and to celebrate

I want to share my top five tips

to help you get perfect English pronunciation

Let's get started

So, my first tip is to do nothing

That's right

Absolutely nothing

As a learner of English, you are surrounded by marketing

that promises to teach you a British or American accent

and unfortunately this is really problematic

Firstly, it shows a fundamental misunderstanding

about the difference between pronunciation and accent

Pronunciation describes the way you pronounce sounds

and accent describes the way those sounds work together

to create identity

So British or American is a description of identity

So, unless you plan to change your identity,

you don't need to imitate a British or American

or any other foreign accent

But because of all that marketing,

you probably have the idea that if you imitate a specific accent,

for example, RP (Received Pronunciation),

then more people will understand you

That is absolutely not true

There is no particular English accent that will give you any communication advantage

But, unlike accent, pronunciation is absolutely vital

But how do you know if your pronunciation is good?

There is only one way to measure it

successful communication

If you are using your English

and you are communicating successfully

then you have perfect pronunciation

You don't need to watch the rest of this video

and you don't need to waste any more time,

energy and money trying to imitate a British or American accent

You can have an accent AND great pronunciation

Let's just take a moment

Take all of that anxiety,

that stress and worry about how you sound,

take all of that learned prejudice

about how your accent makes you sound stupid or difficult to understand

and let it go

Your accent is your identity and it's beautiful

Now, let's do something a bit more technical

In English words generally fall into two categories

Lexical words and Grammar words

The simple explanation is that lexical words transmit meaning

and grammar words transmit grammar

So TABLE, REMEMBER, YELLOW and SUDDENLY are lexical words

and SHE, AT, THE and SO are grammar words

and those lexical words are the most important

because they carry meaning and

in language meaning is everything

I can communicate in a basic way using only lexical words

Christian... pizza... eat... today

but I can't really communicate anything using only grammar words

It... the... through... on?

and this brings us to the rhythm of English

You may have heard about

syllable timed and stress timed languages but

that's just another myth

What we do have in English is an alternating up and down

pattern of stress between those lexical words

and those grammar words,

which sometimes gives the appearance

of a regular rhythm

To demonstrate how the this works,

we can use a metronome

Here are four lexical words

Let's say them to the beat

RED - BLUE - GREEN - PINK

RED - BLUE - GREEN - PINK

Now let's add some grammar words

but let's keep the lexical words on the beat

RED and BLUE and GREEN and PINK

RED and BLUE and GREEN and PINK

Now let's add some more grammar words

RED and then BLUE and then GREEN and then PINK

RED and then BLUE and then GREEN and then PINK

And some more

RED and then it's BLUE and then it's GREEN and then it's PINK

RED and then it's BLUE and then it's GREEN and then it's PINK

The important thing is not

that we are keeping the lexical words on the beat

but that we are reducing the length of the grammar words

Now obviously if you just follow that up and down pattern

then you will sound really robotic

and that's why you need "nuclear stress"

When we are producing language

we normally produce it in small pieces

and each one represents a complete thought

Research has shown that when we're speaking

these little pieces are usually about 2 seconds long

We can call them "thought groups"

Look at this phrase which doesn't contain any punctuation

Take a moment to read it or say it out loud

and ask yourself where there seems like a natural break

or pause in the language

It's highly likely that you chose to put a break here

because we are all humans with the same human brains

we all tend to divide information in the same way

It's not something that you need to study or practice

but what is absolutely vital is how you use stress

inside these "thought groups"

Look at this phrase

Again, take a moment to think about how you would divide it up

In this case, there are various options,

but with different meanings

We can divide it here which creates two food options

TUNA SALAD and CHICKEN

or we can divide it here

which creates three food options

TUNA, SALAD and CHICKEN

The question is how do we indicate these divisions

when we are speaking

Pausing is one way but there is a far more important way

Using "nuclear stress"

This is a strongly stressed word in each "thought group "

that breaks that robotic up and down pattern

and focuses attention

In English, the general rule is that we put the stress on the

final lexical word of the "thought group"

So in this example, we would stress the words

SALAD and CHICKEN

You can have tuna SALAD or CHICKEN

but in this example we would stress TUNA, SALAD and CHICKEN

So you can have TUNA, SALAD or CHICKEN

Now in any sentence, all nuclear stress positions are possible

but each one has a different meaning

and that's why nuclear stress is so important

and depending on your native language

the rhythm of English might be completely alien to you

But you should practice it

Not to sound like a native speaker

but because it's an important part of the way that English

packages information to make it easier for others to process

The Arabic language is written using something called an ABJAD

In an abjad, you only write the consonants

and not the vowels

The vowels are flexible and they depend on the person reading

The thing is, you could also do this with English

Children instinctively know how unimportant vowels are in English

Look at how this 5-year-old from California wrote the  

names of some common shapes in English

Two of the shapes, SQUARE and STAR are written

with no vowels at all

and two other shapes, CIRCLE and DIAMOND

with only one vowel

The good news is that this shows

where you should focus your energy:

CONSONANTS

For example, let's look at a specific consonant sound in English

the T

Now, depending on your native language

this sound might be easy for you

or it might be really difficult

but this sound requires a lot of physical effort to produce

First, we need to make sure that we have enough

air in our lungs,

then we need to raise up our tongue to

touch the front part of the roof of our mouth

to block the air

then we need to create some pressure

and then we need to bring down and release our tongue

and explode with air

with all of this effort

it's not surprising that this sound is often deleted

or substituted by many people,

especially native speakers

But that is a major problem

because English has a very simple grammar system

for tense and aspect

For almost all verbs, to indicate the Past Simple

we add +ed to the verb

which is often produced as that -T sound

In other words, that single sound is the ONLY THING

that tells me if you are talking about something in the past

So you better make sure that it's really clear

And that brings us to the final tip

Now at first, this might not seem like it has anything to do with

pronunciation at all, but it is often the key

to successful communication

When people are learning a language

it's totally natural to want to pronounce the language

like a native speaker

After all, they have had a lifetime of practice

But this comes with a huge negative

Native speakers often only communicate with other native speakers

who have also had a lifetime of practice

They are all experts in the language

and as experts, they have the privilege of

being able to take shortcuts with English

that you do not have

Today, English is a true global language

and you will probably never use your English

with other native speakers

but with other learners just like you

So trying to copy the things that expert native speakers do

with their pronunciation,

like eliminating that -T sound,

will not make you a better communicator

In fact, it will do the opposite

When you enter into any type of communication

you are making a social contract

and part of that contract is to take 50% of the responsibility

for the success of that communication

Your job is to help the other person as much as possible

to understand the meaning of your communication

It might seem cool or authentic

to use the same shortcuts that natives speakers use

but there's nothing cool or authentic

about making communication difficult for other people

When you consider others and take the time

and the effort to follow the fundamentals of the English sound system

then you respect the fundamental goal of language

which is to share

I'm Christian, this is Canguro English, and I'll see you in class