Name: ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION | ADVANCED STUDENT LESSON | Rachel’s English
Uploaded: 2020-03-09T03:11:50.000Z
Duration: 16 min 48 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...

To-infinitive

Today, you're going to study some really hard to pronounce words in American English.

Future simple

We'll talk about why these words are tricky,  go over 'regularly' and 'clearly',

and practice lots of other similar words together.

The sounds R and L are difficult for most non-native speakers when they occur in words on their own.

So when they occur in the same word, it  can be very challenging.

For japanese speakers and others, it's common to mix up or switch the R and L sounds.

So the word 'class' might be pronounced 'crass'.

In this video, we'll be working on finding  more clarity for these sounds.

To do this, we'll be focusing on multi-syllable words,

For in-depth descriptions of these sounds,

I'll link to some of these important  videos at the end of this video.

But let's start by going over the basic differences in  the mouth movements for Light L, Dark L, and R sounds.

The Light L is used when the L is beginning  a word, like: light or love.

Or for an L in the middle of the word when  it starts a syllable like: believe or delight.

For the Light L, the tongue tip lifts and touches the roof of the mouth just behind the teeth: ull, ull.

I've also noticed, some native  speakers make it like this: ull, ull,

where the tongue tip is pushing up on the  bottom of the top front teeth.

The Dark L is used when the L ends  the word like: feel or mail.

Also, in the middle of the word, if it comes after

the vowel or diphthong in the syllable  like: billing, billlling, or taller, tallller.

The Dark L can be made with just the back part of the tongue pulling back and pressing down a little bit.

You don't need to lift your tongue tip up to  make this dark sound and in fact,

native speakers don't lift their tongue tip  except in a few cases.

When students lift the tongue tip in the Dark L,  it tends to destroy the dark sound

and it ends up sounding more like a Light L instead.

When people focus on the tip, they forget the back.

And for Dark L, we want that dark sound  made with the back of the tongue.

It's not made in the front or the back, but the middle.

The front part of the tongue lifts and pulls back a little bit,

but the middle part of the tongue might make contact with the roof of the mouth in the middle.

Okay, we've taken a look at the specific way we make Light L,

As you've heard and seen, each of these sounds has a very distinct mouth position.

We'll have to really think about these positions as we work on these tough words with Rs and Ls.

It's a great idea to stop on the R, to stop on the L, hold out the sound,  and check your mouth position.

Let's analyze two words that both have R and L in detail.

So tongue tip is pulled back and up to start,

rrr, lips are flared, rrrr--eh--, then jaw drop,  tongue tip goes down.

Re-- reg-- back of the tongue lifts for the G, touches the soft palate, reg--, then we have Y consonant schwa.

Regyy-- For the G, the back of  the tongue is  lifted, touching he soft palate.

For the Y, you move your tongue forward along the roof of the mouth.

Regyyy-- then bring your tongue down for the schwa.

Does it come before or after the vowel in the syllable?

It begins the third syllable so it's a light L, tongue tip up.

Let's try that again, just holding our L and R.

From the light L, the tongue pulls right back into the R.

Don't try to make a vowel in there, the schwa is absorbed by the R.

Let's practice that transition by holding out L and R.

Now, we have an L again and it's the beginning  of the syllable again so it's a Light L

so the tongue tip comes back up for the Light L.

It pulls back for the R and goes right back up.

You don't have to move your jaw very much.

And finally the tongue tip comes back down  for a quick  unstressed E,

Let's do this whole word, holding out our Rs and our Ls.

Now, let's do the whole word in slow motion a few times:

How does it feel? Is it any easier for you to do this?

Having slowed it down and broken it down?

If not, break it up into parts, keep going slowly,  practice just individual sounds,

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ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION | ADVANCED STUDENT LESSON | Rachel’s English

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