3 Tongue Twisters to Improve Your American English Accent Reduction Practice Rachels English

Seventy-seven Benevolent Elephants

I can’t do this one. Why practice tongue 
twisters? My students who have problems  

with some of the sounds in American English 
need to train their mind to guide their mouth,  

to effortlessly go through the positions for
these sounds. Tongue twisters can help with  

this. they can help build the brain connection: 
This is a T-H thhhh so that your body can do it  

on its own, without thinking of it, without the 
mind having to guide the tongue through the position. And  

that’s what we want of course. We want the habit. 
We want to take the sounds that are hardest,  

and make them effortless. So today we’re going 
to go over some tongue twisters to untwist  

your tongue and help you master some of the 
trickiest consonant sounds of American English.  

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Today we’re training 3 super-tricky tongue 
twisters. First, Seventy-seven benevolent  

elephants. This is going to help with your V. My 
students from India and Germany tend to sometimes  

switch V and W, and these can be tricky 
sounds for other language groups as well.  

Mastering this tongue twister will help 
your brain really get that V is vvv.

We’re also to do “which wristwatches are Swiss 
wristwatches?” Hitting the W hard, also the  

R. That’s because the W is silent in the word 
‘wrist’. Look out, this one is really tricky.

And I’m not going to forget 
that ever important TH.  

“He threw three free throws” – you’ll 
get to work on R with that one too.  

What other tongue twisters do you know? 
Put them in the comments below.

Let’s look at our first one, seventy-seven 
benevolent elephants. That’s a lot of elephants.  

Benevolent means kind, expressing goodwill, 
helping others. You usually don’t think of  

an elephant as being benevolent, but it does make a 
good tongue twister. This one is tricky. Too fast,  

and it even native speakers mess it up. This 
is my friend Ginny and her daughter Natalie.

Seventy-seven Benevolent Elephants

And this is my sister-in-law Audrey.

Seventy-seven Benevolent Elephants

We’ll focus on the word ‘benevolent’. First,  

it helps so much with a longer words to focus 
on stress. The second syllable here is stressed,  

let’s practice just that. Nev. Nev. It’s like 
a hill. Nev. Nev. It has our tricky V sound. V,  

not a W, no lip rounding. Nev, vvv. Next, 
unstressed. The first syllable is just ‘be,be’.  

Very simple, very fast. Let’s put it 
with the stressed syllable. Benev. Benev.  

Remember, these two syllables should feel totally 
different. One is stressed, one is unstressed.  

The first one is very fast, the second one is 
longer, it has that hill shape. Benev. Benev.  

Our other two syllables, -olent, -olent.  

All three of our unstressed syllables here 
have the schwa, pronounced like this ‘uh’.  

Can you believe that? Almost no jaw drop, totally 
relaxed face. It almost doesn’t even look like  

I’m not even talking. -olent, -olent, 
-olent. Benev - -olent. Benevolent.  

Put them together but don’t slow down 
those fast syllables. Keep them fast, keep  

it simple. Benevolent. Seventy-seven benevolent 
elephants, Seventy-seven benevolent elephants.

The next word, elephants,that first syllable has 
the hill shape, the stress. Practice with me. El-.  

El-. The other two syllables, schwas, said more 
quickly. Ephant. Ephant. Ephant. Put it together,  

elephant. The PH makes an F sound. Did you know F 
and V have the same mouth position? F is unvoiced,  

meaning just air makes the sound, ffff, and V 
Is voiced, meaning your vocal cords are engaged,  

making a sound. Vvvv. I’ll alternate. See that 
nothing in my mouth changes. Ff, vv, ff, vv.  

Let’s put the two words together. It’s going 
to be common to make the ending T a stop T.  

Stop the air in your throat, but don’t 
release tt, the T sound. Benevolent,  

benevolent. Benevolent elephants. Move your arm on 
those stressed syllables. Benevolent, benevolent,  

benevolent elephants. Okay, move your arm 
on those stressed syllables. Benevolent  

elephants, Benevolent elephants. Benevolent 
elephants. Do it as slowly as you need to,  

to make sure you’re doing it correctly. Remember, 
we want to train the right positions.

Seventy-seven. This is going to help us 
train that V sound some more. Both parts  

of the word have first syllable stress. 
Seventy-seven. Seventy-seven. Notice I’m  

making that T more of a D, or a Flap T sound. 
This is an exception. Usually after N it’s  

either dropped or a True T. But here it’s 
a Flap T. Seventy-seven (flap). Seventy.  

Seventy-seven. Seventy-seven. Okay I’m going to 
try it now. Seventy-seven benevolent elephants.  

Seventy-seven benevolent elephants. 
If V is at all tricky sound for you,  

do this over and over. Slowly. Get it down 
good. This will help. Don’t go so fast that  

you’re doing it incorrectly. You want to practice 
doing it right, then you can speed it up.

Our second tongue twister today is “which 
wristwatches are swiss wristwatches”.  

This one is so hard.

“which wristwatches are swiss wristwatches”.

I cannot do it quickly at all. Look at all these 
W and R sounds. W are in red, R in blue.  

Beginning R and W actually look a lot a 
like from the outside. Watch: rrrrrr, wwwww.  

Lots of lip rounding. But what’s 
happening inside is pretty different.

