Name: Is your accent holding you back at work?
Uploaded: 2025-07-17T09:39:11.000Z
Duration: 33 min 24 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I've lived in a country where I didn't speak the language natively and I know it's frustrating to have English speaking barriers get in your way.

I want to help everyone who feels ineffective speaking English, who feels like their accent is keeping promotions and advancement out of their reach when they have to speak English at work.

When people think we're hard to understand, they pay less attention to us.

The perceptions of how we present when speaking are important.

I have a background in opera singing and I've been teaching the American accent to non-native speakers for over 20 years.

Scan this QR code or go to rachelsenglish.com slash free to get my free course, The Top Three Ways to Master the American Accent.

It will give you totally new ideas on how to get the sound you've always wanted.

Today, we're going to look at a couple of sounds that can get confused and can make it much harder to understand somebody speaking English.

I'm thinking especially of my Japanese students, but this also applies to my students from China, Thailand, Vietnam, South Korea, and other countries.

Today, we're going to solve this problem for you.

One of my students from Rachel's English Academy, which is my online school for mastering the American accent, sent me her biggest need with her accent.

You can learn more about the academy at rachelsenglishacademy.com or following the link in the video description.

For Emi and everyone like Emi, I have good news.

Your R and L sounds alone aren't that big of a problem.

So, we'll clarify them a bit and then we'll talk about how to train and check the words that are the most difficult for you and anyone else with this problem.

First, it always helps to clarify a sound by holding it out.

The mouth position for these, pretty different, right?

Here, we compare R at the beginning of a word and L at the beginning of a word.

The corners of the lips come in which flare the lips for the R.

For R, the tip of the tongue pulls back so it's not touching anything.

For L, it lifts to the roof of the mouth or comes between the teeth, like in this image.

Close your eyes and go back and forth between the two.

This will help you focus in on the mouth position.

Here's a clip from a live class from Rachel's English Academy where I'm working with the students on clarifying these two sounds.

He's working on the phrase, I'm an early riser.

An early riser is someone who likes to wake up early and get their day started.

We've got an R and an L and I need to help him clarify the two sounds.

So, let me hear you say, I'm an, I'm an, I'm an, I'm an, Exactly.

And I just want to hear the next sound, which is, I'm an er.

My tongue tip is pulling back a little bit.

He wanted to say, oh, lifting the tongue tip up.

We need the R, where the tongue tip pulls just slightly back.

When you're working with a tricky word or phrase, try to bring it down to just one syllable or sound.

But I don't even want to talk about that.

I just want to focus on one little thing at a time.

I don't want to work on two different problems at once.

I want to focus in on one thing and fix it before moving on to the next.

This is how we improve in Rachel's English Academy.

So, sometimes it sounds sort of in the throat, and this last time it didn't.

It sounded more here, and I liked that better.

Now, let's put it back with I'm an, I'm an er.

As he starts getting this R sound to become more clear, we link it back into the sentence.