How to Practice English Pronunciation Interview with Tom Kelley
Hey guys. Welcome to the set of Rachel’s
English in New York at the YouTube Space.
We’re here with the Rachel’s English teacher
Tom. Tom’s been teaching with me since 2012
and has logged hundreds of hours teaching.
So we’re going to sit down in an interview
with Tom today to learn about his lessons.
Also, you’ll get some tips about things
to think about when you’re practicing on
your own.
Tom, thank you so much for being here.
It’s my pleasure.
My first question is, what is something
that new students discover when they first
start taking lessons with you?
To be honest, I think students tend
to discover that it’s going to be more complicated
than they thought. Many students come into
lessons with a belief that they will work
on the R sound and maybe a couple consonant
sounds, and then, all of a sudden, their English
will have improved dramatically. And I think
it’s often much more complicated than that.
It tends to be a lot of focus on rhythm. And
a lot of focus on relaxation.
Yeah.
Um, one thing that I think about a lot
with my students and talk about a lot with
my students is that, as an actor, when I went
to school and took speech training—I’m
a native speaker of English, but I was in
a speech class—and the first thing we did
was work on relaxation. Taking this instrument
way back to neutral. So that we could start
from a place of, kind of, discovering some
new sounds that I wasn’t capable of making
when I went in there. And that’s as a native
speaker of English.
Speaking about the rhythm of English reminds
me, when I was teaching, that students didn’t
realize how much I was going to focus on character.
They were just thinking: sounds. But I was
more character-focused. And when they got
into it, they realized, wow, this really matters.
Yeah. To be honest, I think the best lessons
that I do are almost solely based on character,
and then sounds come up.
Right.
And you deal with them in the moment. But
those are so easy …
Yeah, right.
…in comparison with dealing with that
character of English. The way that you move
your tongue in your mouth. It’s going to
be very different than you’re used to. So,
if you start correcting that, if you start
playing with that movement, you’re going
to find that a lot of sounds take care of
themselves. But you’re going to need to
do that by building the character.
Notice that Tom’s talking a lot about
playing. And I think that’s one thing
that we don’t do enough. When we’re learning
something new, we want to make sure we’re
right, which often brings in extra tension.
But when we think of it as playing, then it
can sort of loosen us up. And actually, Tom
and I recorded some audio for the book, in
which we’re just making random, crazy sounds,
and encouraging people to imitate that. And
that’s the first thing in the book.
Yeah.
And the point is, relax. Get out of yourself.
This is going to be something different and
new.
Another thing that can help a student who,
maybe, can’t take lessons in person or online,
is to get really interested in how they’re
making sound visually. To use a mirror, to
use a camera. Something that I’ll do with
my students is have them listen to a native
speaker’s TED talk. Which as so interesting
and inspirational so often anyway, so it’s
interesting to listen to. And they have all
their transcripts available. So you can practice
a transcript looking into a camera and record
yourself. And then, watch the native speaker
and watch yourself. And if you notice that
you tend to not drop your jaw at all, you
see your teeth, they’re very close together,
then that’s a sign that you need to work
on that relaxation of the jaw. Create a little
more space. So you can start getting, just
really interested in watching other speakers.
And comparing it to your own. That’s, um,
that’s if you’re on your own and you—and
there’s just no one around to help you out.
It’s a good, a good way to do that.
That’s a great tip.
Tom, what’s something that you’ve learned
from your students.
I would say that, something that I was
kind of surprised to learn—I went in thinking,
oh, at some point I will feel like I have
it all figured out. Like it’s just kind
of cut and dried and I will know everything
to hand to my students, and they will simply
take it, and I will just have to say it one
way. And I think, what I’m realizing, is
that we all have incredibly specific histories
to the way that we speak. For me, I grew up
in Indiana. So, the center of the country.
But, I had a father who was a newscaster.
So I grew up with, kind of, broadcaster English.
