Okay.
At this point, I hope you're feeling much, much better about how to really score well on the aisle.
Speaking tests in regards to the band descriptors, you've really learned the finer points of fluency
and coherence, lexical ability and grammar, range and accuracy.
So now we're going to get into the final the final section on the rubric, which deals with the area
of pronunciation.
Now, pronunciation is really, really a high level skill in terms of teaching it.
So we're not going to really get so much into teaching you pronunciation, but more of just really explaining
to you the finer points of the rubric so that you understand what you need to do well, what you need
to do well to to achieve a great score in regards to pronunciation.
So I hope by the end of this lecture you'll have a greater grasp on what it means to have great pronunciation
on the aisle speaking tests.
So let's get started.
These are the band descriptions, the band descriptors in terms of pronunciation.
And what I want you to do here is kind of read through them.
Notice some of the small differences with pronunciation.
And if you have any questions about, well, what does this mean?
What's really the difference between the band?
You see, Band seven is skipped here.
That's because for Bands seven, it says has all the aspects of Band six has some of the aspects of
Band Aid.
That's why Band seven is skipped.
Right.
So when we talk about pronunciation, how much effort is there needed to understand your speech?
If you're easily understood and your accent rarely interferes with clarity, your pronunciation is at
a high level.
If you have a lot of mispronunciations and a lot of strokes, most reduce.
That's if you have a lot of muddled speech.
That was just an example of muddled speech.
Everybody muddled speech.
If somebody doesn't understand you because your speech is muddled, right, that hurts your pronunciation.
Now what to work on for proper pronunciation?
Number one, work on your clarity of speech.
Don't worry about accent.
Be clear.
Have very clear speech.
Next, learn how to work on words, stress and sentence stress.
If you've heard me say sentences so far, you've heard me use word stress.
You've heard me use sentence stress.
Also intonation.
Speaking English is very musical in nature.
What I mean by that is there are natural rises and falls throughout the sentence.
It's not flat.
Chongqing native speakers really chunk their words later on.
I want to talk about that a little bit later so you can kind of get the idea.
But Chongqing really shows, hey, you have native speaker quality.
A lot of times when I hear students that that aren't able to chunk that's the reason why you're not
getting above a seven.
That's the reason why that's why you're stuck.
Because when you're not able to chunk, that means you're just saying each word individually.
And that's not how native speakers speak.
You definitely have to work on your individual and week sounds and also your rhythm.
How to improve your pronunciation.
Well, number one, move your mouth.
You cannot speak English very well with a closed mouth.
Also work on your specific practice if you know you have sounds.
Work on that.
If you know you have V and W sounds.
Work on that.
You've heard me talk about this earlier.
Model native speakers listen and repeat.
Copy.
Copy the speed.
Right.
Copy the emotion in the words.
Copy the intonation.
Also use contractions.
When you look at a lot of the examples that I'm going to give you when we get into part number one and
part number two and so forth and so on.
What I'm giving the examples.
You're going to see me really using contractions.
Now.
I'm not I'm not about to teach you intonation, but I am going to talk about just some general rules
when it comes to intonation.
When you're giving a statement, it has a falling intonation.
When you're giving a list, it's rising, rising, rising, falling.
When you're using your W words, it's a falling.
You know, your what, where, when falling, intonation, yes or no questions.
Rising intonation.
And that's at the bottom.
You see the name that that person really gives some really great videos on intonation and pronunciation.
Right.
Here are some examples of poor intonation.
For example, this is a statement is quite a small village.
Now, you heard me say it correctly with the intonation falling at the end.
Incorrect.
It's quite a small village.
Right that rising intonation makes it sound like a question or you don't know what you're talking about.
Right.
All kinds of jobs.
That's correct.
But here are some of the most common ones are accounting, banking, teaching, I.T..
Again, wrong intonation makes it sound like a question instead of a statement.
This is some information you can review here about intonation in terms of falling and rising intonation.
Words stress sentence stress were stress is syllable.
Stress is the beat on one or more syllables within a word itself.
