Do This to Sound Natural and Fluent in English (Connected Speech).

Okay, we should be live. Welcome everybody. Welcome, welcome. Let me know in the chat if you can hear me and see me okay. I hope you're all having a fantastic Friday. In the background you may hear some music and things like that because it's actually the national day of Catalonia today. So everyone in Barcelona is celebrating and partying while we are studying hard. But afterwards I will go and join them and I will join the parties. Where is everybody from? Please share in the chat where you're from. If you're staying up very late. I know that quite a few people watch from Japan and where else? Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, South Korea. So if you're there then nice to have you here. Thank you for staying up late. As I said, people from Japan. There are people from Japan here. Welcome, welcome. So today what we're going to talk about is connected speech in English. You may notice I'm a little bit tired today and it's because I've been filming lots of videos. So exciting but also very tiring. But let's get started. So why does English sound so fast? No doubt when you've been watching something on television or a film or listening to a podcast you think to yourself, wow this sounds so fast. Native speakers sound so quick. The thing is that native speakers or English in general isn't actually a fast language. It's actually quite a slowly spoken language. So it's not the speed that's making it sound fast. It's actually different features. One of the features that makes English sound really fast is connected speech, which is what we're going to work on now. So if you're familiar with connected speech, this will be great practice. If this is brand new to you, I do have some dedicated videos about connected speech which I can leave down below in the description for you to take a look at after this live stream where I go through the rules and everything. Today's lesson is going to be more just practicing. So hopefully you're in a nice comfortable environment where you can listen and repeat. If you're on the bus or something like that, try not to disturb people around you. But it's going to be a very interesting lesson whether you're new to connected speech or not. Let's begin with what is connected speech? So when you hear fluent native speakers talking in English, you'll notice that a lot of their words blend together. I'll give you a real example. When you are listening to a podcast or watching Netflix or something, you probably think, wow, they speak so quickly. And then you put the subtitles on or you look at the transcript and you think, but wait, I understand everything. I understand everything that's going on here. So is it grammar that's a problem? Is it vocabulary that's a problem? What's the issue here? And what native speakers tend to do is they blend some of the words and sounds together. I'm going to show you different types of connected speech. As I said, I'm not going to go into the rules too much, but you'll notice that they join them together. And this is what makes it quite difficult to understand fast, especially native speakers. So that is connected speech. Connected speech is also like a nice umbrella term. There are more specific types of connected speech. You've got catenation, you've got assimilation, you've got all sorts of different types of connected speech. I won't go into technical terms today. I will just talk about connected speech in general. I'll keep it very beginner friendly for you. So take a look here. We have three short phrases and notice what happens when I say them slowly compared to saying them quickly. Ten cups. So that n is really clear, yeah? Ten cups. But when I say it quickly, that n changes into more of an ng sound because we're anticipating the next sound. I'll bring it down a bit there. We're anticipating the next sound, okay? So instead of saying ten cups, we say ten cups. Ten cups. So it becomes ng, ten cups. How many cups are there? There are ten cups. Sounds way more natural. Same here. Big game. Now this one's easier because we have two of the same sound together, yeah? Big game. But instead of releasing them as two separate ng sounds, we hold the first one and then release it on the second one. Big game. Big game. And then it joins them together more smoothly. This one, here's another interesting one. Similar to ten cups becoming ten cups, we have green bag. Now to make it easier, we change the n into a m. Green bag. Green bag. What color is this? It's a green bag, yeah? Sounds way more natural if you change the sounds, okay? So let me know if this is something that you've seen before, that you've heard native speakers and fluent speakers do before because it's a very, very common feature of kentite speech. So here are some more. Now we've looked at how the sounds can change, okay? Like green bag, ten cups and so on. But let's look at when we have a consonant and a vowel together. So when consonants are at the end of a word and then the next word starts with a vowel, we join the consonant over to the beginning of the next word. So instead of saying turn it on, it becomes turn it on. You see? Turn it on. Turn it