#130: Revolutionize Your Pronunciation (with Rachel’s English)

We had the great pleasure of interviewing one of our favorite online teachers, the pronunciation master herself, Rachel from Rachel’s English. If you don’t know Rachel, she’s been a huge inspiration to how we teach pronunciation here at RealLife.

In this conversation, we talk about a lot of awesome stuff, but here are a few of the highlights:

• Rachel’s story as an opera singer and how she started teaching pronunciation
• The importance of learning to listen and imitate the rhythmic patterns of native speakers
• Is it okay to practice your English with other non-native speakers and learners?
• Using media and repetition of native speech samples to improve your pronunciation

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Words to Know 

• Background– Accumulated experience, education, and expertise
• Scholarship– When somebody else pays for your education based on merit
• Opera– A dramatic “play” (theatre) that has music, instruments, and the acting is sung
• Audition– When you “try out” for a part in the opera, a play, or any other form of acting
• Abroad– in a foreign country (e.g. study abroad)
• Archaic– Old, not used anymore
• Apparatus– mechanism or equipment needed for an activity
• Philly (“filly”)– shortened way of saying Philadelphia
• Mimicry– Imitation
• Get in the way– block, impede
• Boil down to– to be reduced to its most simple form
• Tune out– exclude from your audio awareness
• Crocodile Dundee– famous movie about an Australian
• That’s not a knife (see notes below)
• Persona– identity
• Spinning it back (Spin it back) – to repeat back
• Start from scratch– start from nothing, zero
• Lose your train of thought– to forget what you were talking about
• Eye opener– Something that surprises you
• Slice– Small Piece (slice of pizza)
• Loop– Repeat
• Drill Sergeant– the person who trains soldiers
• Embody– to include or integrate into the main part of something
• Pick your brain– to interview, explore the mind or ideas of somebody

Links and Mentions

• Rachel’s Website
• Rachel’s Youtube Channel
• Rachel’s English Academy
• Fluency MC
• Simple English Videos & Vicki Hollett (Interview with Fluency MC & Rachel)
• Famous Crocodile Dundee scene (“That’s not a knife“)
• Shadowing (imitation technique)
• Content and Function Words on Rachel’s English

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