Sentence stress is the beat of certain words within a sentence.
There are some great videos on on YouTube about sentence stress that you can watch and kind of learn
about that right sentence stress is so important because that's what really gives your speech rhythm.
When a greater is talking about your speech has rhythm or your speech doesn't have rhythm, they're
talking about proper sentence stress.
Now which wars do we stress?
You stress content words.
You do not stress function words.
Here you can see a list of content words and you can see a list of function words.
Right.
Here are some examples of content and function words in contexts.
OC.
Will you.
Will you sell my car?
Because I've gone to Ghana.
I'm going to tell you about an advert I saw last week.
A mother played with her kid.
He's interested in taking an economics class.
She wanted to play better.
Also sentence stress changes the meaning.
Right.
The woman speaks a little Japanese.
Right.
Stressing different words in that one sentence completely changes the meaning.
Here is word stress.
We're talking about photograph.
Photographer.
Photographic.
Right.
Changing the word stress properly.
You can read through this chart for a little bit.
For more information on word stress.
So now let's talk a little bit about what it means to do chunking, right?
Chunking means dividing speech into groups of words.
When we talk without chunking, it could be really, really hard for people to understand you.
So let's look at an example.
Right below are two answers to the question.
In your country, what kind of possessions do you think give status to people?
Here's answer one.
Now I'm going to it's difficult for me because I just naturally chunk, but I'm going to try to kind
of read this without any chunking so that you can get the idea of what we're talking about.
The first thing that comes to mind is the car.
And this is because in my country, a lot of people like to have luxury cars such as BMW and Audi vehicles
to show their status.
In other words, the more expensive the car, the higher the place in society.
That's like just that's what that's what it sounds like when a non-native speaker is speaking.
Sometimes it's without any chunking at all.
Now, this is more of what it sounds like when you're when you're when you're chunking.
You're saying these groups of words.
And then there's a pause.
Right.
And there is another pause.
And that's why I've told you you heard me say this earlier.
You have to be able to speak with pronunciation.
I mean, speak with pronunciation, speak with punctuation.
So here's the second part.
The first thing that comes to mind is the car.
And this is because in my country, a lot of people like to have luxury cars such as BMW and Audi vehicles
to show their status.
In other words, the more expensive the car, the higher they, the higher their place in society.
Did you hear the difference?
That's the difference in terms of chunking and not chunking.
Let's look at another example.
What does climate have to do with building homes again?
Give me a moment.
A moment.
I'm going to take a breath.
And because I have to kind of I have to read I have to say this without any chunking.
And that's that's not natural.
In my opinion, climate has a lot to do with the way we construct and design our residents.
For example, in tropical countries, the houses are usually built to keep the sun out, while in places
where it snows a lot, you find houses with steep roofs so that the snow can't so that snow can't settle
there and damage the roof.
Right.
That's just reading.
That's just going directly through.
No chunking at all.
Here it is with something.
In my opinion, climate has a lot to do with the way we construct and design our residents.
For example, in tropical and tropical countries, the house are usually built to keep the sun out while
in places where it snows a lot, you find houses with steep roofs so that the snow can't settle there
and damage the roof.
That's what chunking is.
That's what native speakers do.
If you're able to chunk properly, that's how you really increase your score.
Here's one more example of chunking versus non chunking.
Right.
I'm just going to read the the Chongqing one OC.
Does it really matter whether people speak with an accent as long as they can be easily understood?
Many people now believe that in an increasingly globalized world, we should accept variations in pronunciation.
That is accent.
However, there's no point in speaking with an accent if people can't understand you.
Is there?
Right.
So how can you improve your chunking look for a listing?
You know, look look for listening texts that actually include the audio script.
And as you listen, kind of locate and mark the pauses in the audio script.
I think that's some of the best advice.
Listen to books on tape.
Right.
Those are some things you can do to really help improve your chunking.
Thank you very, very much.
Have a fantastic day and I look forward to your joining me as we now are going to enter into speaking
part number one.
Thanks a lot.
Talk to you soon.