Episode 2: Pronunication Tips

Listen to episode 2 of the Peach Teach English Podcast to learn how to improve your English pronunciation. I’m Frankie Mesmer, your host, and I was joined in this episode by my co-host guests Oluwatoye Peter and Jeanne Petrus-Rivera. Information to contact them below: Contact one of the hosts: Frankie Mesmer: Book your FREE COURTESY CLASS [CLICK HERE] Oluwatoye Peter: Email: [email protected] Whatsapp: +2349028949279 Jeanne Petrus-Rivera: Book your FREE ASSESSMENT [CLICK HERE] Pronunciation Resources: In this episode, we recommend a few great resources to help you improve your pronunciation. Check out the links below: Youglish BBC 6 Minute English Peach Teach English Blog: Read my blog for more pronunciation tips and practice activities! Don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE! TRANSCRIPT: How are you today, Jeannie? Good. Hello, Jeannie, nice to meet you as well. Thank you. Jeannie, why don't you introduce yourself first? My name's Jeannie Petrus, and I'm from Cleveland, Ohio, originally. I've lived in a few different places, I'm in Mexico right now. I specialize in accent reduction, so helping people to speak more clearly and confidently with an American English accent. And Peter? My name is Peter. My local name is Oluwatoye. It means God loves me, right? So you can say we believe in God a lot in this part of the world. Yeah, so I'm a researcher at Babcock University. I'm also a materials writer. I train people who want to do programs, exams, like IELTS, like TOEFL, like CELPIP. And I'm an author as well. I've authored some books. And I train people just, general English usage, for business or whatnot. We're happy to have you here too, Oluwatuye. Okay. Oh, you've got the pronunciation down. I need to practice that one a little bit. We've talked a few times. He helped me. Yeah people who don't know me I'm Frankie Mesmer. I'm from Savannah, Georgia, USA, but now I live in South America in the beautiful country of Colombia. I work as an ESL teacher, focusing on helping students become confident speakers of English and be able to interact with native speakers more easily. Today we're going to focus on how we can improve our pronunciation in English and perhaps sound more like a native speaker. And first I'd like us to talk about our personal experiences with pronunciation challenges. Actually I'm going to start with you Oluwatoye. So actually I have a very funny funny funny experience when it comes to pronunciation. Because in this part of the world there's a way we pronounce our words that's really quite different from the word itself. Okay. And I have lots of examples here. For instance, I grew up, listening to the word. Insatiable. All right. Imagine my shock. Imagine my shock when I got to know the word is insatiable. I was, I was totally taken aback, so that kind of give me the the passion, to want to study more. And I discovered that, we have letters and we have sounds, it's quite different. We have 26 letters, we have 44 sounds. And interestingly, letter A can give us up to 9 different sounds. In different words. So the letter A in table is different from the one in Swallow. . So it's really intriguing. How letters, work, and how sounds also work. Yeah it's quite funny for me. Thank you for sharing your experience. And what about you, Jeannie? What languages have you studied? I started studying Spanish in high school. And I studied four years in high school, and then I majored in that in college. And for me, the pronunciation in Spanish came pretty easily. But I think also that it comes from having confidence and from not Being afraid to sound weird because like high school students don't usually have so much confidence, self confidence. And so they don't want to, no quieren hablar. They don't want to speak with the correct accent. So they say, yo no quiero. And they pronounce Spanish as if they were speaking English. And that's where you just get, and it's like, Just it's getting out of your comfort zone. And so now, and then after that, I studied a little bit of French and that was a totally different accent, especially like the R the L no and then I'm studying also some Russian and that has certain sounds a lot of the vowels are similar to to Spanish or French, but then they have this one, it's. And you have to pull your, yeah, you have to pull, it's almost like swallowing. It's almost like a combination of E and a dark L where you're pulling your tongue back. So that one's really challenging. And hopefully someday it'll start to feel more natural. And then I fell into teaching accent reduction, just because I was teaching English as a second language, and then somebody wanted specifically to focus on accent. And that was many years ago. And so I started coaching her on her accent and just over the years I've learned so much I had some of that in my master's. Program, but then a lot of it was just learning as I go watching YouTube videos on technique and taking some shorter courses on learning how to teach the accent reduction. Okay. So I think it's fun. I think it's fun. Yeah, it sounds fun for sure. So my experience, I'm going to share experience with Spanish, but I have studied Portuguese, French, and Turkish as well. But Spanish was my first language that I studied, and I think Jeannie made a really good point. You have to, realize that, especially in the beginning, you're gonna sound a little funny. It's new. You're learning how to move your mouth, your tongue in a new way. And I think with the other languages, I already learned how to accept that. So it wasn't as big of a problem. But when I was first learning Spanish, I was so worried about sounding perfectly. And if I didn't think I was gonna sound perfectly, I would prefer just to be silent. And that wasn't very good. Especially because I didn't know how to roll my R's in Spanish. And a lot of words require you to roll your R's. So I would just feel like I sounded ridiculous and maybe I did a little bit and it actually took me two years to learn how to, But when I finally was able to roll my r's It was such a special moment in my life. I still remember it to this day And I was actually singing a song that didn't even require me to roll my R's. But there was an R sound so close to each other that it like forced me to roll my R's. And I did it. And then I tried it three seconds later and did it again. And I was like, Oh my God, I finally have learned to roll my R's. And so I do think maybe in the beginning, it can be very difficult. These new sounds, but keep at it. If you have someone helping you too, you can learn a lot faster. And I think music is a great way to help you improve your pronunciation because you're naturally learning how to connect those sounds and make those sounds. I remember also when I first came to Colombia, I was in Cali and I was making some friends and we were like singing some songs and they're like, your accent isn't as strong when you sing. I don't know. Singing and music can make a big difference. Interesting. Do you agree, Jeannie? Yeah, I would probably say I don't use music as much as I, or would like to in, in my classes. But I know for me, I've learned a lot in Spanish, especially through music. So vocabulary is great for vocabulary, for grammar, just for colloquial expressions or collocations. Yeah, and it's fun. Yes, music is. And you don't forget. It helps with memory, too. Because you won't hear a song for 10 years, and then all of a sudden you hear it again, and you still know all the words. Exactly. That happened with me at karaoke night this weekend with a song. I haven't sung that song in so long, but I still remember all the words in Spanish because it was the first one I learned. That's also why I chose it at karaoke night. And so what about you Oluwatuye? Did you ever use music? No, I don't use music. What I use in fact is maybe movies. I watch movies and I listen carefully to the words being articulated. And once I hear that, I check my dictio… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit peachteachenglish.substack.com/subscribe