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  • This video is a joint project between Rachel's English, Jason R Levine, aka Fluency MC and

  • Vicki Hollett, the video producer. It originally aired on WizIQ. Enjoy! The Best in ELT with

  • Fluency MC. Listen, oh, listen. Rachel, it's so nice to be sitting down

  • with you to talk. I met you once in real "real life." That's right.

  • But like many people, I feel like I know you from seeing

  • your videos and following you. I have a lot

  • of respect for your work. Thank you. And I'm so happy

  • to have this chance to talk to you.

  • I guess the first thing I want to ask,

  • and I know a lot of people are interested in, is how did, how did you get into teaching

  • in the

  • first place? Was it English as a foreign language or a second language, was it something else

  • and then, how did that connect or evolve into teaching pronunciation?

  • Yeah, well, I think it was a bit of an unusual path. I did teach a little bit of

  • ESL but mostly Rachel's English grew out of something totally different, which was, I

  • went to school for opera singing. Right. I have a Masters of Music in Opera Performance.

  • And so through that I was getting really connected

  • to this part of my body. So it was pronunciation first, in a sense,

  • because you had this background in opera. Yeah, the ESL work that I did was useful

  • but I don't think it actually is related at all to the Rachel's English thing that I'm

  • doing, even though I did have that experience. So, mostly it grew out of myself singing in

  • other languages. And so I was studying the pronunciation specifically and the phonetics

  • of Italian, French, German, English for the stage; I had studied Spanish. So, there was

  • that, my relationship to learning the pronunciation of other languages. But maybe even more so,

  • it was just spending a decade really focused on

  • breath and you know tongue placement and these

  • kinds of things. And I think that gave me a really clear language to talk about pronunciation

  • for other people.

  • Did you have a language teacher helping you with that or, and a music teacher, or

  • were you learning the pronunciation of the languages through the music?

  • It was in a class that specifically "Diction for Singers". I see. So it was always

  • related

  • to the goal of singing for the stage. And it was focused on pronunciation and not so

  • much the languages, although I the did take a semester of Italian, a year of German, and

  • a semester of French.

  • So you almost had no choice; they focused you on pronunciation.

  • Yeah, they did, because, you know, if you only have one year and you need to get all

  • of these things under your belt, then that's what's the most important; because as a singer

  • you can memorize a translation and, you know, the feeling of what goes where, but in order

  • to sell it, you have to really sound like you know what you're saying.

  • And you were teaching English during that time or where you'd taught before?

  • I did teach English as a second language a little bit during that time at a place in

  • Boston where all of my students were Korean and it was mostly one-on-one or two-on-one,

  • thirty minute sessions, and I really loved it. I think the rhythm of the language is

  • so important, and the melody. And for me, having

  • the background in singing has been really helpful for that, partially because, you know,

  • singing

  • is rhythm and is melody, but then also I think I developed

  • an ear through that for when I hear someone

  • do something, I can imitate it quite well. And then I can find out what needs to be changed.

  • So, often with students, I'll imitate, think what needs to shift, and then be able to articulate

  • that to them. Ah, that's interesting. For their pronunciation.

  • And do they know you're doing that or is this your best kept secret

  • you're revealing right now?

  • They do they know because they'll be talking and I'll say "hold on," and then I'll do it

  • myself and I'll say, okay your tongue needs to make whatever adjustment.

  • I do that actually with grammar and vocabulary, if something's high frequency, and I'll kind

  • of tune in to the collective use of English somehow from listening but I don't have that

  • gift

  • with pronunciation; so that's great. For the W consonant, the tongue tip is down

  • here, and the back part of the tongue stretches

  • up, so the tongue stretches this way. Ww, ww,

  • wow. For the R consonant, the back part of the

  • tongue does stretch up, here towards the middle part

  • of the roof of the mouth. The front part of the

  • tongue pulls back. So, with the W, the tongue is

  • stretching. With the R, the tongue is sort of

  • pulling up into itself. I think I just have a real interest in

  • the human voice and how we produce sounds,

  • and vocal health, and this kind of thing. So that's where my interest lies, not so much

  • in even teaching a language, or, I mean, certainly not grammar! Sometimes teachers will correct

  • my grammar in videos because it's not always perfect.

