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Oh hey there I’m Emma from mmmEnglish.

If you’re a regular mmmEnglish student

you know that I don’t prioritise perfection.

I’m more focused on building confidence and self-belief

and regular English practice.

So when it comes to your accent,

let’s focus on clear communication, not the perfect

English accent but clear communication that makes it

easy to understand you, to help you feel more confident

when you’re speaking to others and to fit in.

So if reducing your accent and speaking clearly

is something that you’re interested in doing, then stick

around because I’ve got six tips to help you do that.

So what’s so bad about an accent?

Absolutely nothing.

If you can communicate your message clearly,

then there is no reason to change it.

Your accent helps to create character

and intrigue and you know it helps to tell your story.

However, if your accent is a barrier to someone

understanding you or it stops you from creating

a meaningful connection with someone

well, we’ve got a problem right?

So reducing or limiting your accent is probably

going to help you to feel more successful

during conversations and to help you

to get more confidence and to speak more

which is important. That’s the most important thing.

So to help you to improve your accent

and speak more clearly, I’ve got some tips

that I’m sharing with you right now.

The first one is to choose your accent.

Now usually my advice is to listen to as many different

English speakers as you can,

both native and non-native English speakers.

This is essential to help you develop really strong

listening and comprehension skills.

However when it comes to changing your accent

and practising your pronunciation,

with this type of practice you know, it’s

better to choose a specific accent to focus on

so that you can really pick out the most unique

features of that accent and try and copy them.

And the simplest way to do this is to choose an English

speaker who you like the sound of when they speak,

you like listening to.

So find out where their accent is from

and learn some of the key features of that particular

English accent.

So if you want to learn an Australian accent like mine,

then you would focus on pronunciation features like

the flap T sound,

you know when a T is between two vowels

and it ends up sounding more like a D

like in water, bottle, little.

You might also look at schwa endings, you know

in words that end in -ER but the

sound is not pronounced like mother and weather.

And also I just want to take a moment to say that

in no way does this have to be a native English speaker

who you’re copying.

If there’s someone who you admire

who’s a native of your first language

but when they speak English,

they speak clearly and confidently, by all means

copy their English accents.

The reason why it’s important to choose one English

accent to focus on is so that you can get the repetition

that you need you know,

to keep hearing those sounds again, to emulate them

and to copy them and produce those sounds yourself.

So ideally you’ll find someone or even a couple of

people with a similar accent that you have

regular access to,

a regular access to their voice you know.

Maybe they have a podcast, maybe they have a YouTube

channel. Whatever it is, as long as they’ve got

lots of content and that it’s interesting content

that you like listening to, you may as well make your

pronunciation practice enjoyable right?

If you’re still wondering how to choose the right English

accent, the one that’s right for you,

well think about your personality,

you know, are you quite serious and quite professional?

Or do you want to sound really cool and chilled out

and approachable?

All of these things influence the accent

that’s right for you but also the people that you are

listening to and that you are trying to copy right?

So I’m curious,

which English accent do you like the most?

Which one would you most like to use yourself or

which English speaker would you most like

to sound like? Is there someone

who you listen to regularly or you know

someone that you watch on YouTube that you would

like to sound like? Let me know in the comments.

So you want to watch and listen to that accent

as much as you can.

Like I said, find a person that you admire,

that you’ve got lots of access to so that you can

copy them. It’s just like you learnt your own accent

from your parents. If you surround yourself with regular

sounds, you will naturally start to

use them yourself when you speak in English.

I taught kids when I was in Vietnam and

some of them could bust out the most

amazing American accent and slang words

and expressions all because they spent so much time

watching cartoons and movies

with American accents in them.

This is exactly the same concept.

Another really great option is listening to audiobooks

which are read by an author

who has an accent that you like.

So Stephen Fry is awesome for received

pronunciation, for sort of formal British pronunciation.

I’m listening to Michelle Obama read her book

Becoming on Audible at the moment

and that’s also a lovely accent to emulate.

Trevor Noah is also a good one

if you quite like jokes and humour.

So I’ve added links to books narrated

by those people in the description below.

You can listen to the samples of audiobooks

on Audible. Find an accent that you like

and grab that book for free.

It’s a really great resource for finding the accent

that you want to copy yourself.

So the idea is you watch and you listen to as much

of that person as you can or that accent as you can.

And the great thing is you’re going to be learning

new words, new slang, humour.

All of this is really, really helpful, right?

