Hi, I'm going to tell you about a video that I watched and my comments about the speaker's pronunciation. This could be an example for you for what you could do, but you don't have to do it exactly the same way, it's okay. Don't worry too much about making a perfect speech, just pretend that you're talking to your friends out there. You're talking to all of the other learners. Here's what I did when I made mine. First, I picked a video. I chose one that's about words because I'm an English teacher, I like words. But you can pick something that you like, pick a topic that you're interested in. My talk was a TED Talk, and because it was a TED talk there was a script available. So I copy and pasted the script into a Word document and printed it out, and here it is, so that I could mark the pauses and the other interesting things that I heard. You don't have to do that, but it helps. So here's my analysis of the video. The video that I watched is called Go Ahead Make Up New Words and the speaker's name is Erin McKean. She's a lexicographer and that's a person who makes dictionaries. She told about six different ways that new words come in two languages and it was really interesting. So here's something that I noticed about the speaker's thought groups and pauses. She used a lot more pauses than most people would if they were just talking to a friend. But that's what we would expect because this was a very well prepared speech. She had planned it carefully and she knew where she wanted to pause to make it very effective. A lot of her pauses were in places you'd expect, they were between clauses or between sentences, at grammar points. But some of them weren't, sometimes she paused to make an extra point. For example, she said, you know how to make the plural of wug. And that made that sentence really stand out because it had a lot more pauses. But some places there were no pauses where you might expect a pause. Sometimes there were two sentences together or two clauses together with no pause in between. For example, she said, you never had to be taught this rule, you just understand it. So there were two complete sentences. No pause in between, that's what she decided to say. So some of the pauses were really longer. I noticed that she used longer pauses between the main sections of her speech. And that's a really good way to let your listeners know that you're about to say something new, so they're ready. Here comes a new topic, I'd better listen. I also noticed a couple of things about prominence. She used emphatic stress, the stress where you really want to make something stand out. She used it in sentences like, my job is not to decide what a word is, that is your job. She really emphasized that is your job to make it stand out. And her intonation was also interesting. She had lots of ups and downs. She wasn't just talking in sort of a flat voice, but really up and down a lot. And that made her sound more lively, more interesting. And I think it made it easier for the listeners to stay interested in what she was saying. And she used connected speech a lot, which is normal. She used some of the the common linked expressions like going to, and hasta, and hafta, and want to. And she also used lots of reduced speech in the small word of in, on, at, those words. That's what we expect. Finally, here's my advice about learning pronunciation. Don't give up, and let me tell you a story. A long time ago in high school, I was taking German classes. And one of the teachers was from northern Germany. And he pronounced the our sound the one that's represented by the letter R. He pronounced it like [SOUND] so the word for red is rote, or the word for right is rictich. And I hope I'm doing it right, I can't guarantee it. So I could not say that [SOUND] sound. I would say err instead like the English sound. And so I tried and I tried to say the word read, but it kept sounding like rote, rote. It sounded like English. And the teacher was really insistent everybody tried to say [SOUND]. So I practiced and I practiced and I tried so hard. And it took me six months, but finally after six months, somehow I figured out how to say that [SOUND] sound. It's kind of like your tongue is up in the back. It's like you're gargling [SOUND] [LAUGH]. And I was so happy because finally somewhere in my mouth I had found that sound. It was hiding there, I don't know where. But I could say rote and richtich, and rechts, and lots of words with r. And now it's 50 years later and I can still sort of do it. I'm not sure it's perfect, but I can still say it. So don't give up, keep trying, sometimes that sound is in there someplace and we just have to find it and pull it out and start using it. And once you find it, it'll stay with you. May not be perfect all the time, but you can find it, you can do it. Thanks.