  • It's all about your passion; follow your passion.

  • That's right. And so, like, pronunciation and the human voice, that's where it is for

  • me.

  • So what happened as far as getting your work up on YouTube? Did you first imagine

  • putting a video of yourself up there and reaching just your students or more students? No, actually,

  • I didn't have students when I first started the videos. I first started

  • the videos when I was living in Germany and I was studying at a language institute there,

  • so most of the people that in as in contact with were not American and also were not German:

  • they were from all over the world studying German. And so I had a friend there from Turkey.

  • And he was interested in American English because Hollywood is such a great exporter

  • of American English, and wanted to sound more American. So we just played around a little

  • bit with a few of the sounds, and I was telling him, you know, what his tongue should be doing

  • and this kind of thing. And he was like, wow, you're really good at that. And I thought:

  • hmm,

  • idea! Actually, in undergrad, I studied computer science and in order to keep that skill set

  • going, I had been wanting to make a website;

  • I just didn't really have a topic yet. But I knew that was something that I wanted to

  • create and so when he told me he thought I was good at that, I thought, maybe that's

  • my idea. And so I made a few videos, put them on YouTube, connected them to a website, and

  • just went from there.

  • And how, what was the reaction at first? Nothing! There was no reaction for a long

  • time. Why?

  • Well, I wasn't doing them with a business mind; I wasn't promoting at all; I was just

  • exploring, basically. And that was ok probably, at that point,

  • or did it make you worried and nervous: nobody

  • likes my approach?

  • No it didn't make me worried and nervous, no, not at all, because I wasn't doing it

  • for an audience. I was mostly doing it as a way to explore a website-production kind

  • of thing. It's great that you had this interest in

  • both pronunciation and computers.

  • Yeah, no, definitely.

  • You weren't an expert right? It just got you more into thinking about

  • ... In pronunciation? No, not pronunciation, I mean that I'm

  • just wondering, especially for people out there thinking about doing any kind of online

  • anything, but especially teaching, or students who want to study online, who might be a little

  • afraid of technology thinking that they can't do it. It sounds like you kind of dove in.

  • One step at a time.

  • Oh totally. I mean, when I realized what I needed to learn, I learned it. I did not

  • start Rachel's English at all with an idea of what it would be, like, in no way, and

  • I'm still not sure what it will be.

  • And that's important to the point now, because it's gotten, it's so well done now.

  • I think that someone who hasn't followed you for as long as I have or as long as many other

  • people here may have, would just think that wow that she just, boom, but it didn't happen

  • that way. Definitely not. No, no. It grew.

  • It started out in a dorm room in Germany. When was that, by the way?

  • That was 2008. This October will be my 5th year anniversary of posting my first video.

  • Congratulations in advance. Thank you. That's great. I want to ask you more about the rhythm

  • of English, because I focus a lot on that

  • too. What techniques have you found most useful? Because there are a lot out there. Yeah, well,

  • I'm still developing that actually. But I've had a lot of fun recently working

  • with students where I actually take the actual words out of the picture, and we just work

  • on rhythm. So, for example, let's just take that phrase da-da-DA-da: for example. And

  • when you take the text out, you're just focusing on the rhythm. Then the main thing I have

  • to do with my students is to make their short even shorter, duh duh duh duh, trying to make

  • them comfortable with that kind of length; and then once they start having, like, the

  • rhythmic language down, and they're comfortable with that contrast and with making things

  • that short, then when they put the word back in it's just unreal how much better it sounds.

  • And then they're so aware of the difference s if you don't hear it yourself, feel it

  • yourself, then you're not going to catch it when people say it.

  • Yeah. It's such a matter of boiling things down to the most simple units for teaching.

  • So, like the L consonant,and just drilling that,

  • or in this case the rhythm, just drilling

  • that, out of the context of the word or phrase. And then you know you can teach people that

  • this rhythmic pattern can apply to all of these different words. And so, yeah, then

  • as they really drill one word and one pattern, they're actually making themselves comfortable

  • with the pattern that can be applied to tons of different words and sentences.

