Speaking Skills | This is why people don't understand your English

hey what's up Stefanie the English coach here from Englishfulltime.com in this video we are going to talk about some of the reasons why people might not understand you when you speak English so you can improve your clarity and so people understand you the first time and they don't say hey what do you mean by that what did you say I don't understand you can you repeat yourself please now you might think that the reason people don't understand you is because of your pronunciation and yes sometimes it is because of that that is the most obvious

culprit so we are going to start there but there are other reasons why people might not understand you that awore just as important as pronunciation and sometimes even more important so let's jump into it the first reason why people might not understand you is because you are mispronouncing words in English however there are many ways to mispronounce words you might use incorrect sounds you might add a syllable that shouldn't be there you might drop a syllable that should be there or you might stress the word incorrectly so let me give you some examples the word

chocolate chocolate notice that this word has two syllables chocolate chocolate however I have heard lots of English Learners pronounce this word with three syllables chocolate chocolate chocolate Okay the word vegetable vegetable has three syllables vegetable however I have heard lots of English Learners pronounce this word with four syllables vegetable vegetable now let's use both of these words in a sentence chocolate is not a vegetable chocolate is not a vegetable now let's add in those extra syllables from before chocolate is not a vegetable chocolate is not a vegetable do we still understand it yes we do

however every time you change the pattern right change the pattern in English the pronunciation or adding something that shouldn't be there removing something that should be there it could be confusing to your listener or at any rate it gives them more to think about their brain has to filter through more things and go okay she said this but she meant that he said this but he meant that once in a while it's okay because we can still understand what you're saying from context clues but sometimes sometimes when you do this whatever you're saying will be

completely incoherent to your listener they won't understand it at all let me give you an example one time I was in our Argentina talking to a guy in Spanish I used to live in Argentina for a while and he found out that I was from California and he goes oh wow California have you ever been to Shosemite and I was like Shosemite like what is that and he's like oh come on like Shosemite and I'm like I don't I I've never heard of this place before so no I don't think I've ever been there and

he goes oh that's interesting it's like a super famous National Park and I was like Oh you mean Yosemite and he he's like looking at me like what and then we figured out that when he said Shosemite he was talking about Yosemite National Park and I'm like yes I've been there I used to go camping there when I was a kid with my family so what he did here was he pronounced the word in Spanish with Spanish sounds Spanish pronunciation and he changed the stress of the word he said Shosemite instead of Yosemite okay so

he changed the stress of the word he did not use English sounds to pronounce the word and he pronounced it in Spanish specifically Argentinian Spanish now something else I noticed when I was living in Argentina is that people do this as well with the names of actors or famous people they pronounce them using the phonology of their native language so for example the actor Johnny Depp that's how I say his name Johnny Depp but in Argentina they say "Shonny Deep" Shonny Deep and when I first heard that I was like woah that's not how we

say his name but then of course I realized hey that's how they say it over there using the phonology of their language English has a different phonology so words are pronounced differently now you have to be aware of this when it comes to proper nouns names of places and people you might say these names one way in your native language using the phonology that you have in your native language but English uses a different phonology and when you're communicating with English speakers if you jump into your native language to say a word in English like

Shonny Deep okay or Shosemite people might not understand you so what I recommend here is really mastering pronunciation in English there's no other way around it really Master the sounds of the English language work on word stress all of those things and I actually have a lot of resources that can help you master your pronunciation in English but I will wait until the end of the video to tell you about them okay so now with all of that said I actually have some bad news news because you could use totally correct pronunciation but if you

use correct pronunciation with incorrect rhythm in English you will still sound unnatural and unclear and to help you really understand this I'm going to give you a few examples now I have some example sentences and I'm going to pronounce every single word in the sentence perfectly but I'm going to use incorrect rhythm and hopefully you'll see what I mean okay so the first sentence is I am at home right now but later I will go out for dinner again I am at home right now but later I will go out for dinner so here I

am assigning the same length of time to each syllable within the sentence and we actually don't do this in English this is unnatural so here's how I would say this sentence in English to make it sound natural I'm at home right now but later I'll go out for dinner I'm at home right now but later I'll go out for dinner notice I'm joining words I didn't say I am I said I'm I'm at home home I stretched that word a little bit I'm at home right now but later I'll go out for dinner but later

