Name: THE "R" IN AMERICAN ENGLISH | 5 POWERFUL TIPS | ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION | RACHEL’S ENGLISH
Uploaded: 2020-03-09T05:40:40.000Z
Duration: 10 min 15 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

We’re going to go over my top 5 tips for the R sound,

Gerund

and you’ll get to see me working with real students as I help them live to get the sound.

Today, I’m going to go over the tips I use  when I’m working with students.

As you’re actually practicing and getting the R, this is what you’ll want to watch.

These tips will help you finally get this really tough sound.

Won’t that be fabulous to have a perfect  sounding American R?

You may have already seen my video on the R, how to, a great video with illustrations and up-close,

I’ll link to that at the end of this video if  you want to see it again.

Watching and mastering all 5 of these tips will make your American R sound amazing.

Tips 4 and 5 are critical so make sure to  watch all the way through.

Tip number one:  It’s important to know that there are two different ways that native speakers make the R.

So, you may have heard or seen information that was conflicting and been confused.

No need – they both work to get the right sound.

I find my students get a better, more accurate R sound when they use this position:

middle part of the tongue lifted, tip pulled back slightly.

So even though there are two different ways a native speaker might get this sound,

I suggest as a non-native speaker that you use this position.

The tongue tip is pulled back a bit, it’s not  touching the front teeth.

However, some of my students pull the  tongue tip way too far back.

It sounds like the R is trapped in my mouth.

Like the R is shooting out of the mouth,  not being held back.

If the tongue is pulled too far back, the  sound gets stuck in the mouth.

A good way to work with this is to purposefully pull your tongue really far back.

Touch the back of your teeth, and then pull it back just a bit, rrrr.

Sometimes doing it wrong, pulling the tongue tip too far back, can help you find what’s right.

If the tongue tip is pulled too far back, it brings extra tension here, rrrr, at the base of the tongue.

We don’t want that. Tip more forward, base of tongue relaxed, sound flowing forward.

Watch me working with a student on this sound.

Here, we were working on words with the UR vowel, like in ‘Burma’ and ‘internal’.

When we were talking about the UR vowel just then I was talking about really releasing the throat here

it could be that when you're trying to make the R, the tip of your tongue is pulling too far back

and that also makes the sound feel trapped.

So, you know, it's hard to explain. Does the tongue pull back, yes. Is there such thing as too much, yes.

So it's a delicate balance between having it too far forward, and having it too far back.

This is where our tongue, like, meets our,  is attached basically.

So, if you think of, I'm gonna say lowering a little bit, lowering and relaxing your neck, uh, uh.

Think of there being a little bit of weight there

and that might help open it up and relax it, and let the sound come out, ur.

Good, and the second time wasn't quite as good.

Your lips didn't come into quite as much of the correct position, but that was better.

That's the feeling that we always need is the forward flow. We're never stopping things.

I said the lips didn’t come into quite as much of the correct position. The correct position is a little bit flared.

Already so much good stuff and there are 3 more tips coming right up.

Tip #3 is:  create a little bit of space  between your lip and your gum.

Rr-- rr--  Watch me explain this to a student.

Yeah. It's just creating a little extra space between your gum up here and the back side of the lip.

You're just... It's not that it's not touching.

It's still touching, but it's just, you're pulling it away a little bit. It's like a tiny bird beak.

Okay, I think you should probably think about doing with the bottom lip too. So here as well.

You're just creating a little bit more space. So you're taking this part of your lip, and this part of your lip,

and you're just like pushing it out a little bit.

>> Err.  >> Yeah that was good. That was good.

The first ones were a little bit, like, stuck back, but by bringing that part of your lips just a little bit out,

it's bringing the sound forward and it's sounding a lot more open and free and a lot more accurate.

One thing to be careful about with the flare is the corners of the lips. They should be relaxed.

Yes, R can be a consonant or a vowel –  we’ll get to that in a second.

First I want to add, for a beginning R, the lips do round more, they come into a tighter circle:

A beginning R more rounded than a lip flare.

This brings us to Tip #4:  R can be a  consonant or a vowel.

This is surprising to a lot of people, but when you see this vowel sound, this symbol,

it’s the R vowel, and there’s no change in  sound between it and the R consonant.

So this vowel symbol is always followed  by the R consonant symbol,

Do not try to make some sort of vowel and then an R.

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THE "R" IN AMERICAN ENGLISH | 5 POWERFUL TIPS | ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION | RACHEL’S ENGLISH

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delicate

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