  • And you said you're still developing this, so imagine where she's going to go with...

  • Yeah, I'm excited about it! ...teaching the stress and what I call "shrinking

  • and linking".

  • I just wanted to go back to ask you, when you first started out and you were making

  • those videos, did you think about the fact that so many students don't have enough time

  • in the class? I mean, you were teaching a group of Korean students.

  • Yeah, that was about a year before I started the Rachel's English thing. Was part of it,

  • were you also inspired or motivated to try to deliver something to

  • individual students who wouldn't necessarily have that kind of attention to pronunciation?

  • Well, yeah, in a way. When I was teaching at the institute in Boston, all of my students

  • told me no one else cared about the pronunciation the way I did, and they really cared. So they

  • really wanted a teacher who really cared.

  • Well, can you imagine someone who is trying to learn a language who's not concerned about

  • pronunciation? But it's true, what you're saying. I hear this complaint from a lot from

  • students that teachers aren't focusing on it. So definitely that was in the back of

  • my mind and the videos were made completely for

  • self-study. I know that teachers do use them in the classroom but

  • my original idea was just to have a great resource to learn on their own because for

  • me,

  • since I left college, everything that I've had

  • to know, I taught myself.

  • The library, or online resources, or whatever. I mean languages, computer stuff.

  • That's interesting. I love that kind of learning. Well, I can

  • see how that has benefitted you and your work.Yeah, definitely. Basically, I wanted

  • to make something for English like I wished I was finding for French,

  • and German, and Italian. So yeah, I thought it was

  • really fun and I wanted to sort of provide this

  • service for students.

  • I think it's really interesting that you made them for self-study.

  • You didn't really think about a teacher bringing them into the classroom

  • . But now, I notice a lot of teachers using it in the flipped classroom model.

  • The other day, literally the other day, at a college where I was doing a workshop, teachers

  • were talking about the problem we just talked about, about pronunciation and how students

  • want more and what should

  • they do because they don't feel trained enough. I think that's a big reason why it's not...

  • I think so, too. I've had teachers say the same thing: I don't know how to teach

  • that.

  • So it's interesting because I'm a teacher trainer, and I used to think OK, well then

  • my job is to try to train up teachers to be able to do that

  • and now I'm wondering if that is the best way because the other day these teachers were

  • gathered

  • at a college in New Jersey. And they were talking about this and then one teacher

  • said, "You know there's this great teacher

  • online, that teaches pronunciation. Students can

  • just watch her, she's ..." and I knew she was going to say your name,

  • and she said, Rachel's English! True story.

  • That's awesome! I smiled to myself. "I'm going to have a

  • conversation with her!" What she said was, "What I do with my students

  • is just, you know, ask them to watch those videos, and then do some stuff in class but

  • then they watch on their

  • own or, and/or I learn from Rachel as a teacher how to do this in ways that I haven't been

  • able to do from books or even from taking classes."

  • It feels great to know that I'm providing something that can be helpful to teachers,

  • too. Because you know teachers, obviously, it's one person, and they're reaching many,

  • many, many so if I can help the teacher, then there's just that many more people that are

  • benefiting from it. But yeah, I think that the idea of the flipped classroom is so great

  • because, you know, not only do the teachers not need to learn every single thing to teach

  • directly, they can sort of be a curator of other resources, and oversee the process of

  • learning for their students. It's a very specific skill set to teach pronunciation, different

  • maybe than the skills set to teach a language, and grammar,

  • and classroom management.

  • You would know, and she would know that, better than anyone.

  • That's right, so, you know, not every teacher needs to be a great musician and a you know

  • super great at teaching pronunciation if they know other resources that they can recommend.

  • Aren't we at a time in history, with education, where, you know, teachers can be facilitators,

  • guides, curators, mentors, you know, if you want to learn to be a great pronunciation

  • teacher, fantastic; but if you don't or if you don't have the time, what's the point

  • of being a mediocre one, when you can go see Rachel.

  • Exactly, that's exactly right. I mean, a good teacher is maybe one that knows, well,

  • this person teaches this so well, there's nothing more that I feel like I could add

  • to it, let me point my students in that direction, let them work with the material, and then

  • I can be here for questions and guidance, and that kind of thing. I think it's so important.