I'll go out all I said all not I will I contracted it here's another example it is going to be a long day it is going to be a long day here I'm pronouncing everything perfectly fine like the pronunciation the actual sounds I'm using is fine okay but the rhythm is off it doesn't sound natural at all so that's not actually how I would say it first I would contract going to and I would say gonna it's gonna be a long day it's gonna be a long day notice I'm stretching long long day it's gonna

be a long day okay let's do this with one more example I would not have asked if I already knew the answer I would not have asked if I already knew the answer okay that doesn't sound natural I would say I wouldn't have asked if I already knew the answer I wouldn't have asked if I already knew the answer now look at the contraction that's happening in the first part of that sentence instead of saying I would not have I say I would have I wouldn't have I wouldn't have asked I wouldn't have asked if

I already knew the answer if I already knew the answer so the lesson here is the more natural your rhythm is the more natural you will sound in English and rhythm is not necessarily the same thing as pronunciation it's tied to pronunciation it's part of pronunciation but when people think of pronunciation they're generally thinking of the actual sounds that are coming out of their mouth they're not thinking of the timing of those sounds and the timing is related to rhythm okay another thing that can make you unclear when you're communicating in English is the overuse

of pronouns pronouns are the small little words like he she him it they them now these little words are great because they can help you get your message across in a more concise way and avoid being repetitive like overusing someone's name or something like that however when people rely too heavily on these words in their communication they can easily become unclear let's look at this sentence he said he would call him when he got home he said he would call him when he got home so when you have a sentence like this hopefully we already

know who is being talked about but he said he who would call him who when he who got home okay so do you see how without using people's names here it can get very confusing who's going to do the calling who's going to receive the call so some tips to avoid this use name names okay use names provide context and be specific in your communication if you're going to use a pronoun a pronoun is there to replace a noun make sure that you've already mentioned the noun explicitly that you've been very clear about what that

noun is so you can provide an anchor for yourself when you're communicating you discuss something you give it a name you say what it is and later you refer back to it with a pronoun okay in a clear direct manner so people understand oh when he says it he's referring to this when he says them he's referring to that okay and you have to set up these anchors for yourself in your communication to be clear and it's better to over-communicate than to under-communicate that way you guarantee the clarity of your message and I know it

takes more effort it takes more time and sometimes it feels like I just don't want to communicate at this level right now but I guarantee you're setting yourself up for success if you do that and if you get lazy in your communication and you start overusing pronouns people are going to get confused very fast you're going to have to repeat yourself and it's going to be a frustrating experience for everyone for yourself and for your listener or whoever you're communicating with now a quote here from my husband he said this once and I thought it

was so profound I wrote it down he said our minds are lazy and they move fast so sometimes we actually have to slow down our own minds okay and think deeply as we communicate so we communicate well and so people understand us okay so the next reason people might not understand you in English is actually simple and relatively easy to fix you might be speaking with a quiet unsupported voice so what do I mean by this a quiet voice is just a voice that is not very loud it's difficult to hear but you also don't

want to yell to be heard right you want to speak like you're trying to be heard but you don't want to yell and the way to do this is by supporting your voice with your diaphragm so you can project okay so you have to really engage first of all you have to have good posture right shoulders back and you have to engage the muscles here in your chest in your back and in your belly and what you do is you feel you expand this area you fill your lungs with air and then you're kind of

like pushing the air down as you're pushing it up right to create this compression and that helps push your voice across the room now obviously there will be times where you don't want to have a big booming voice okay but when you support your voice so many things will happen first of all your voice will not be quiet it won't be difficult for people to hear you you will be able to project right when you're talking to other people they will be able to hear you clearly even if you have to speak over noise and