So when I went to grad school, there was less
that I needed to adjust to find the standard
American English. But, every student has a
very specific history that they’re coming
from. The languages they spoke, and then,
the people that they learned English from.
Where were they from? What kind of accent
were they speaking? And, so, as I’m teaching,
each student is, kind of, teaching me a new
way to talk about concepts.
Yeah.
Because, that’s one of my favorite things
about teaching. It can be frustrating sometimes,
but it’s really a joy to find the best way
to communicate a concept to each individual
student. Because it’s always just a little
different. So I think I’ve really learned
how unique we are, in the way that we communicate.
And Tom and I were talking last week about
how, sometimes, you’ll be working with,
for example, a student from Russia, and you’ll
figure out the right way to, to teach something
to him or her. And then—oh, you’ve learned
from the person the right way to teach it.
Totally.
And then the next time you have a Russian
student, then you’re all the better prepared
Yeah, yeah. Those are awesome moments.
Those are huge light bulb moments for me as
a teacher, certainly.
If a student is preparing for something
important, like a job interview, for example,
and they have a limited amount of time, just
a couple weeks maybe. What would you do to
work with them? What would your priorities
be?
Well, for all my lessons, we use a recording
project to, kind of, get them into the lessons.
So they’ll send me a recording that they
will record of themselves speaking. And so
for that week, we would use the text of whatever.
If they had a presentation, we would use the
presentation text. If they had an interview,
they could do a mock interview of themselves
speaking. So they get some practice on the
vocabulary that they’re going to use. And
then, we would use the lesson time to really
drill that vocabulary, any concepts, any words
that are a little hard to understand. We would
really kind of get into why it’s hard to
understand, and help them drill those. And
then they would have that lesson video throughout
the week to, kind of, focus on those interview-specific
concepts. And they would practice with that
throughout the week. And then if they had
a couple weeks, we could come back, see how
that’s going, and adjust. But, I love in
lessons when we have something that specific,
because we can really focus in on vocabulary
that they’re using on a daily basis. And
that can be great to help them integrate the
practice into their everyday conversation.
Now, at the beginning of this interview,
you said one of the first things that students
discover is, sort of, how much work it’s
going to be.
Yeah.
And how complicated it is. So when you
have a short period of time to work on one
goal, how do you simplify the process, or,
what do you focus on?
For that, if it’s just one goal, we really
just focus on succeeding on that, kind of,
small world of text. So it becomes much more
specific about this word, as opposed to trying
to extrapolate major concepts from that word,
we just focus in on, when you get to this
word, remember to drop your jaw, remember
that tongue movement, and drill it a million
times this week.
Right.
So that you can really nail it in the interview
or in your presentation.
So, for an interview, it would maybe be
vocabulary specific to that job interview,
or whatever.
Absolutely
Just getting comfortable with those core
words.
Yes. Yeah. I mean, we just dive into the
material that they will be using in that,
whatever environment they’re headed into,
so that they can feel as comfortable as possible.
The, the thing is, you can practice as much
as you can, you, maybe you can practice five
hours a day. But, when it comes down to it,
you’re probably going to be nervous in those
situations. And so, when you get in the room,
you kind of have to let everything go and
just be yourself, and hope that the
practice kind of comes with you.
Yeah.
Um, but the best way that that practice
is going to come with you is if you’ve drilled
and drilled and practiced. And so, we try
in the lessons to really give a specific kind
of sense of what they need to work on in their
alone time as they practice. To build up,
and have a successful experience.
Great. Well Tom, thank you so much for
this advice. I appreciate it, and I hope everyone
out there has appreciated it too.
Absolutely. My pleasure.
And guys, Tom does have availability yet
in his schedule for a few more students. So
if you’re preparing for an important event,
or you just want to work with somebody directly
on your specific issues,
check out RachelsEnglish.com/lessons.
I’d love to work with you.
That’s it guys, and thanks so much for
using Rachel’s English.