on. Turn it on. Same with this one. Pick it up. Sounds very unnatural, yeah? Pick it up. It's quite difficult to say. So we take the final consonant and move it over to the start of the next word that begins with a vowel. Pick it up. Pick it up. Pick it up. Then this one. Same thing. Not at all. Not at all, I hear my students say, yeah? Oh, thank you. Not at all. Sounds quite unnatural. So we take the final consonant, move it over. Not at all. Not at all. Not at all. So again, we have turn it on, pick it up, not at all, yeah? And you see how we... I'll move that down a bit. It's quite high up. So you see how we were able to connect the sentences by moving the consonant over to the next word. If you have any questions, feel free to put them in the chat and I will try and keep up with the chat as we go along. So I said, I've seen all these before. It's like five years ago. Ah, really good. I'm glad you're familiar with it. Not many people know about connected speech, so you're very fortunate to know about it. You must have a very good teacher. Any other questions? I don't think so, so far. Lots of people saying hi. Good. No, fantastic. No other questions. But if you do, feel free to put them in the chat and I'm very happy to answer your questions as we go along. And hello to everyone joining. It's nice to be live and say hi to people. Welcome, welcome. Okay. Someone's asked, how can I practice every day? Super simple. You can either find someone to talk to every day, make friends online, or you can join a conversation course. You can take classes online. If you have a phone and an internet connection, you can talk to anyone on the internet, right? Just don't be annoying. Don't be a creep. Another thing you can do, if you really cannot find someone to talk with, is talk to yourself. As you're going around the house, talk to yourself. It's such an underrated technique. It makes you seem a little bit crazy if you are doing it. But if you're just going about the house, you're home alone, and you're narrating what you're doing, I'm cooking, I'm cleaning, I'm sweeping the floor, I'm washing my hair, okay? Or if you take little phrases that you normally find quite difficult, like you could take some of these phrases that we've been practicing today. So, turn it on. You could take that phrase, turn it on, turn it on, turn it on. And throughout the day, you can practice that phrase in little pockets of time. Pronunciation is fantastic to practice on the go, yeah? When it comes to grammar, you normally need like a book, or a textbook, or an app, or something that can correct you, right? But with pronunciation, you can just do it on the go, yeah? As you're walking to work, as you're driving the car, washing your hair, sweeping the floor, making the bed, doesn't matter, okay? You can practice and train your muscles. Where does Emma live? I live in Barcelona, in Spain. That's probably why you can hear music in the background. Hopefully, you can't hear much, but it's the Catalan, the National Day of Catalonia today, so you can hear all the music in the background. I have a question. In the second sentence, pick it up, I hear speaker say picker up. I think you mean pick it up, yeah? Do you mean like this ra sound, Mateo? If that's what you mean, when you say pick ear up, like you're spelling it with an R, I think you mean pick it up, yeah? So what that is, is what's called a flap or a tap sound. And this is more common in however, it is creeping into British English accents as well, especially younger generations, millennials, Gen Zs, Gen Alphas, okay? Younger generations. And that's because of the influence of American cartoons and American TV shows, like, you know, my generation grew up with Friends and things like that. So we're very used to hearing American English. And what ends up happening over time is these little influences slip into our own accents and pronunciation. So if you hear a Brit say pick it up, they're probably younger, okay? They're probably a millennial or younger. If you hear pick it up from an American English speaker, it's more usual, yeah? So we call this a flap or a tap. And it typically happens when you have a T between two vowels, yeah? So if you take away, like, city, now what's really interesting is British native English speakers wouldn't really say city, yeah, or better. That sounds a bit more Australian if you do that. Or if you say city or better, then that sounds more American, okay? Brits wouldn't normally say it in words, but we may say it at the end of words where it's between two vowels, like pick it up, yeah? But I need to go. That's way more usual for Brits. So hopefully that answers your question there. Really good question, though. So flap or a tap, it's called. Are you not from England? I am from England. Yes, I'm from England, but I live in Spain. I've been here about four years now, yeah. Four and a half years, wow. Yeah, it's been a long time. I'd like to say thank you and I have an interview early today and your channel helped me become more confident. Oh, well, good luck. I hope it goes well or I hope it went well. I learned a lot from your videos, especially in the shadowing lecture. Really good. Really, really nice. Can