your voice will not get as tired when you use it because when you're not supporting your voice well you can get a scratchy feeling in your throat you won't feel as good when you you talk and you won't be able to talk for long periods of time or lecture and I don't know if you even talk for long periods of time but it's definitely helpful to support your voice plus you actually just sound more confident much more confident when you support your voice when you speak okay and the last thing I want to talk about

in this video is intonation sometimes people might not understand you when you're speaking English because you're using intonation incorrectly we have certain patterns in English intonation patterns that communicate specific ideas thoughts beliefs Etc and if you use the incorrect pattern people might think you're joking when you're not actually joking they might think you're being sarcastic when you're being serious right so it can be very frustrating when you say something and you're like I pronounced the words correctly I use the correct rhythm the words I'm using are clear and people still don't understand me like what

is going on then it might be a problem with your intonation people might even think you're being rude when you're not being rude intonation is so important in English probably in every language but let me give you some examples if I say I speak English I speak English English see how it goes down at the end that is showing certainty I am simply stating a fact if I say I speak English I speak English I sound sarcastic it's like why are you saying it like that why are you saying it like you don't actually speak

English and there's another variation I want to show you listen I speak English I speak English okay did you hear how it went up in the very beginning I speak English I speak English here I'm like no no no no I speak English maybe somebody was doubting me and so I clarified so you can see how the intonation I'm saying the same sentence with the same words the same pronunciation the same rhythm I'm just changing the intonation and the message is changing let me give you another example and this is an example of how you

can potentially come across rude without even meaning to come across rude let's look at this sentence you got a raise you got a raise when I say it like that you got a raise I'm raising the intonation at the end and I'm excited I'm showing genuine curiosity there's no judgment in my voice or anything like that right you got a raise like wow that's great that's wonderful how cool but if I say it like you got to raise you got to raise now it sounds like I don't believe you're even deserving of a raise why

did you get a raise you got a raise okay so the difference here is you got a raise and you got to raise so it's so subtle right how the intonation changes but you really want to work on your intonation so that when you're serious people know that you're serious when you're joking people know that you're joking and people don't think you're being sarcastic when you're not being sarcastic or or you're being rude when you're simply trying to show friendliness or genuine curiosity about something okay so that is it for this video however I have

a few things that I want to share with you if you enjoyed studying pronunciation intonation rhythm all of that here with me you're definitely going to want to hear this so the first thing is I have a free course a free pronunciation course that has over 7 hours of in-depth pronunciation training with me if you have not taken this course already I highly recommend it make time for it study the material there's so much in this course we also talk about confidence communication so many different things it's called The Fluent Pronunciation Challenge you can sign

up today it's 100% free the second thing if you are struggling with the sounds of English you're really struggling to master the different sounds cuz that's pretty foundational work in order to communicate clearly the rhythm intonation connected speech all of that is more advanced stuff if you're struggling with the basics the sounds then I have a course that could help you with that it's called The Amazing American Accent Sound Bank and all I do in this course is teach you the sounds of English based on the way that I speak so if you like how

I speak and if you want to imitate my sounds in your own English then this is a great course for you to learn all the different sounds I will link it below okay and the final thing I want to share with you is that in a few days we are opening enrollment to my Accent Freedom program this is a 12 week comprehensive A to Z course that teaches you everything you need to know about American English the pronunciation the rhythm the intonation connected speech all of it in-depth every single thing you need to know but

it goes even further because it helps you find your voice in English so that you can speak clearly and confidently without simply trying to be a copy of somebody else but to really find your own sound and identity in this language while being clear and just getting your Accent Freedom basically that's what it's called because we want you to have freedom in English to feel free and shape your accent so that you can sound how you want to sound so the version of you that exists in real life matches the version of you in your

head that you really want to become so that's it I will leave all the links in the description I really hope this video was helpful I hope you learned something and I can't wait to see you soon in another video bye