#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

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  • Moisés Rocha says:

    Awww yeah!!RLE is so great and useful. I like so much this podcast.
    Thanks guys.

    • RealLife says:

      Thanks for listening and letting us know what you think! Aww Yeah buddy!

  • Jonas Sousa says:

    Awesome podcast! I love Rachel’s work, she is amazing!

    • RealLife says:

      Aww yeah, Jonas! That’s awesome that you had the chance to give it a listen. Yeah, her work is very helpful for everybody. Thanks for listening!

  • VieiraWn Neves says:

    I would like to know if we can dowload to transcription of podcast?

  • Ivan Ustra Beta says:

    Awww yeah!

  • Aidai says:

    Hello to everyone 😅 I’m gonna appreciate my favourite app .
    In real-life app so wonderful app , actually I saw the videos in YouTube channel it has also amazing videos but i could not catch more words .I downloaded this app only yesterday but I have noticing today that my pronunciation get better then whenever it was .
    I like an American accent as well because of I have one friend from British she is speaking so fast 🤣 And other global world non-native speakers .
    I tried to invite here my friends , and they just greatly thanked me .
    I hope i will get better and better step by step .I have purposes for that .
    Hey Ethan teacher thanks for everything .
    With you guys we won’t get bore!!🇰🇬 this comment from Kyrgyzstan

    • Agnieszka from RealLife English says:

      Hello Aidai! Aww yeaah! Thank you so much for sharing! Keep listening to our podcast 🙂 I’m sure that also you will increase your understanding of British English too! Greetings to your friends!

  • Elizabeth Queen says:

    Thank you so much RLEnglish for all these lessons. You have help me a lot to understand English pronunciation. All the teachers are great and they have encourage me to keep learning. Awww yeah!

    • Agnieszka from RealLife English says:

      It’s so nice to read your comment, Elizabeth! aww yeah! Happy to help!