For R, the middle part of the tongue lifts towards 
the roof of the mouth, the tip is back and up,  

not touching anything. For the W, the tongue 
tip touches the back of the bottom front teeth,  

then the back stretches up, and we have a little 
something extra in the throat. Wwww, just a little  

bit of a narrowing here. Wwww, Wwww wRrrrrist 
wwwwwatch. If R is at all a problem for you, or W,  

then nailing the tongue twister, slowing it down, 
getting it right, is going to help you out.

Let’s do just the first two words: which wrist, 
which wrist. Both have the IH as in SIT vowel.  

Which wrist, and the both have that hill 
shape, they’re both stressed. Which wrist,  

which wrist, which wrist, which 
wrist. Do that with me slowly: which  

wrist, which wrist. Let’s put in the 
second half of our compound word,  

‘watches’. IN a compound word, the first word 
is stressed. So Watches is unstressed, watches,  

watches, watches. It doesn’t have that hill 
shape, it’s flatter. Wrist watches. Wrist watches.  

Say that with me. Wrist watches, wrist watches. 
Which wrist watches, which wristwatches.

By the way, this reminds me  

of another terribly hard tongue twister, 
“I wish to wash my Irish wristwatch.”  

I made my nieces and my niece’s fiancée try that 
one a couple of years ago, it was not pretty.

But this one, I think, is slightly easier. By 
the way, I’ll put the link to that other tongue  

twister video in my video description. 
Our next word is ‘are’. This word won’t  

be stressed. In fact in lots of sentences a 
native speaker would just say ‘er’. “Where  

are the kids?” Where are, er, er, er. For example, 
let’s try that. Just ‘er’ on the end of ‘watches.  

Which wrist watches are. Which wrist watches are. 
Watches are, watches are, watches are. Reducing  

are. Next, Swiss, we have another W. 
Lip rounding. Swiss, swiss. This is also  

stressed with that hill shape. A little bit 
longer. Swiss. Which wrist watches are Swiss.  

Do it slowly and accurately. Which wristwatches 
are Swiss. Notice even when I’m going slowly,  

I’m still connecting all the words in that 
line. We want that. No breaks, no separation.  

All smoothly linked. That’s something we just 
love in English. Which wristwatches are Swiss.  

Now all we need is ‘wristwatches’ again. 
Which wristwatches are Swiss wrist watches?  

Which wristwatches are Swiss wristwatches? Have 
you got that? Take your time, do it daily.

Okay, our third and final tongue 
twister that we’re practicing today  

is pretty tough. My sister-in-law 
and niece could not get it.

He threw three free throws.

He threw three free throws. 
Natalie couldn’t get it either.

He threw three free throws.

Not quite. Julia, nope.

He threw three free throws.

Let’s give Ginny a try.

He threw three free throws.

(lauging) I’m so sorry.

She says no, she can’t do it. But you can 
do it. We can do it if we slow it down,  

get it good, and then speed 
up. And if you master this,  

your TH is going to be a lot clearer 
and THR would be way less intimidating.

This one is extra tough because 
we’re dealing not just with TH and F,  

but with clusters with R. THREE, FREE. 
A lot of little kids can’t even say TH  

actually. They say F instead. I 
remember when my son Stoney did that.

Marf..

So you’re going Marf. You’re using your 
lip but we want to use your tongue.

No almost. Bring your tongue.

He wasn’t very interested in learning that day. 
Was he? To make the unvoiced TH like threw,  

three, and throws, your tongue tip 
has to come through the teeth. Th, th,  

just air. No tension, no holding, no stopping,  

th. Easy sound. Let’s alternate between three and free. 
I’ll zoom in.

Three, free, three, free,  

three, free. You can do it. It takes practice, 
but you can get it. He threw. Let’s just do that.  

Threw is stressed. He threw, he threw. Three is 
also stressed, another THR cluster. So for the  

THR, you go from the tongue tip being out, th to 
being pulled back and up a little bit. Thr, thr.  

Slow it down, feel that movement 
at the tip of your tongue.  

Thr

He threw three. He threw three. He 
threw three. Free is also stressed.  

Here you do want to use your bottom lip. 
Th, th, three. And then throws, unstressed.  

Free throws, free throws, free throws. Do that 
with me slowly. Free throws. You can hold out  

the consonant, really make sure you’re getting the 
right mouth position. He threw three free throws.  

Practicing slowly gives your mind time to guide 
your tongue into the right position. And once your  

brain does that enough, you won’t have to think 
about it anymore. The habit will be made.

Our three tongue twisters today are all 
training problem consonant sounds in English  

for non-native speakers. Take your time. Get 
it right. Form the right pathway in the brain.  

You can do it. Seventy-seven benevolent elephants. 
Which wrist watches are Swiss wristwatches?  

He threw three free throws. And as you get more 
comfortable, you can increase your speed. Tongue  

twisters are actually kind of fun, aren’t they? 
Huge thanks to my friends and family for helping  

me out with this video, they’re not afraid of 
a few tongue twisters! Audrey, Emily, Molly,  

Taylor, Ginny, Natalie, and Julia, thank you. 
Keep your learning going now with this video,  

and don’t forget to subscribe. I make new 
videos every Tuesday and I love being  

your English teacher. That’s it, and thanks 
so much for using Rachel’s English.