  • And I think, ultimately, it's just going to make education a lot better. Yeah, I think

  • so, too. So you had that experience teaching in a classroom. Someone

  • the other day said, talking about 'ground teachers', or teachers on the ground. I love

  • that. Instead of, like, 'first life' or 'real life'. Are you a ground teacher also?

  • I'm not right now, actually. You're not on the ground. Not on the ground.

  • Yes, only in the cloud. But I do have plans to start developing,

  • some in-person maybe workshop kind of things, then

  • maybe move more into longer-term classroom

  • situation. I'm really not sure. I mean, I just, for every video I make I have ideas

  • for a hundred. I feel like I have a lot on my plate with what I'm doing virtually. And

  • so, I do really want to move into that, because I think that in-person aspect is so interesting.

  • Well, they can go hand-in-hand. Can't they? They can.

  • To throw out another term, the blended learning doesn't just have to

  • happen with the teacher flipping the classroom,

  • it can also be, people are watching your videos, but then here you are in person to do something

  • that you couldn't do and then it's back to virtual...

  • Definitely. Definitely. So I see myself moving in that direction at some point, but it's

  • not in the short-term plan.

  • You just got back from a trip. I did.

  • I was spying on you a little bit on the trip. I don't usually spy.

  • I made it easy. I guess it's easy for us to spy on each

  • other and many others who are watching, so it's kind of fair. So tell us where you were,

  • and also tell us, how much was work, how much was pleasure? Because I did see you met some

  • students... I did... where you were. So tell us how that

  • was

  • . Well, I had my first-ever meetup, in Berlin. Two students came.

  • What? It was great!

  • Not 200? Not 200. Two students came, neither of

  • them are German. It was fantastic! We sat down to coffee; we were there for about two

  • hours and, just, discussed everything about who they are. It was just fantastic getting

  • to know them as people. It was very motivating actually for me, to think these are real people,

  • these are the people who are using my videos. And, like, wow. I

  • mean, it's easy sometimes, I think, to lose track of that when, as in my case, I'm only

  • doing virtual teaching. I'm doing no one-on-one teaching. Rachel, there are so many people

  • out there who want to meet you at meetups in Brazil.

  • I know! In Russia, in Taiwan

  • . I'd love to do more, definitely. So, and you said you are interested in doing

  • the on the ground workshops, so when are you going to...where?

  • Well, the most vocal group of people is in Brazil.

  • Yes. So I will probably end up there at some

  • point, I hope. I hope, fingers crossed.

  • But also, you know, I live in New York City and that's

  • such a melting pot, there's so many people there; it's crazy that I haven't done something

  • in New York City. I should.

  • Wow! We should talk about that. We should!

  • Great. Rachel, I know a lot of people out there, both teachers and students who follow

  • you, are probably really interested to know how you make your videos. How do you make

  • videos, how often do you do it, how long does it take, do you do it on your own, do you

  • do it with other people's help...

  • Yeah. Well, I try to do two a week and it takes, depending on the length of the video,

  • it takes around ten hours per video. Ten hours per video. That includes editing

  • all the way to the end? Yeah, that includes everything: brainstorming,

  • writing out the transcript, doing my hair and make-up, the lights, all of the set-up

  • . How much help do you get with all of that? I had been doing it entirely on my own

  • until about maybe six months ago. I had someone

  • come in and help me, because rather than doing it at home, I started doing it at the YouTube

  • studios in Manhattan, where they have all of the equipment already set up.

  • That must have been really nice. It was great. It was fantastic. But I have

  • to have someone run the camera and the teleprompter and help me if I meant to say 'consonant'

  • but accidentally said 'vowel'. That kind of thing happens all the time as I'm talking.

  • But yeah and then, there's, the editing takes quite a bit of time. I try to put some of

  • the IPA and text up on the video screen. Yeah, I noticed that you're doing more

  • of that. Typing up the transcript, making, you know,

  • an interactive transcript version for my website. The whole process is about ten hours.

  • How much of that process has evolved from when you first started? And how much have

  • you changed, either, what you do, your approach to teaching pronunciation, and the video-making,

  • in response to what students have told you, or

  • teachers have told you they liked or didn't like?

