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comment by tacocat
tacocat  ·  2775 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Help request: spoken English

Here's a YouTube channel we've used in my ESL classes

https://www.youtube.com/user/rachelsenglish



Devac  ·  2773 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Sorry for late reply, but I wanted to check the channel you linked to… and I have to say that it's really good. One of the first videos, pretty much picked at random, turned out to be about one thing in pronunciation that I never even noticed: gluing syllables. I'm usually trying to pronounce all words separately, like it's something that I'm reading, and it seems to add a bit of that 'alien-like vibe' that comes from being too careful. For example, compounding together "Did you" to something closer to "Didja".

This is a really cool channel! Thank you! :D.

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tacocat  ·  2773 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I feel bad for not offering to help directly since I'm in an ESL program but I'm just starting. There's so much stuff we do as native speakers that we don't notice or couldn't explain, I really wonder how I'm gonna teach it when I get there.

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Devac  ·  2773 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    I feel bad for not offering to help directly since I'm in an ESL program but I'm just starting.

Honestly, I'm surprised so many people even felt like responding at all. It was a request and each response went above my expectations. It's the intent that counts anyway :).

    I really wonder how I'm gonna teach it when I get there.

This comes mainly from my experience in tutoring: it's weird and awkward at first, it's fairly quick to get used to it even if the feeling will not subside. Most of the time I was feeling like a dumbass who could use a tutor himself. But you get used to it, pupils often have the same questions despite age and education differences. What helped me the most was to write questions and then attempt to explain them to either:

- No-one, just recording myself and listening to it back to see how it went.

- Someone who I know but is a layman on that topic.

Another trick I'm using boils down to "try to write an explanation without using any complex words or syntax". Pretty much Simple English Wikipedia level of writing.

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