Better than AI? [HINT: YES]

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I’ve worked with speech recognition software when it comes to Accent training. It can help you with maybe half of your issues if you’re struggling to speak English with full confidence. Is that good enough? Is half good enough? What would it mean to you to have a trained American accent teacher coach you on your English?

Think how quickly you’d improve and how much more confidence you’d have to know you were doing it right.

Not an app, not AI, a person at the top of their field giving you easy to understand focused feedback. Okay, but apps and AI are a lot less expensive than real people than the time of experts. True. But when you do most of the training on your own with the right method, then you come to your coach for 5 minutes of intense focused personal feedback, then you’re hacking the system. You’re getting an expert’s advice but you’re not paying for an hour of an expert’s time.

I’ve set up Rachel’s English Academy for this exactly. It’s expert accent training but for a fraction of the price of private sessions with a coach. It comes with Coach time but more importantly, it gives you all the materials to work with between checking in with your coaches so you can nail it, get that sound get that rhythm into your body.

For the first time ever, I’m offering a lifetime option for purchasing the academy. No subscription, no recurring payments you pay once, you have access forever and you work on it when you can. No stress over keeping a schedule and wondering every month if you’re really using it enough. Get instant access to every course: American vowels, rhythm, conversation practice. We have 23 courses. Subscriptions also come with access to our community where you can meet online with our teachers and get personal feedback at no additional cost. It’s all included.

Lifetime access is on sale for this week only, Save $598. If you prefer a subscription and ongoing access to the live classes and teacher feedback in our community, then right now for this week only you can pay just $5 for your first month of subscription access.

Two options: One lifetime payment and one smaller subscription payment, your first month for just $5.

Probably the most special thing about Rachel’s English Academy is the exclusive community that comes with it. You can post to the community and get feedback from one of our teachers.

Watch this. This is Josh helping a student find a great R sound after listening to a recording of him practicing. He makes a video and the student can watch it over and over again. He shares about the r sound and how to feel that in the chest instead of the mouth.

Hey how’s it going? Nice job here with the last practice our consonant sound is a really deep inside the body sound, so you can really tell what’s happening with a person’s placement by the way that sound. So if we listen to this here uh, this first couple of sentences, let’s check out this R sound.

I’ve not been here before.

Alright, so if you listen here, here, here, you can hear that’s a mouth sound right? It’s not here, here, rrr, right? I don’t hear that chest resonance. You know, as much as you probably would expect for most native speakers.

It makes such a difference to see and hear a teacher imitating you and going back and forth between what they hear and what sounds more natural. And this community comes with your Academy subscription at no extra charge. Now the student can go to the R soundboard in the Academy and use the Play it, Say it method to make that a habit and really anchor the sound in the body so it becomes effortless.

Here, let me show you. We go to the right course, we find the chapter and we have our choice of lessons. I can use the soundboard to practice each word 10 times in a row with our repetition method.

across

Some students do even more. This is the same method used for adults in speech therapy when they suffer a stroke and need to relearn how to speak English. Or if it works better for me I can download the soundboard audio in a single file with the repetition built in. I can practice in the car, I can practice anywhere. We need to make it super easy to practice speaking out loud because that’s what’s going to change your habit.

So, as you move through the daily plan, you’ll see each module has a focus. You’ll work on it, you’ll watch the videos, you’ll work with the audio and at the end you’ll post a challenge for Teacher feedback. This way you’re able to get really focused feedback on each aspect of the American accent.

Sometimes people just want general advice on what to focus on. Our teacher, Rachel Stokes gave great advice recently to a new student from Iran.

Hi Muhammad, welcome to the Academy, thank you for taking time to introduce yourself. So, my big piece of advice to everyone who’s new in the Academy is to take advantage of the slow motion on the soundboards. So when you go to practice, start with play it say it in slow motion not the regular speed. Start at half speed because you’re wanting to train your ears in a new way. You want to change the way that you’re perceiving and hearing the sounds of English. So if you’re going to repeat five or 10 times play it every time before you say it in slow motion, you will do that and each repetition will bring you closer and closer to your target. Then you can go to the regular speed with more play it say it but try this method, let us know how it works for you and I hope that you’ll post again soon.

Every bit of feedback you’ll get from a teacher, you’ll know where to go to find those lessons. You’ll go to the module or find the course, get the lesson and everything is there for you. Everything you could ever need. All of our audio also has a slow motion version so you can get it into your body more easily if the sounds are tricky for you at the beginning.