But you’ll also be training your brain to recognise

and associate those sounds with words

as you hear them

so that you can start using them yourself as you speak.

Up next, of course, it’s practise imitation.

So English has a rhythm

right it follows a stress and tonal patterns that

are probably quite different to those used

in your native language and this can have a huge impact

on your communication in English.

If you’re speaking English and you’re applying the

stress and the rhythm from your native language,

it can be pretty distracting for other English speakers

who are trying to listen to you.

So softening that a little is a really, really good idea

and this relates to syllable stress in individual words,

it relates to sentence stress, to tone, to pause.

So becoming familiar with all of these things by

imitating a native speaker as they speak,

it’s going to help you to learn and understand

and experience the rhythm of English

and help you to use it more yourself.

And if there are words that you use in your native

language that are also used in English as well,

then pay close attention to the English pronunciation

of those words because it’s probably

a little different to what you’re used to you know.

Words like burger or other foods especially.

Words with common endings like action

or community, countries and city names

you know, they can be pretty similar between languages

but it would be a good idea to practise

the correct English pronunciation

especially names that you are using often yourself

right? Say everything out loud.

The more that you actually say,

the better because you can read about English

pronunciation, you can listen to English speakers

as much as you like.

I mean you can listen to me talking in this video

as much as you like but if you can’t get the muscles

in your mouth moving and working

in the way that you need them to.

It’s pointless

you know and you don’t even need someone to speak

with to do this, you can do it yourself,

you can talk to yourself in the mirror and the shower.

It literally doesn’t matter but if you build a habit around

moving and working those muscles,

it’s gonna have an impact. The more that you practise

saying English words, the better.

So reading out loud is a really good daily practice,

singing songs is awesome as well.

Simply just getting your mouth muscles moving

and comfortable and doing all of the things that they

need to do to make English sounds correctly, right?

Just do it as much as you can. And as a hint,

just make sure that you’re going back to that podcast

or back to that YouTube channel or that audiobook

re-listening to the accent so that you can make your

own adjustments to your pronunciation if you need to.

Right my fifth tip is to take

every opportunity that you have to talk,

you know, you don’t improve your accent

by thinking about it.

So what opportunities do you have to actually

put it into practice in real live situations?

If you go ahead with the Lingoda Sprint,

then you’re going to be getting regular speaking

practice every day.

But what other opportunities do you have?

Take them. Use them to practise.

And I say this especially if you are shy

and you’re uncomfortable about speaking in English,

you know maybe you hesitate before you speak

and sometimes you miss those opportunities.

So try and speak up, take every opportunity

that comes your way.

Don’t just go to class, you know, ask questions,

be the first person to put up your hand and answer.

Don’t sit in silence.

Students who take those opportunities to improve

are going to do it the fastest right?

So try to put your fears and your

worries and your doubts aside and speak.

Get into the habit of practising.

And lastly record yourself

and listen critically.

I’ve talked about the importance of choosing a single

accent that you would like and to listen to it

and then to take every opportunity to speak out loud

either yourself or when you’re talking to people,

get those muscles working and practise speaking

but how do you know if you’re actually improving

or how do you know if your accent is changing?

Or how can you tell what you need to improve

or get better at?

You record yourself.

Now it’s possibly one of the most awkward,

uncomfortable things that you’ll ever have to do.

Listen to yourself speaking in a second language

on a recording.

Never mind I promise you, you’ll get over it

and improving your accent is way more important.

Now remember way back in step number one,

I talked about paying attention to the unique

features of the accent that you want to use. Well

can you hear those features in your own recording?

If you compare the recording to the accent that you’re

trying to copy, what sounds different?

You know and what do you need to change to

make it sound more natural or more like that accent?

Changing your accent is not

something that you can do overnight.

Alright it takes practice and it takes repetition.

So making it part of your daily practice,

ten or fifteen minutes a day

is going to produce some significant results

if you create that habit and you do it for six months

or for a year.

In fact, keep a recording of you now

at the start of this journey

and then record again at six months and twelve months

and track the progress that you’re making.

Track the change over time,

you know, it’s something that you’ve got to commit to

just a little bit every day over time and I promise you

that if you get to the end of that period of time

and you compare a recording

to one that you took twelve months earlier,

you’ll be blown away by the progress that you’ve made.

You won’t notice this change from one day to the next

but you’re definitely going to surprise yourself if you

compare

that recording to one that you took a year earlier.

So my friend that is it for today,

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this lesson.

I will see you in the next lesson. Bye for now!