THE ART OF SPEAKING AMERICAN ENGLISH (2 page)

The Relationship Between Economy Of Breathing, Correct Intonation, And Perfect Pronunciation

For those of us who are less inclined toward the intense physical challenge of sports there are few activities more exhilarating, in my opinion, than riding a bicycle down hill, feeling the wind in your hair, effortlessly steering the handlebars as you seemingly glide above the surface of the ground. “It’s a rush!”, as we Americans say. To point out the obvious, this requires little strength to accomplish; the incline pretty much does all the work for you.

Applying the instructive dynamics of nature to the example sentence, pronounce each word at a lower tone than the word that proceeds it
(going down hill)
. This will allow you to easily stretch vowels and breath smoothly, eliminating the tendency to speak haltingly or disjointedly. The idea is to start your sentence at a reasonably high tone -
without shouting -
and end in a low tone. Follow the assigned pattern.

Note: Don’t forget to stretch your vowels
.

Linking Words

My beginning students, if asked, would certainly tell you if anything can be said to be truly difficult about learning to speak American English it would undoubtedly be the process of acquiring the necessary skill to link or string words together in such a way that makes them all sound like one long word.

These
long words
fly by in rapid succession leaving students linguistically dizzy and desperate to know what somebody has just said. Though this has likely been covered in one text book or another, I thought it bare reviewing since it continues to be a significant obstacle to overcome.

To take the mystery out of what really is a simple trick, look closely at how syllables and single letters can be cut away from one word and attached to the word that directly proceeds it. Pay particular attention to the cases in which letters are omitted or modified to make the sentence flow smoothly. Read the following sentence slowly at first, and then gradually increase your speed, taking extra care to stretch the vowels.

*Note: As difficult as this may seem, the more time spent reading the easier it becomes to link words, and that is a guarantee
.

The Pencil Technique

Nineteen groups consisting of roughly fifty-two individual muscles allow the human face to stretch and contort into a wide range of expressions, that, in part, enable us to articulate language.

Let us consider two automobile engines that have exactly the same parts and designed to perform in the same way. Over time the two engines, due to several variables, will come to perform differently. Similarly, when it comes to facial muscles Japanese and Americans, for example, are for the most part physiologically the same at birth. But from the moment he or she as a toddler begins learning how to talk, a pattern begins to form in how the facial muscles are used to articulate sounds and then words unique to the respective language spoken. As language skills improve, a seemingly unchangeable pattern of vocalization is established that clearly favors certain facial muscles over others.

This difficult obstacle to learning how to speak English naturally can be overcome utilizing the pencil technique, while at same time, may save you the expense of a vocal coach. The technique is as simple as it is effective. It requires a pencil, as you might guess, and just a little determination on your part.

Choose a novel to read. Find any passage in the book. Firmly place the eraser end
of the pencil between your upper and lower teeth. Lightly bite down. Hold the other end of the pencil as still as possible and begin to read, taking care to heavily overemphasize your syllables. Your mouth and jaw will soon get a little tired and may ache a bit.

To help you better understand how this effectively improves your English, just imagine a rubber band that is a little too small to fit around an object, such as a rolled up newspaper. Carefully stretching the rubber band for a few minutes will enlarge it enough to accomplish your goal. In the same way, working your facial muscles with the pencil between your teeth will give you the ability to stretch your face, so to speak, allowing you to pronounce words with ease you were previously unable to.
10 minutes a day
of this technique should be sufficient.

Why Reading Novels Can Make You Your Best English Teacher

Everywhere you go these days, you see advertisements promising to teach you English, on trains and buses, in shopping malls, airports, hotels, and even in business centers. TV commercials depict businessman and businesswomen ready to meet the world with confidence, equipped with their newly learned English language skills acquired at the purported
best-school in Japan
. If you happen to be one of those ambitious people who have spent a sizable amount of hard earned cash attending such a school, you might be asking yourself if it was worth it, and why it still seems incredibly difficult to hold a simple conversation in English. You might even be blaming yourself. Don’t do that!