Had you met her before.

I don’t know.

I hope you’re seeing how much our teachers care about our students. Each teacher you’ll see in this video has been on my team for years. They care about you. This is amazing. You get personalized video feedback from a teacher but what if you want to actually talk with a teacher live? Get live feedback on the particularly tricky word or sound in the moment.

We have drop in hours throughout the month where you can join one of our teachers in our online classroom and ask your questions directly in real time. Get coaching and feedback in the moment. For example, here a student is struggling with uh, a very open and relaxed American vowel in English. This is the uh as in the word cup, cup, cop. And I know these two vowel sounds distinguishing them is so tricky. Getting a clear uh helps you sound more natural and here our teacher Laura helps the student find it.

And I think you can use a little more breath.

Uh, uh, uh.

Yeah. And make sure it’s not tightening. Make sure it still feels soft and natural.

Uh

That’s the sound! That’s it! You found it. That’s the sound that we’re looking for. That’s really American sounding accent there. Here, the students confused about these two words: hear and here.

Can I hear you try it? I would start with the E, so with the lips softly open, tongue wide in the middle of the mouth, e, e, and then I move into the er, so my tongue will lift for that er.

Here

That’s it. Here.

Right. So what’s the difference with the word hear like to hear something? It’s the same sound. It’s just spelled differently h-e-a-r versus h-e-r-e, like I hear a sound here in my room.

Oh, all right. Yeah. So it will, there also, we were talking about homophones earlier, words that sound the same but are spelled differently, and have different meaning and this is another example of those.

Alright, thank you.

Yep. Here and hear, it’s a good one. It’s a good one to know.

I also love how students connect with other students in the community. They find practice partners to work with on their own speaking English and practicing their conversation skills. They also come to our conversation meetups which are led by teachers. We practice by doing.

Here another one of our teachers has listened to a student and is giving feedback. This is our teacher Katie.

Hey Victor, it’s Katie here with some feedback for you. Awesome job working on this conversation and overall I’m really hearing that linking, it sounds smooth and connected. The placement is also sounding low so fantastic work over overall. I want to talk a little bit about um, stress and intonation, I feel like there could be a little bit more pitch variety, um, so on those stressed words I feel like the pitch could go a little bit even higher, let’s take a listen.

First of all, I don’t appreciate stomping in my—

Yeah, so like first of all I don’t appreciate, appreciate, I feel like the pitch could go a little bit higher on that stressed syllable. Appreciate, appreciate. Um, just to get a little bit more of that stressed contrast.

Okay this student has just gotten some valuable detailed feedback, they can go to our courses and find a lesson where they can put this feedback into their own practice.

I don’t appreciate you stomping into my office.

Lean into the stressed syllables, even more pitch variation.

As valuable as our teachers are, I don’t want to undersell the audio training. Over 10 years ago I was working with a student from China who couldn’t hear the difference between IH, sit and EE, seat. I recorded some audio for her comparing a lot of similar words, these are called minimal pairs, she listens to it several times a day for a week and the next week, not only could she hear the difference but she sounded native on both sounds, just by working with the materials. No feedback from me. The listening practice then the speaking practice works. It makes the sounds that are hard effortless. but when you’ve done the practice and you’re still not sure that’s where this community is invaluable.

Here’s one of our teachers Alicia helping a student with UH and AH. She’s just listened to the student she turns on her camera and right away she’s giving feedback that that student can watch over and over.

Above

Cousin

Done

So you’re close. What I’m hearing is just a little different. You’re saying above, cousin, done versus above, cousin, done. UH, AH. UH is further forward and you can find it by doing an mmm, with a gentle press downwards. Mmm. And you can also try one with won with a w-o-n, bring the lips forward and that will set up your tongue for the ‘s and butter. Won. Won, won, won. Above, cousin, done, that will bring your sound to the front of the mouth and help you find that UH as in butter sound.

block

doctor

hop

Really nice AHs and father sound in all three words.

Today is Sunday. The Academy sale ends on Monday, in one day. Go to rachelsenglishacademy.com right now to sign up.

Any questions, yes, I want to hear them. Put them in the comments. Keep your learning going now with this video and don’t forget to subscribe with notifications on, as always I love being your English teacher. That’s it and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.

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