Check out this video to see exactly how I help students learn to use reductions and linking to sound more like a native speaker. Plus, discover how you can receive personalized feedback from me as well.
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I love helping people communicate in English, and I want to help you, yes, you, on the other side of the screen. It’s been too long since I’ve seen you, since I’ve heard from you. So let’s do this, let’s work together.
Back in 2020, do you remember that year? Or have you let yourself completely forget it? Back in 2020 I collected videos from you and I used them to create two big teaching videos. This one on placement is probably my favorite video I’ve ever made. Let’s do it again. I’m going to give you something to record. You make me a video, and send it to me, then I will give feedback right here through YouTube.
This is what I want you to record.
Hurry up! We’re going to be late.
Sorry! I just have to go the bathroom and then I’ll be ready.
Alright. I’m going to wait in the car.
Just a few lines. It helps if you record this way rather than this way. Try to be in a quiet place if possible so we can get the best audio. Upload it to YouTube, it can be unlisted and email the link with “Hurry up” in the subject. Email that to help@rachelsenglish.com
Please be sure to include your name, your native language, and definitely if you’re a member of Rachel’s English Academy, be sure to include that too.
Please record and send me your video by May 15th
Once I get them, I’ll start organizing and working with them. Now, depending on how many I get, I might not be able to put all of them in my teaching video. And please, only send a video if you’re okay with me putting that video in my video on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram. You sending it to me will be your consent.
So here again is what I want you to record.
Hurry up! We’re going to be late.
Sorry! I just have to go the bathroom and then I’ll be ready.
Alright. I’m going to wait in the car.
I’ll put the text of this conversation in the video description.
Now, to give you an idea of how I’ll use your videos, I want to show you a little bit of the video I made last time from all your videos. The full video, if you want to see it, will be linked in the video description. Before I play you this, I want to be clear, there is nothing wrong with an accent, and everyone has things that work well with their voices speaking English and things that could be improved if their goal is to sound native speaking English. When I have learned languages in the past, I’ve always loved trying to embody the sound of the language completely, and that’s what I’m coaching towards in this video
Now the next phrase, “What do you want to do tonight?” is so interesting in American English. We have a lot of different reductions that we will do with this. For example, ‘What do you want to’ will become from many speakers ‘What do you wanna’. What do you wanna. So we drop the T in what, links right into the d of do. What do, and then we reduce the vowel of do and you. What do you. And then ‘want to’ becomes ‘wanna’. What do you wanna, what do you wanna. What do you wanna do tonight?
Very linked together those reductions, everything is super smooth. So now, we’re going to take just ‘what do you want to’ and we’re going to listen to some students who did a really nice job with the reductions and linking of that phrase. The first two native languages are Portuguese and then we have Urdu.
What do you want to–
Again, that smoothness, the reduction, what the, the tongue just flaps there. It’s just a flap between those vowels. What do you want to, what do you want to.
What do you want to–
Great. Now, as you hear just that phrase in isolation, are you thinking this is crazy? Are you thinking this is so sloppy and unclear? It is! That’s what we do in American English. We link everything together and we smooth it out and we reduce some words. So ‘what do you want to’ becomes ‘what do you wanna?’ Now, we listen to some students who missed some of the reductions.
What do you want to–
Want to, to, to, to, to. The word t-o, we almost never pronounce it to, to, to. We almost always will make that a reduction to, want to. And of course with want, it’s very often to combine those into wanna with no T whatsoever but the to reduction is important. It’s almost always done in American English. Her native language is Russian. Now, we’re going to watch a native student whose native language is Thai.
What do you want to–
What do you want to, what do you want to. What do you, do you, do you. So those are two words that it’s not quite as strong as to where that is just 99% of the time reduced. Do and you, it’s not as common but it’s still something that you’ll hear and notice a lot and when you do it especially with a phrase and a casual conversation like this. What do you want to do, what do you want, what do you wanna sounds better with schwas than do you, do you. That sounds a little bit too full. What do you do, do you, do you, what do you, what do you.
What do you want to–
What do you wanna. Now, in a lot of ways, this was great. I’m just pointing out that she made a stop T, what do you wanna. When she could have just even dropped that T. When the word what is followed by a word that begins with a D it’s not uncommon to just drop the T and link ‘wha’ on the next word, what do, what do, what do you. What do you. Now, the word, ‘tonight’. What do you want to do tonight? Okay, there are two different pronunciations but first, the first thing I want to say about it is the beginning of the word t-o, if you look the word up, the pronunciation in a dictionary that is not to, it’s to. There is a schwa in that word, lots of people like to say tonight, today, tomorrow. That is not the pronunciation, we say to, to, tonight, today, tomorrow. So watch that vowel.
Tonight.
So there, I just isolated the word tonight, tonight, tonight. Her native language is Russian and I hear her saying to, to, to, to, to, tonight. But it’s to, to, tonight, tonight.
Tonight.
I love his placement but I definitely heard tonight, tonight, to, to, to, instead of to, to, to. Now, the other pronunciation of this word. It can be a flap T. Do tonight, do to [flap]. You have to practice it with the word before but when the word before ends with certain sounds, it’s pretty common to flap the T in tonight, today, tomorrow and even together. What do you want to do tonight, do tonight, do tonight, do tonight. It was a vowel before, pretty common to make that a flap T to smooth it out a little bit more. What do you want to do tonight?
