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.