  • Well, I guess I haven't actually gotten so much feedback that shapes how I make the

  • videos, I more get, suggestions for topics which I try to do.

  • Is there anything you haven't covered yet, as far as, consonants, vowels?

  • No. Well, I still have some blend work that I would

  • like to do. But the sounds are pretty much

  • there. It's more fleshing out the rhythm. As I said, I feel like I've got sort of a

  • gray idea of how I want that to go, so trying to sharpen that. Really, I said before, for

  • every video I have I ideas for a hundred more. I mean, I could right now write down a thousand

  • videos that I would like to make.

  • Do you? Or do you just keep them like... I keep track as I go. But a lot of them

  • are, like, I get an idea of a way to teach a sound and so then, that would be thirty-three

  • different videos because I would do it for every sound, and that kind of thing.

  • Right, right. I just want to take this opportunity to say that if you are a teacher,

  • or even just a learner of English, or anything, if you wanted to write down your ideas and

  • start video taping your ideas, it's so easy now.

  • It is, yeah. To get stuff out there. Even, you know,

  • starting like you did. Not with a mission to become what you've become, but just as

  • an interest in what you were studying and learning.

  • Right, just exploring what's interesting. Yeah, and, you know, at that point, to

  • know anything about a website, design, was kind of unusal, compared to now.

  • Oh it's so easy now. You don't need to know anything now.

  • Yeah, except that way you can focus on... Right, the content.

  • And not the vehicle to get it out there, but more, just, the content itself. Which

  • is great. Yeah.

  • Have you found any areas of teaching pronunciation that are particularly difficult to master

  • as a teacher? And I also wanted to ask you, from a student's perspective, if a student

  • is feeling frustrated with learning something in pronunciation, I wonder how much of that

  • is due to, you know, the fact that it really is difficult because of their first language,

  • learning English, or how much maybe is like, oh, I just didn't know this trick, or something.

  • Right. I guess I have a couple of different answers for that. First is that I think that

  • the rhythm is the most important thing in capturing the language, the character of the

  • language, much more important than sounds. Rhythm. Yeah, rhythm. You heard it here from

  • the expert. I'm

  • so 100 percent behind you. And so it's been, as I said, I'm developing

  • sort of my way for teaching that. So that's coming along, but there's one topic that I'm

  • actually still struggling with teaching, and that has to do with the placement of the voice.

  • So in American English...umm...uhhhh...that's our core sound. It's very much so here. The

  • schwa basically; the elongated schwa. Exactly! And as a singer, I have dealt

  • a lot with placement, but not in a very concrete way. What do you mean by placement exactly?

  • Well, no, exactly, that's part of why it's hard to explain, and something a lot of people

  • don't think about, but for me it's like, where does my voice live inside my body. And for

  • me, and I think for Americans, it's generally a lot lower; other languages it tends to be

  • more nasal. If I take American English as

  • my base and I compare it to other languages, for example Mandarin. I've had some students

  • that just have a very, very nasal delivery; and it also just has to do with the placement.

  • Their voice seems to live so much in their face, completely detached from the body. Whereas

  • for me, I think it really lives in the body and then the face is sort of where the shape

  • of the sound will happen. So that's been sort of hard to teach because it's not at all like,"oh

  • you need to round your lips a little bit more." It's not something that people can

  • see that's concrete. It's like, where does your voice live in your body, that's sort

  • of a difficult...

  • Do you think people that develop high accuracy and fluency in their pronunciation, delivery

  • through just experience; and, you know, just like anything else in language, they're not

  • aware of what we're talking about; do you think that's the way, in this case? It sounds

  • like the Holy Grail: if you can find where you're voice lives.

  • You can go from sounding not quite right to sounding very American really quickly if

  • you can make that adjustment.

  • Does it come from just the input and the practice or is it something you could make

  • a video for?