The little secret that you have unlikely heard is that reaching your goal of speaking English proficiently is far easier and less costly than you could ever imagine. The world is full of books from manuals to academic works to inform and educate, but there is nothing quite like novels, regardless of the genre, that present the reader with the broadest perspective available on how English is actually spoken in everyday settings.

Nothing, to be sure, should or can replace actual conversation with native speakers of your target language. Nevertheless, depending solely on conversation can result in a limited vocabulary and the habit of using
unacceptable poor grammar sometimes very tough to break. Reason being, more often than not topics are superficially discussed, and Americans will seldom mention a grammar mistake when they hear it, if they notice it at all. So, for most people, the ability to speak a foreign language well and intelligently correlates with the amount of time spent reading the language.

Review: A Few Important Rules Of Reading

1. Read Aloud

Listening to your own voice accomplishes a couple of very important things: the tendency to skip over words you do not know or have trouble pronouncing is eliminated, and, you simulate actual conversation, especially when it comes to dialogue between story characters.

2
.
Forgo Using Dictionaries and Electronic Translators

Just picture yourself watching a movie and someone in the room pauses the show every few minutes to get something to drink, eat, or search the dictionary for some word they heard spoken in the movie they did not understand. You would find this extremely frustrating to say the least, as it would make it practically impossible to enjoy the story. You put your brain through the same taxing affair when you depend on a dictionary to do what
your imagination is supposed to do for you. In the words of my erstwhile and excellent Japanese professor, “If you don’t know it, guess!”

3. Apply All Techniques Covered In Previous Sections Of This Book

Think of the gears in a wristwatch; all it takes for the sensitive mechanism to go awry is for one single cog to break. The aforementioned techniques, for all intents and purposes, are the gears that turn and their cogs that mesh in the process of learning to speak English like a pro. Use them all.

The Layering Effect

The tendency to get bogged down in too many facts too fast in the processes of learning is compounded by a number of today’s accepted methods of language acquisition that encourage students to tackle every part of speech at the same time. Inadvertently, some parts of speech, such as adverbs, are largely neglected.

In stark contrast, children gather information in stages, a kind of
layering effect
, each layer coalescing with the one that came before, building an ever stronger foundation, which leads to rapid improvement in listening comprehension, writing skills, and conversational skills. I have seen this firsthand in Japanese children I teach in the U.S. and Japan.

Fortunately, it does not take much effort on the part of the adult student to obtain similar results by applying the
layering effect
to their daily reading. Focus on one part of speech at a time. Though to some degree it is a matter of preference, a good start is to pay close attention to adverbs.
Adverbs
help the reader wonderfully visualize the force and nature of verbs. Consider the following with and without adverbs; the later paints a far vivid picture of the tense atmosphere in the meeting room.

A.
He stood up in the middle of the meeting and said he did not agree with the new company policy
.

B.
He
abruptly
stood up in the middle of the meeting, and
angrily
said he did not agree with the new company policy
.

Focus on
adverbs
, your first
layer
, for two to three months or until you feel confident to try using them more often in daily conversation. By then, you will be ready to move on to
adjectives
and other parts of speech, repeating the same process. Keep in mind that you are
not studying
but rather absorbing the language, which will help you to relax and enjoy literary works, a necessary factor, by the way, to mastering any language. On your mark, get set, go!

The Sandwich Principle: Remembering Articles the, an, And a

Arguably, one of the most pesky features of English is the necessity for articles
the, an
and
a
. If you have a favorite sandwich – hopefully you do - etch a picture of it in your mind and keep it there at all times when speaking, reading, and writing English. The regular homemade sandwich is made up of two slices of bread, and meat, lettuce, and cheese in between. Let us pretend an
article
and the
noun
it ultimately modifies are two slices of bread, and what you find in between, verbs, adverbs and adjectives, are the meat and cheese, etc. There is hardly a paragraph in English that does not contain many of these article/noun sandwiches. Keeping your
favorite
sandwich
in mind at all times, you will be less likely to drop needed articles.