3 Steps to Sound Fluent (linking, pausing, and rhythm)

Did you know that you can pronounce every single sound perfectly in English and still sound robotic and unnatural? So today let's look at three things that will instantly make your English sound more natural and fluent. Connected speech, pausing, and intonation. Welcome to my channel, Pronunciation with Emma. My name's Emma and I'm a qualified British English pronunciation coach with over 18 years of teaching experience. If you want a clear first step towards improving your pronunciation in English then you can download my free pronunciation pack by clicking the link in the description or scanning the QR code somewhere on the screen. Let's start with connected speech because this is probably the biggest reason why you might sound a bit choppy and robotic when you speak. Connected speech is basically when you link or merge words together in a sentence. Let me show you the difference between using connected speech and not using connected speech. Listen to this sentence without any connected speech used. Put it on the end. Now listen to it with connected speech. Put it on the end. The second one sounds a lot more fluent and natural, right? And connected speech is something that you probably use in your native language without even realising. For example, in Spanish you say un barco and not un barco. Or in Italian you say sei andata and not sei andata. So connected speech isn't unique to English. This is probably also a big reason why you understand films and TV shows with subtitles, but then you find it really fast and difficult to understand when you watch without subtitles. So let's look at three really interesting types of connected speech called catenation, assimilation and elision. Catenation is when the final consonant sound of one word links directly to the vowel sound at the beginning of the next word. Listen to these examples. Turn it off. Turn it off. Not at all. Not at all. Pick it up. Pick it up. So you see how the final consonant sound moves to the start of the next word. Let's practice with some more examples. Feel free to listen and repeat. Look at it. Look at it. Check it out. Check it out. Keep it up. Keep it up. Now let's look at assimilation. This is when one sound changes because of a sound next to it. Usually it becomes more similar to the neighboring sound or sounds. For example, don't you becomes don't you, did you, did you, this year, this year. Some more examples, good boy, good boy, white paper, white paper. Ten cups. Ten cups. This can take quite a bit of practice to get right when you're speaking naturally in conversations, so if you want to start using this yourself then my advice is to start with just small chunks that you use every day and then practice them and then start to incorporate them into your everyday speech. So for example, did you? It's a really common way to start a question so you can practice. Did you, did you, did you. And then the next time you're speaking in natural conversations, you start using did you. Did you go? Did you say that? Did you see? Can't you? There's another one. Could you? Don't you? Should you? And so on. The third type we're going to look at is called elision. And this is where the sound is completely removed. Listen. The next day. The next day. I asked John. I asked John. Or, if you're from the south of England, I asked John. I asked John. Send me the email. Send me the email. I found them. I found them. In these examples you can see that the T and D is completely removed in these consonant clusters, particularly when there's another consonant sound at the start of the next word. Now let's put these three features of connected speech together in a short story. I'll read it and you listen and repeat. You can pause the video at any time if you need a bit more time to process it. Last week I found a little brown box while on my way home. It was just sitting outside my front door. I didn't know what it was at first so I checked inside it. Inside was an old photo album. It wasn't at all what I expected. I called my sister and asked, did you send this? She laughed and said, of course I did. I found it at mum's house last week and thought you'd like it. Now let's move on to the second thing that's going to make you sound more natural. That's pausing. To be specific, we're going to look at something called thought groups. Thought groups are little chunks of a sentence that go together and are separated by tiny pauses. Listen to these examples. I think I'll go to the event, but first I need to find an outfit. This ugly building, in my opinion, should never have been built. When you have these little chunks, you usually join them together by using features of connected speech, like what we've just been practicing. So you'll say them like, I think I'll go to the event, and in my opinion. You don't need to use connected speech where you have these tiny pauses though. It's just in the little groups, in the little thought groups. So let's practice. Here's the same short story that we practiced before, now with the pauses. Last week, I found a little brown box while on my way home. It was just sitting outside my front door. I didn't know what it was at first, so I checked inside it. Inside was an old photo album. It wasn't at all what I expected. I called my sister and asked, did you send this? She laughed and said, of course I did. I found it at mum's house last week and thought you'd like it. So do you hear now how the story is starting to come together and sound more natural? Now let's look at the third and final feature, intonation. Intonation is how your pitch rises and falls as you speak. And today I want you to practice the most basic part of intonation, which is moving your pitch on stressed syllables in a sentence. In English, we don't stress every word in a sentence. Instead, we just put stress, or we usually put stress, on the content words, which are words that carry the actual meaning. These are things like nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, negative auxiliary, and negative modal verbs. The other words that we don't tend to stress are called function words, and these are the little words used for grammar. Like articles, prepositions, connectives, auxiliary verbs and modal verbs. Listen to this sentence with flat intonation and every word stressed. I want to go to the shop. I want to go to the shop. Now listen with more natural sentence stress and how the intonation moves on the stressed words. I want to go to the shop. I want to go to the shop. Notice that the words want, go and shop all stand out. They're very clear and we raise our pitch with them while I, to, the are really weak, quick and a bit lower in pitch. So let's practice this a bit more with some phrases from our story. I found a little brown box. I found a little brown box. Inside was an old photo album. I called my sister and asked. I called my sister and asked. So you see that as soon as you use correct sentence stressing intonation, it starts to sound a little bit more British, doesn't it? Okay, now let's put everything that you've learned together and read the same story that we've been working on. I'm going to read it in chunks and I'd like you to listen and repeat it exactly as you hear. Feel free to pause it at any time. Last week, I found a little brown box while on my way home. It was just sitting outside my And my front door. I didn't know what it was at first so I checked inside it. Inside was an old photo album. It wasn't at all what I expected. I called my sister and asked, did you send this? She laughed and said, of course I did. I found it at mum's house last week and thought you'd like it. I'm going to read all of it together. Last week I found a little brown box while While on my way home. It was just sitting outside my front door. I didn't know what it was at first, so I checked inside it. Inside was an old photo album. It wasn't at all what I expected. I called my sister and asked, did you send this? She laughed and said, of course I did. I found it at mum's house last week and thought you'd like it. So notice what we've been doing in this lesson. We've been building up your pronunciation in layers. First we looked at connecting the words, then we added the thought groups and pausing, and then finally we added the natural stress and intonation. So now you have the absolute basics you need to sound more natural, less robotic and less monotonous when you speak English. If you've enjoyed this lesson then remember to give the video a like and subscribe to the channel if you want to see more videos to improve your British English pronunciation. Don't forget to download your free pronunciation pack with everything you need to get started with English pronunciation. You can download it using the link in the description or you can scan the Scan the QR code wherever it is on the screen. I'll see you in the next lesson, thank you for watching! Thanks for watching, bye bye!