you tell me how to practice every day? I already did. I answered that question. Okay, can you speak Spanish? Hola, buenos dias or hola, buenas tardes, I should say. Have I been to Egypt? I've not. I've not been to Egypt. Interesting questions, but I say, yeah, pick it up is used frequently for USA people. I wouldn't say for USA people. I would say it's used frequently by people from the USA. Okay, that sounds more natural. Yeah, fantastic. Okay, let us continue. So, there's one here. So, we've already looked at changing sounds. We've already looked at moving sounds over to the next word. So, we've looked at two types of connected speech already. Now, we're going to look at adding extra sounds. Okay, we call this intrusion if you ever come across the word. So, if you get two vowels together, meaning a word ending in a vowel and starting in a vowel, we don't like it in English. We like to separate them or we like to add something in between to make it easier to transition between the vowels. So, if you take a short phrase like go on, sounds quite robotic if I don't connect it. Yeah, go on. Yes, yes, go on. Okay, it sounds quite broken. So, what we do is we add a sound in between. Go on. Now, notice the sound. It's a w. Go on. Go on. Go on. Sounds way more natural. The same with this one. Do it. Yes, just do it. Yeah, do your homework. Do it. Sounds very broken. Yeah, it sounds very unnatural and robotic. So, we link it together. Do it. Do it. Yeah. Why do we link these ones with a w? Very simple. It becomes, what am I trying to say? It's because of the final vowel. Okay, if the final vowel is a rounded vowel, so your mouth is in this shape, okay, then we link it with a w. Very, very simple. Okay, rounded vowel, link with a w. Go on. Do it. Good. Any other questions? None so far. It's so warm as well today. It really heats up in the afternoon. Let's see. English pronunciation is hard because many times words are pronounced differently than how they're written. Yes, because English isn't a phonetic language. You can't trust the spelling. I had to go through the same process as a child. You're going through the same process as an adult, okay? So, I've been there. Let's see. How to understand British native speakers? Expose yourself more to native speakers. That's it. One thing I find that English learners do, especially if they're at like a beginner level or maybe like a B1 intermediate level, is that they only listen to materials. They only listen to podcasts or watch videos that are designed for beginners. The problem with that is if you're only listening to things that are created for beginners, everybody speaks very slowly and clearly, but the problem is when you go to England, nobody really speaks like that. Everybody speaks like this, and this is a completely normal speed, okay? So, you need to be exposing yourself to more authentic, what's called authentic listening materials. This can be Netflix TV series, it can be films, it can be podcasts, whatever, okay? It just has to be a material, something that you can listen to that's created for native speakers, yeah? So, if there's a topic that you really like, you can research podcasts for that topic, or if you really enjoy watching YouTube, try and find YouTube channels that are similar to ones that you watch in your native language. So, let's say, for example, you're really interested in history, but you're always watching history channels in Arabic, or you're always watching history channels in Spanish, or Italian, or French, or something. Start to find them in English, yeah? Just do some research, a quick chat GPT, or a quick Claude search, and just say, I'm really into this YouTube channel, are there any similar ones for English speakers, or ones that are in English, okay? And you'll find a ton of them, for sure. You look happy when you mention you've been living in Spain for a year. Yeah, yeah. Living in Spain for a year? Well, I've been here for four and a half years. It's been a while. Although it's not so hot yet. Ah, I don't know what you're talking about, Susanna. It's been crazy this year. Especially in Barcelona, it's been disgustingly humid. Like, disgustingly humid in Barcelona. What's the difference between weld and world? The vowel sound, yeah? Weld, like Emma, and world. More relaxed. What's that on your face? Two different vowel sounds. Weld and world. What is easy pronunciation? USA or the UK? Depends what you expose yourself to, yeah? Completely depends. If you listen to more British English podcasts and things, then, of course, it's gonna be easy for you. If you listen to more American English TV shows, then that's going to be easy for you. So expose yourself to different accents. It will help you. Good. Okay, fantastic. I don't think there are any other questions about the lesson. If I've missed your question about the lesson, about the topic, then please just put it in the chat, okay? Let's see. So, continuing. There's one here. Okey-doke. So, on the topic of intrusion, right? We're going to look at more intrusive sounds. There are two types of R that we use when we want to connect words and sounds together. You have the linking R and the intrusive R. They both do exactly the same