Do tonight —
Do tonight. Did you hear that? Do to, do to, do to. He did the flap T, his native language is Fula and that was perfect. Do tonight.
Do tonight —
Again, flap T, a nice way to smooth that out. Do tonight. His native language is Serbian.
Do tonight —
Do tonight. Very clear flap T. Nice job. Her native language is Spanish. What else about the word tonight? Okay the final T. I don’t want that to be dropped. Tonigh. That’s different than how we would do it. We might do it with a stop T, tonight, and that can sound like a dropped T but it’s not. The stop of air is abrupt, the word kind of feels like it gets cut off, tonight. That’s different from tonigh, when the pitch falls off and goes down and sort of tapers then it just sounds dropped and we wouldn’t do that in American English. We could do a light true T release but more common we would make a stop T, do tonight, do tonight. Let’s listen to a couple students who dropped the T.
Do tonight —
She did the flap T in tonight, I liked that but she didn’t put an ending consonant on. Do tonigh, do tonigh. It needs to be do tonight, do tonight. Her native language is Vietnamese. Let’s check out another student.
Do tonight —
I felt like the word ended before the T was put on. I didn’t feel that abrupt stop, do tonight. And when I do that even if it’s at the end of the thought, I might even lift my tongue up into position for the T, not just cut it off, cut off the air and in the vocal cords and I saw that his mouth stayed open, there was, there was no mouth movement for the T and I didn’t hear that abrupt stop so, dropped T there. His native language is Burmese.
What do you want to do tonight? Okay, let’s talk for a second about that most stressed word there. It’s very natural. What do you want to do tonight? To bring the most stress to the verb tonight is an adverb so it’s also a content word but you wouldn’t really stress that unless you were really focusing on the time. What do you want to do tomorrow, no, what do you want to do tonight. Then you might stress it but otherwise it would be what do you want to do tonight? And do would be our peak of stress for that sentence. So peak of stress meaning loudest meaning the highest part of the pitch and I also like to describe it as it feels like the energy of the sentence is going up to that peak, what do you want to do tonight? And then after that peak, it falls away from it. What do you want to do tonight?
What do you want to do tonight?
Okay, she also dropped her T at the end of tonight but the peak of stress do was very clear. What do you want to do tonight? What do you want to do tonight?
What do you want to do tonight?
What do you want to do tonight? Do, do. Again very clear peak of stress for that sentence. The more clear your most stressed word is in a sentence, the better, I think. The feeling of everything linking together and that is just part of that line is important, we talked about reductions, we talked about linking, taking ‘what do you want to’ and turning it to ‘what do you wanna?’
One more example of that peak of stress and the smoothness of the phrase. This student’s native language is Filipino.
What do you want to do tonight?
But now, let’s look at a few examples of some students who didn’t quite have that smoothness, they had a little more of a choppy feeling to the way they spoke.
What do you want to do tonight?
Her native language was Spanish and did you feel how what do you want to do tonight. It felt more separate, [flap] instead of [flap]. What do you want to do tonight? Really smooth and more rhythmic contrast. Her syllable, her syllables were a little bit more all the same which would be natural for a Spanish speaker to do but in American English we want those long versus short syllables.
What do you want to do tonight?
What do you want to do tonight? [flap] Again, sort of a feeling of separateness between the words and in American English, believe it or not, we don’t want separation of words. We want the words to flow one right into the next.
A note about the beginning of the sentence. The word ‘what’. That starts with a w sound. And I’ve noticed that some of my students from India for example, Germany also can mix up W and V. And I noticed one of my students here who submitted a video, native language Hindi, he made a V-shape with his lip rather that a W, that’s what we want to see.
Hey, what —
Do you see his lip position here? It looks like the bottom lip is coming up to touch the top front teeth. That’s V. What we need to see for a W is Www, www, more lip rounding. What do you want, wha, wha, what do you want to do tonight?
This student did a nice job with the lip rounding. Her native language is Korean.
Hey, what —
Did you see that? More lip rounding. Wh, wh, wh, wh, what do you want to do tonight?
The last thing I want to say about this sentence, can you believe how many things there are to say about this sentence? I want to talk about the intonation. This is a question but it’s not a yes no question. You can’t answer it with a yes or no. And because it’s not a yes no question, we’ll make the pitch go down. What do you want to do tonight? For a yes no question, we’ll probably make the pitch go up. Do you want pizza tonight? That’s a yes no question. This question should go down in pitch and I noticed just a few students made it go up in pitch.
What do you want to do tonight?
tonight?
Tonight? Tonight? Do you notice that pitch going up? We want it to go down. Tonight. Her native language was French.
What do you want to do tonight?
Do tonight?
Do tonight? Do tonight? Pitch going down. His native language is Arabic.
I so look forward to seeing this next batch of videos that come in from you. Please subscribe to my channel so you never miss a lesson, and do turn notifications on. Then come back often, I love being your English teacher. That’s it and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.
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