Speaking English: Simple Exercises for a PERFECT American Accent

In this speaking English tutorial I’ll show you several simple exercises that you can use to master the American accent. 

Tagged With: American Accent   YouTube blocked? Click here to see the video.

Video Transcript:

Having an accent in English has to do not just with individual sounds like a or AA or AH or the rhythm but a lot to do with the overall sound. This is why you have an accent speaking English. It’s like how a flute sounds different from a violin when they’re playing the exact same note. Different material, different shape.

Today, I’ll give you exercises to get the right shape in your throat to get the American accent. Have you ever done physical therapy and you can’t believe how much these little simple exercises help you get better?

That happened to me when I blew out my ankle. I couldn’t believe how simple and minimal the exercises were to heal and eventually my ankle got back to 100%. It’s the exact same thing with speaking American English. We want to make small changes here that will have a big impact overall to the way you sound.

Simple exercises for the throat can change everything. If you use your throat speaking English the same way you do speaking your own native language, you’ll probably never get an American sound when speaking English. And that’s okay. No one has to lose their accent to be welcome here on my channel. But I know for a lot of my students the goal is to sound as native as possible. So let’s do some PT. That is physical therapy, exercises for your throat to get you a truly American accent.

I’m Rachel, I have a background in opera singing and I’ve been teaching the American accent to non-native speakers for over 20 years. Scan this QR code or go to Rachelsenglish.com/free to get my free course, The Top Three Ways to Master the American Accent. It will blow your mind, it will give you totally new ideas on how to get the sound you’ve always wanted.

Before we get into the exercises, let’s look at what’s happening in the throat when we speak. I got this clip from a YouTuber who was able to do what I’ve always wanted to do. He was able to go into an MRI and get a video of the anatomy when speaking or in his case singing. Tyley Ross is a voice teacher living in New York City and I’ll link to his original video and website in the video description. It’s really worth watching the full video, it’s very cool. He went into an MRI and sang the same part of a song in four styles. So, the sounds were the same, the pitches were the same, but the overall sound the style was different depending on what he did with his tongue lips and throat. Listen to this difference. It’s singing the same note the same vowel in four different styles. Do you hear a difference? Let’s listen to it on a loop.

Of course you hear a difference. The sound is different because of the position of the tongue and lips but also the throat. The voice box or larynx is here. It makes the sound, the pitch based on how the vocal folds or vocal cords are stretched when air pushes against them causing them to flap and vibrate.

But the position of the larynx can change based on the muscles around it and this is what changes the shape of the throat and changes the sound. Let’s look at the four positions.

So here, we’re comparing the four different sounds and styles and we can see the changes in the body that are making the sounds different. Even though the vowel is the same and the pitch is the same, the larynx is this part here. But look at the shape that’s created. So the shape here for opera, that’s a different shape than the shape here. Here this line is very flat. And in opera, it sort of got a notch out of it. Also look at this space here. It’s narrower here than it is here on the light mix then it is here on the rock style and here in the forward style.

So, this part of the body is changed, is moved by the muscles around it. And changing its position and its shape changes the shape of the throat, the part where the voice is resonating. The empty space here in the mouth is also something that resonates to make the sound. To make what’s called the overtones of the sound. And that really affects the overall sound. So tongue position matters. Also, look at this in the opera style. The top lip is doing something a little bit differently than it is in the other styles. There’s just a little bit of space being created between the front of the teeth and the inside of the lip. This part is called the soft palette. That can also move. It can hang down, let air through or it can be closed up tight preventing air from going up into the nasal cavity. So the way to change your overall sound where in your body the voice is resonating is through the muscles of the neck, throat, the tongue, lifting or lowering the soft palette. What you do with your lips, everything that affects the shape will affect the sound. So the exercises will go over today will help to lower and relax the larynx. That’s the placement that we want for an American English accent.

N ow let me try to make the EH vowel on the same pitch but sound different. I’m going to be shifting my tongue, larynx, soft palette, I’m going to do a bunch of different EH sounds. Okay.

Okay, that was fun and weird. It was all the EH vowel and the pitch was the same but the sound changed completely throughout that. That’s because of how I changed my anatomy. They didn’t all have the American feel of that vowel which is EH, EH. I’ve noticed that almost all of my students have the overall feel, that’s just a little different. The throat is a little tighter, the larynx higher, it makes the vibrations seem like they’re pressed more in the face rather than lower in the chest. In American English we want a really relaxed throat, a lower larynx for that open low American sound.

So in this area, in the throat that includes the larynx and muscles around it which move it. This is called the vocal tract.

I found a voice coach Renée Yoxon on YouTube who talks about this really well. When the shape of anything changes, then the sound it makes when vibrating changes.

Your vocal tract also has a resonant frequency when struck. But because it can change shape and size, the resonant frequency also changes.