thing and they are used in exactly the same way, okay? To connect words together, I mean. The only thing is that, well, very simply, when you're talking about the linking R, this is where you have an R at the end of the spelling of the first word, okay? So, in most British English accents, I'm talking about modern received pronunciation, the standard variety that you hear in the dictionary, you'll notice that we don't pronounce the final R at the end of words, or if it's RE, like this one, for example, okay? The R is silent. So, if I say this word alone, the R is silent. It's not far. There's no little R in there. It's just a vowel, yeah? Same with this one. The strong form would be we're, okay? But in a sentence, we're all. So, we're going to use the weak form. I don't pronounce the R. You're is a strong form. There's no R, not you're. That would be more American. You're, it gets reduced in a sentence to you're, okay? You're. No schwa, you're answer, okay? So, if we put these together, it's so hot. I may have to turn on a fan. It's like really, really hot in here. You'll find that in a sentence. You know what? I will turn on a fan because life is too short to be suffering like this. It's way too hot. Let me turn on the fan. I think as well. Okay. Oh, that's already so much better. So much better with the fan. Oh, goodness me. If you can hear the wind blowing into the microphone, tell me and then I can change the position of the fan, okay? Hopefully, it's okay. When we get these words in a sentence where the next word begins with another vowel sound, we put the R sound back in to help us connect the two vowels. So, we have far, but then together, far away. Yeah? Far away. It's very far away. No air conditioning, no. Let me move over here a bit as well. I'm a bit too far across. A bit over here, I should say. Okay? Far away. So, it's very far away. It's very far away. Okay. Yep. You can see me a bit better now. Better positioned myself. Or should I go over here, actually? I'm getting confused on which side I need to be at. So, the next one. We're all going together. Is that better? I'm waiting for the live stream to catch up. Okay. I'm on the right side now. That's good. That's good. Because there's like a five or six second delay. So, you live in Merida. It's not as humid as Barcelona, but our 40 degree temperatures are becoming more and more frequent. Yeah, yeah. No, it's horrible. Yeah. I definitely don't envy anyone who lives in the south of Spain, that's for sure. It's very hot in Barcelona, but it's extremely humid. Right now, the temperature's dropped, but it's still quite humid. So, a poor English girl like me is suffering. Okie doke. So, next one. We're all going together. So, we're going to weaken we are, because it's in a sentence, we're. Very short, we're. We're all. We're all going together. Yeah. Your answer. This one here. Your answer. Join it together. Your answer. Your answer is correct. Here, answer is. Your answer is correct. Your answer is correct. So, we're adding that r back in there. Okay. Answer, answer is. Really interesting, right? Same with this one. Now, you'll notice that this time, we don't have an r in the spelling, and that's because these three examples are examples of intrusive r. The difference between linking r and intrusive r is that with the linking, you have an r in the spelling. Yeah. Far, were, you. Intrusive r is where there's no r in the spelling. You see, it's a w. It's an a, and it's a w. Interesting, right? So, then how do we know when do we link with a rough sound? Okay. Very simple. Remember I mentioned before about these sounds with the go on and do it, where your mouth needs to be very round, go, do, and then you link it with the w because it ends with a rounded vowel. Okay. These ones do the same. Oh, I think I skipped these. I think I accidentally skipped them when I went to turn on the fan. Yeah. The end does exactly the same. This time, we're linking with a y. Okay. The end, y, y, y. He, sorry, that should be they. I'm missing a y. Maybe I can just add it. Add a little y. Add the colour as well. This one. Yeah. They. Okay. They ate it. They ate it. So, we're adding the y sound in there. They ate it. We're doing that. Why? Because that final sound here, the, they, is what I call a smiley sound. Okay. It's not a technical term. It's just one that I use with my students because it helps you to visualise and think, oh, what position is my mouth? Is it round or is it smiley? Yeah. They ate it all. The end. Okay. We link with a y. Now, when it comes to the intrusive r, our mouth isn't round and now our mouth isn't smiley. It's somewhere in between. Draw. Not drew. Draw. Yeah. Africa. Saw. Okay. It's a little bit more relaxed. Yeah. Compared to an e. And that's why we connect these with a r. Very simple. Right. So, we have draw a picture. Draw a picture. We're adding the r in there to help us connect the two vowels because remember what I said. Native English speakers don't like it when there are two vowel sounds together. We don't like it. We need to add a sound in there to help us connect them together. Draw a picture. Can you draw a picture? She went to Africa and loved it. She went to Africa and loved