of your tongue forcefully to the roof or top of your mouth right behind the top front teeth. At the same time, make a loud voice from your throat with your vocal folds.
This is a quick sound, so quickly press the tip of yur tongue to the roof of your mouth behind your top front teeth then quickly pull your tongue down. Make sure you get a loud voice from your throat at the same time. Now that’s coordination!
Special tip–the position of the tongue and sound /d/ is different for other languages. (For example, for Spanish, the tongue goes between the upper and lower front teeth.) To prevent the inaccurate position of the tongue for /d/ for English, close your teeth on both sides of the mouth.
Remember, it is not practice makes perfect, but perfect practice makes perfect!
P.S. We are using this vocal strengthening exercise for /d/ with our students now and they are mastering this crucial sound much faster!