So, different shape, different core sound. Now, we humans have pretty much the same material as one another. Our blood vessels, our mucus and all that that’s in there but the shape we make with our throats naturally depends on the native language we grew up with and the overall sound of that language.

So there are two things that make up the sound of your speaking voice.

The pitch. That is the note that my vocal cords also called vocal folds make. You know what? Let’s play with some pitches. I’m going to play a middle C here on the keyboard that I have pulled up.

So, I’m matching that pitch, my vocal cords I don’t really know what they’re doing, I’m not telling them how to stretch but I hear something and I’m matching it. Let’s play another pitch.

So again, I didn’t tell my throat how to change its shape. I just did it based on what I hear and almost anybody can do this unless you’re tone deaf, you can hear a pitch and you can match it. So that pitch of my voice, that is the pitch of the vocal cords vibrating. However, there’s another thing that makes up the sound of our voice besides just the pitch.

When you speak, you actually have two sound waves working together you have the sound wave from your vibrating vocal folds and you have the resonant frequency of your vocal tract. When two waves meet you get what’s called wave superposition. Basically, the waves interfere either constructively or destructively to create a third new wave and this is the sound of your voice.

The sound of your beautiful voice. Okay, that was a lot of detail to try to convince you that the shape of your throat does matter. Now let’s jump into some exercises to get you a more relaxed shape which will give you a more American sound. The first one is super simple and just like the PT I did on my ankle it seems too simple to actually do anything but it does.

I want to credit these exercises, they were passed on to me by someone on my staff, a Rachel’s English teacher, Ms. Stokes who’s getting a degree in order to become a speech language pathologist. Shout out to Ms. Stokes, she’s been teaching with Rachel’s English for years and she’s a fantastic teacher. In her studies, she came across a speech therapist named Shirley Tennyson who developed the exercises from the teaching of three others. I’ll put a link to the book with these exercises in the video description.

The first exercise is simply massaging with a circular motion. You start high up by the jaw, this is the jaw, and you just work your way down. That feels nice. And you do both sides, couple times, get your neck muscles in the front to release.

Now we’re going to massage this part here. So you put your fingers there where the base of your tongue is and you spread them apart. Feels good. Got to say. We all probably hold more tension than we know we do. So do that several times without talking.

Now this one’s going to feel weird. So you know your larynx is here. We’re going to pinch above it, and just pull it down the tiniest amount, it’s not a big forced thing. Do that several times and then do it also from the side. Nothing harsh. Just gentle. This next one is one I used to do a lot when I was singing opera to just sort of relax and release these muscles. You take your fingers on either side of the larynx and you push it side to side and it will probably crackle. Mine always does.

Do that for a while. Maybe 10 times back and forth.

For the next one we’re going to take our thumb and press up here into the tongue and you just press there and hold it. Pressing up into the back of your tongue. Hold it for 20 seconds maybe even up to a minute without talking.

And release it. Feels good. You can feel it sink down. The pressure was firm, you let go it sinks down. That also helps release tension.

Now you’re going to play with actually pulling down your Larynx so gently, while you’re making sound and you’ll see that there’s a subtle change in sound.

Depending on where your larynx is naturally, the sound change will be different.  

But you want to see what it feels like to have it be relaxed open and low because there’s a real chance that in your native language the muscles of the neck and throat are tensed a little bit that lifts everything up a little bit and puts the sound here. Ah. And in American English we want the sound here. Ah, Ah, Ah, and we do that by relaxing everything letting the larynx lower. I want to show what effect this can have on the voice. This is Shawn, a student of Rachel’s English Academy who could tell that his overall sound which I call placement where the voice resonates here, ah or here, ah. I call that placement. He knew that his sound was preventing him from sounding natural speaking English. This is an introduction he made to the Rachel’s English Academy Community early on and then we’ll play another introduction that he did after several weeks of work on his placement.

Hello everybody, my name is Shawn. So today I’d like to make a free talk video by using the random question generator.

He did a lot of neck, tongue and throat relaxation exercises to help him find that shape of the lower resonance. I’ll play the two examples again side by side.

Hello everybody, my name is Shawn.

So, just to recap, what did we learn today? The shape of our throat of our vocal tract changes our sound and in American English, we want a relaxed open throat with a larynx that is able to drop down in a relaxed way, that shape of the throat will make your voice feel like it’s vibrating here more so than here.

And that’s what we want. That’s the core sound of American English.

What do you think of this? Are you willing to try this PT, this physical therapy for your American accent?

Or maybe you think this whole thing is ridiculous?

Let me know in the comments below.

Don’t forget to head over to Rachelsenglish.com/free to get my free course, the Top Three Ways to Master the American Accent. Do these PT exercises very gently first, then try working with audio in the course and see how your sound changes.  Keep your learning going now with this video and don’t forget to subscribe with notifications on, I absolutely love being your English teacher. That’s it and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.

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