it. Notice that I'm removing this d. Yeah. Africa and loved it. This happens a lot with the word and. We remove the d so that we can transition and say it a bit faster. Yeah. And loved it. She went to Africa and loved it. He saw everything. Link it with the r. He saw everything. He saw everything. Now, you know what's really interesting is that in American English, native English speakers from the US and Canada, they use this type of linking with go on and the end with what and yeah. However, they don't use the intrusive r. How interesting is that? Okay. So, it's only in British English where they use the intrusive r. When it comes to the linking r, it's not really necessary for speakers from the US and Canada to use the linking r because they already pronounce the r in these words. Yeah. They already say it's very far away. Far. They already say it. Yeah. In British English, standard British English, we say far away. We don't pronounce it. But to link the vowels together, we add it back in. Okay. Interesting, right? It's a really big difference between British English and American English. And just as a side note, if you're ever watching a TV series or a film where there's an American actor who has to put on a British accent, sometimes they forget to do this. And straight away, I mean, my ears trained, right? Because I'm a pronunciation coach. I can hear it straight away if an actor is not a native English, British English speaker, let's say. Maybe they are from the USA or Canada or something, okay? It's really interesting. You can listen for that. About the intrusive r, can I apply the same rule for consonants? You'll have to give me an example of what you mean. I don't know what you mean. Sorry. And let's see. How are you? I love how we sound like Shakespeare. How are thou? How do you pronounce draw it? Yeah. Draw it. Draw it. We add the r, the intrusive r. Draw it. Nice. Nice, nice, nice. All righty. So, lots of different examples of connected speech. I'm going to go through it one more time. Then you can listen and repeat. And then anyone who's watching the replay, then you have everything here for you. All right? So, starting from the very beginning, we have ten cups. Ten cups. Big game. Big game. Green bag. Green bag. Turn it on. So, not turn it on, but turn it on. In fact, I need to move over a little bit more. Okay? Pick it up. Pick it up. Not at all. Not at all. Not at all. Now we're adding the intrusive sounds. Go on. So, I want you to imagine that when you're adding the intrusive sounds like w, y and r, you're actually adding it to the start of the next word. Okay? So, if you say, if you say this like go and then one, say it quickly. Go one. Go on. Go on. Yeah, it sounds way more natural when you add the linking sound to the beginning of the next word. Do it. Do it. The end. The end. They ate it. They ate it. Now the linking and intrusive r is very far away. It's very far away. We're all going together. We're all going together. Your answer is correct. Your answer is correct. Draw a picture. Draw a picture. She went to Africa and loved it. She went to Africa and loved it. He saw everything. He saw everything. Okay? Nice. Any questions? Big Ben doesn't change. No. So, when it comes to changing the sounds, like in ten cups, big game, green bag, it only works when the end, so this ending sound here is d, n or m. Okay? D, n or m. Here we have a n. Here we have a n. So, we change the sound. Okay? Big game doesn't really change, but we hold and then we release on the next one. Big game. Big game. Okay? So, it's only with d, n, m at the end of words. So, Big Ben, we just say Big Ben. You want to say Big Ben. Yeah. It doesn't sound right. Big Ben. The intrusive r in the sentence with draw and saw isn't so hard, but the one with Africa, yeah, is difficult to do it. That's a nice thing. To do it. To do it. It seems less natural. It's really intrusive. Yeah. I like that. It's too intrusive. Too much intrusion. Yeah. The reason why it feels a little bit unnatural is because you can add a pause here. Okay? So, you can say, she went to Africa and loved it. Right? What I'm doing is I'm stringing it together into like, oh, there's a fly that just went into my face. I'm stringing it together so it's like one chunk. Okay? She went to Africa and loved it. But naturally, you can also separate it into two different speech units or thought groups. Okay? If you don't know what I'm talking about with thought groups and speech units, I have a video that talks all about that. Okay? I think it's like the last video I did. Either the last video or the one before that where I talk about thought groups and where we separate sentences into little chunks and we add these little pauses. Okay? And this is something you can do here as well. So, she went to Africa and loved it. That's why it's a bit more difficult. Too much intrusion. Yeah. Really good. Really good observation. Maybe for native speakers, the last at in Africa is different from the at in and. Well, interesting observation because and can be pronounced with two different sounds. If you're pronouncing the word and with the strong form, fish and chips, then it's like the at as in cat. Right? However, if I say, I really like fish and chips, it doesn't sound natural. Okay? So, we weaken it to a schwa. Fish and chips. Yeah? Rock and roll. Rock and roll. Okay? That and becomes a schwa. Now, in the word Africa, it also is a schwa at the end. So, if you're saying and with the weak form, technically Africa has the same vowel sound. We don't say Africa. It's not like cat, but Africa. Yeah? It's a really soft, weak sound. And that's because Africa is a weak syllable. Yeah? The stress is on Africa. There was a fly buzzing around. It keeps getting caught in the fan and it's like. I hear at the end of idea and intrusive are. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. The idea was and the idea is. Yeah, fantastic. Do you pronounce it before a consonant? No. We only pronounce the intrusive are when the next word starts with a vowel sound. Only, only. Okay? If it's something like were, don't get confused. Were is considered a consonant sound in English. It doesn't count. Okay? So, if you take the idea is. Perfect. Intrusive are. The idea was. No intrusion. No linking. Yeah? We don't do vowel-consonant linking in English. We do consonant-vowel linking. Like, turn it on. But we don't do vowel-consonant. Yeah, vowel-consonant linking. Good. Ham bag is another good one. Yeah? Ham bag. Ham bag. Instead of hand bag. Yeah? Ham bag. Really good. Any other questions? The curtain sway looks like a live wallpaper. It does. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. It looks nice. Yeah, that's why I want to compare idea is and idea was. Mm-hmm. And a lot of students, they think that were and ya are considered vowel sounds. In English, they're considered, in phonetics, they're considered consonant sounds. So, don't get confused. Do I have any recommendations of a British drama for learning everyday English conversation? Many. I have so many recommendations. However, what I like and what you like are two different things. So, what I can tell you is that right now, I'm watching a TV series. Let me double-check what it's called. Yes. Okay. It's called The Gentleman. I'm going to write it in the chat for you. It's on Netflix, but it's on Netflix in Spain. I don't know about your country. Okay? I'm currently watching The Gentleman and it's so good. For the first time in a long time, I'm actually really enjoying watching a TV series. So, I highly recommend this. It's like out right now on Netflix and it's very, very good. You get to hear different accents. You get to hear received pronunciation, modern received pronunciation, Estuary English, Cockney, Yorkshire, Northern varieties of English. It's so diverse, super, super interesting and the story's just so good. I won't ruin it, but it's so good. Yeah. I highly recommend that. See, someone's recommended The Crown. The Crown is good. However, that's not really how people speak on a day-to-day basis, right? It's like listening to The Queen and thinking, oh, everyone speaks like The Queen. So, The Crown is a great series. It wasn't for me personally, but a lot of students really, really like The Crown. Okay? It's not my cup of tea. I'll be honest. I very much prefer The Gentleman, but try it. Watch it. See if you like it. For The Gentleman, I'm really into The Gentleman right now. How to learn the Cockney accent. I'm curious why you would want to learn the Cockney accent. Is it because you want to be able to do it or is it because you perhaps live in London and you want to be able to understand it? Because my advice will depend on your reason. Watch British YouTubers as well. Exactly as I said before, think about topics that you watch in your native language and then just have a search and try and find similar YouTubers that speak English and talk about the same topic. Yeah? Do what you love in English. That's it. Okay. Any other questions? I have a feeling I skipped a question. Actually, the last point about adding the R into the far and answer is a bit confusing for me. Well, do explain why. Do explain why it's confusing and then I can clarify. I can't pronounce heart. So if you're struggling to pronounce a word, what I recommend is that you go to the Cambridge Dictionary. It's always my favourite dictionary and you type in the word that you can't pronounce and you listen to the pronunciation. You look at the phonetic transcription and then you listen to the recording. What are the key differences between modern RP and Scouse English? Really good question. So Scouse, for anyone who doesn't know, is from Liverpool, is the accent from Liverpool. A Scouser is a person from Liverpool. Okay? One key feature, because I could sit and talk about many differences, okay? One of the key features you'll notice of a Scouse accent is that they do this kind of K sound for a K in final or medial position. So if they have a K, like in the word king, they just say a normal K, yeah? King. However, if they have a K in the middle or end of a word, they replace it with this K sound, like a very soft K. If you speak Spanish, it's quite similar to a K in Spanish. So they'll say something like chicken instead of chicken. Kick becomes kick. They just kick me. I find it quite difficult to do, but that's one of the key features, is this K sound for the