  • I'm working on a video series for it right now, but also a lot of it can be achieved

  • through imitation. Yeah, but for some people they'll say "I know it's not right, but I

  • don't know why it's not right." And often to me it's related to placement. So I'm trying

  • to make some videos that will talk about that in a concrete manner. Also, I'm very lucky

  • to have found a teacher who I'm working with now named Tom Kelly. And he is an actor and

  • he has a Master's in Acting from Harvard. He has a great background, speech for the

  • stage; and placement and how to make someone hear you in the very back of the theater and

  • relaxation of the vocal apparatus and everything.

  • Would you say he knows where his voice lives? I would say he does, and he seems to have

  • language about moving that around and some techniques for that. So he and I are working

  • together. So if you can learn from him, you can take

  • that and formulate it somehow. He and I are talking actively about a video

  • series where we work together on that. That's really interesting. So we can look

  • forward to more of that. Hopefully we'll figure out how to teach

  • it. It's almost like "metaphysical."

  • Exactly! That's why it's so hard.

  • Rachel, not long ago I started teaching in a virtual classroom on WizIQ. I got hooked.

  • The first time I did it I dragged my feet getting into a virtual classroom. As soon

  • as I got in there, people were in the chat box meeting each other "Oh, I've seen you,

  • nice to see you there" She's talking, I have the mike and we're reaching all these people,

  • the way you do with your videos. Have you done any work in a virtual classroom?

  • Not entirely, I do have an online course but it's focusing more on the student interacting

  • with the materials on their own and then one-on-one with me. Tell us about that. What's your online

  • course like.

  • Well, it's eight weeks, and basically I cover the topics that I found I work on the

  • most with my private students. But since there's so much one-on-one time, that doesn't really

  • matter. If something they need to work or isn't covered in the course, we work on it

  • together.

  • It's always one-on-one or do you do small groups?

  • It's always one-on-one. Do you Skype?

  • Yeah, we Skype. But actually, Tom, the teacher I was talking about, is teaching a

  • course for me right now. So I did it four times; he's doing it twice, and I think we're

  • going to have a good enough sense for what worked well and what could work better that

  • when he's done we're going to brainstorm and I think really revamp it to include much more

  • of that sort of, you know, one to five kind of thing.

  • Once you're more certain about what people share, their needs.

  • I haven't done it yet, but I'm looking forward to it because I think that when students

  • can hear another student being coached and they're not actively engaged in having to

  • react, they can just watch, I think that's a great opportunity for learning, too.

  • Yeah, I agree. And then also you can meet more private students this way because more

  • people will come into those classrooms.

  • They learn from each other, they learn from me; I think it's fantastic. And also

  • knowing people from all over the world is such a cool thing. You know, when I first

  • started doing this and they were getting popular and so people were asking me, "Do you teach?"

  • and I hadn't yet ever online.

  • And that must have just really shocked people to hear that.

  • It was crazy. Yeah, and so I wasn't sure how beneficial it would be to teach someone

  • on Skype, you know, with pronunciation especially when you've got the mike and the speaker thing.

  • So what's it like? It's been great!

  • So if I invited you into a virtual classroom one day, would you accept?

  • I would love it. I would love to see what that's like. I'm teaching with students but

  • also I have a plan to bring teachers together coming up.

  • Stay tuned for that. Of course, I'd love for you to come.

  • Yeah, that'd be great!

  • Excellent!

  • Rachel, it's such an honor and privilege to have you here. Thank you for having me.

  • It's been very fun.

  • And this is the first episode or edition of "The Best in ELT with Fluency MC" so I'm

  • really, really happy you agreed to come and it was great talking to you.

  • Yeah, you too.

  • I hope everybody enjoyed this conversation; I know I did. And please stay tuned for further

  • editions of "The Best in ELT with Fluency MC" only in WizIQ. Thanks so much. Peace and

  • much respect.

  • Don't stop there! learn more about us and our work. See my playlist, 'American English

  • in Real Life' or Jase's playlist, Collotunes. And the producer of this video, Vicki, has

  • fun minute English lessons you'll want to be sure to check out. Thanks for watching!

This video is a joint project between Rachel's English, Jason R Levine, aka Fluency MC and

字幕與單字

單字即點即查 點擊單字可以查詢單字解釋

A2 初級

流利MC遇到Rachel的英語 (Fluency MC meets Rachel's English)

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    浦瞿津 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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