K at the end and middle of words. Good. Nothing else? I have trouble connecting the R when the vowel is closed at the Okay. Am I speaking C2 level now? Well, I would say that I'm speaking at a very normal speed, yeah? I'm articulating, but I'm speaking at a normal speed. So it's hard to say if I'm speaking at a C2 level, right? Because I mean, when it comes to C2, when it comes to the levels in English, it usually comes down to the vocabulary and grammar, not the pronunciation, yeah? You can speak with a C2 level of English, yet still have terrible pronunciation. So yeah, it's hard to say, like, am I speaking at a C2 level right now? Yeah, Marlin as well. That's another one. Or Merlin, I think it's called. Not Marlin, but Merlin. I don't know if I've seen Merlin many years ago. Yeah. Cambridge Dictionary is the perfect tool for pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. I agree. The Cambridge Dictionary is my favourite one. Read a narrative book for beginners is efficient? Depends. Depends what your goal is, yeah? Do you need to improve your reading? Then read more. That's it. Is it efficient for pronunciation practice? No. Yeah, so it really depends what you want to improve. Good. Okay, fantastic. So we've talked about connected speech. I've answered many questions in the chat. So I want to talk about something very exciting before we end today's live lesson. I know the time has gone so fast, but I have a really exciting announcement, okay? So on Monday, thousands of people have already signed up on the wait list, ready to join the Pronunciation Hub. The Pronunciation Hub is my online British English pronunciation course. It's six months and it contains over 100 different pronunciation lessons. Okay, let me tell you a little bit more about it. Six months of exclusive access to over 100 different pronunciation lessons, taking you from all the sounds of British English, from all the vowels, the diphthongs and monophthongs, the triphthongs, which many pronunciation courses don't teach you. So triphthongs are in words like fire, power, where you have three vowel sounds together, which can be quite difficult. And I show you how to pronounce them more naturally. We look at all the consonant sounds in English, especially the English R and the TH sounds, the dark L. Again, things that other pronunciation courses don't always teach you. We then build up your confidence so that you're able to start not just pronouncing the sounds, but you can start pronouncing sentences with correct stress, intonation and rhythm. We go through connected speech, so you'll practice this in way more detail and you'll have way more exercises to practice this. The most important thing, however, isn't just the lessons. It's also the feedback that you're getting. The one thing that makes the Pronunciation Hub stand out compared to other pronunciation courses online is that we focus so heavily on giving you feedback. We don't just want you to join and watch the videos. We want you to actually do the lessons, do the activities, practice, record yourself and then get feedback. So we don't use any AI to give feedback. I have a team of pronunciation coaches who listen to your recordings every week and give you detailed written feedback. Sometimes, if they need to, they give you audio feedback so you can listen to the corrections, but they give you detailed feedback. Once a month, I also do a live call inside the community so all students can join and you get time to join me live on mute, like a normal call, not like this, but like an actual call where you can unmute and you can speak and I can give you corrections in real time. So we focus so heavily on feedback inside this course. On top of that, we don't just want you to join and do every lesson and waste your time. We want to give you a clear structure. So I think we have over 30 or 40 different language paths created. So for nearly every single language, we have a dedicated pronunciation path for you that shows you the exact lessons you need to take inside the pronunciation course, depending on your native language. What do I mean by that? So you may have, as a Spanish speaker, very different problems to an Italian speaker or an Arabic speaker or a French speaker. Your native language affects your pronunciation in English. So we have, I can't remember if it's over 30 or over 40, but it's many, different pronunciation paths that are tailored to individual languages so you know exactly what you need to do each week. So all you have to do is follow your plan, do your lessons, check the lessons off on your PDF, record yourself and then get feedback from an expert to know exactly what your mistakes are, to know what you need to correct and to know whether you're actually improving. Then once a month you can come and join me live and you can get that live instant feedback. So what's super exciting is that the doors open on Monday. So the doors aren't open right now, okay, the doors open on Monday. And the reason why I'm telling you this is because I have some special bonuses, some exclusive bonuses. For the first 10 students who join the hub, they'll get an additional 30-minute one-to-one pronunciation lesson with me. I'll talk to you privately on a Zoom call and we'll go through your pronunciation mistakes together. I'll give you instant corrections and I can also give you your top three priorities that you need to work on, okay. And that will be directly with me, not with my team, not with another teacher, definitely not with AI, not over email, no. This is on a live call one-to-one with me. This is for the first 10 students who join the hub on Monday. Within the first 48 hours I'm also giving away a 100 euro discount, okay. So if you're not one of the first 10 students to get the one-to-one lesson with me, don't worry, if you still join within the first 48 hours you also get the 100 euro discount. Now you're probably thinking, okay Emma that's great but then how do I know when the doors actually open? Do I sit and wait? Well you can join the wait list and I'll send you an email as soon as the doors open at 10 a.m Spanish time on Monday morning so you can join and you can be hopefully one of the first 10 people to get the one-on-one lesson with me, okay. The link to join should be in the description but I will also write it here in the chat for you. It should be this one. I should maybe have had the link ready beforehand. This one here. Okay here we go. So if you want to join the wait list, as I said the doors aren't open right now but I'm telling you about this because I want you to be one of the first 10 people that join then we can have a one-on-one call together. As I said the call is with me, the lesson is with me, it's not with my team, okay. I very very rarely offer this so I'm only doing it for the first 10 people who join. Any questions before we finish today? Do you have a course for Russian speakers? Yes, I actually have many Russians on this course. I used to have more Russians on the course but because of sanctions it became quite difficult but there are many Russians who live outside Russia who are part of the course, okay. There is a tailored pronunciation path for Russian speakers so if you're worried about that there is a pronunciation path for Russian, don't worry. Do you provide notes? There are PDFs for every single one of the lessons so you can download the PDF and get a full summary. When it comes to the pronunciation hub the way that the lessons are designed is that you have a video, you watch the video, you practice the sounds, you learn the rules, then you do the activities to help train and practice your muscles and to also learn spelling rules and things like that. Then at the very end you have a dialogue that you can practice. There are two different recordings so the first recording is hearing both people for you to practice and the second recording is just one person then there's a pause and then you need to speak, okay. So it's also training your fluency as well and emulating a natural conversation almost. At the end you can also download a summary of the lesson as a PDF and also as an mp3 so you can listen to the lesson on the go, okay. So you don't need the you can download the lesson and listen and practice while on the go, okay. Any other questions? Am I coming to Mexico again? What's that? Am I coming to Mexico again? Probably not this year. The fees are high on your course. This is a really good point. I have had some students in the past Why? Well, because I have a human team. I don't use AI. I don't cut corners. I don't skip things, yeah. The courses are high quality. I have a team of expert pronunciation coaches who are some of the best I've ever spoken to and that I've ever worked with. These guys need paying as well. My team need paying, yeah. If you want a quality course, high quality course, this is what I offer. Whether it's the one-to-one coaching, the group coaching, or the pronunciation hub, everything I do is human. Everyone is an expert and this costs money. If you want a cheaper option, YouTube is always free. If you want to pay for something and get some feedback, sure, you can use AI apps but they're not very good. So, it's something for you to think about. Is this something that you want to invest in and actually get feedback on and improve? If so, then really think about it. Really think about the kind of pronunciation courses that you're investing your time and money in because there are many pronunciation courses out there but they don't offer feedback or if they do offer feedback, it's AI and it's very low quality and do you want that? I don't think you deserve that. You deserve high quality. You deserve a good pronunciation course. Anything else? I don't think there are any other questions. Okay, fantastic everyone. So, thank you so much for joining today. I hope you've enjoyed today's lesson. I'm so excited to see you join the pronunciation hub. The doors open on Monday and if you have any questions, you can always drop me an email or drop my team an email. Join the waitlist. I will leave the link down below in the chat again. Please go and join the waitlist if you're interested and then on Monday morning, I will send you an email and you can be one of the first 10 people, hopefully, it's you, to join and get the one-on-one lesson with me. Thank you very much everyone and I will see you in the next lesson. Bye-bye.