#444 - 3 Exercises to Speak English Faster (Like a Native) — Proven Tips That Work For Anyone, Why You Still Speak Slowly, and Using Rap Songs to Train Your English
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So if you ever feel frustrated because it takes too long for what you think in your head to come out of your mouth naturally and fluently, then today's lesson is for you. So stick around until the end of today's lesson because we will be sharing with you three exercises that you can use to speak English faster today. How you can get an accent like Oprah, Adele, or even Homer Simpson.

some vocabulary that is really useful for planning a trip, airplane stereotypes, and so much more. So let's jump into episode 444 of the RealLife English Podcast. Aww yeah!

Let's do it.

Oh, don't look at the... Don't look, don't look, don't look. Not looking. Not looking. All right. Thanks for having me to show, B. You know, re-re-re. The thing is, I was in her dressing room, and there was only a little curtain separating us while she was having her makeup done, and I started going, I can do this. I can do this. Do you know what she said? No, I was just baffled by the... The dramatic voices there. And I was like, what's going on there? What does that mean, you're baffled by a...

Can I look now? Okay. So, yes, I was just shocked. I was just stumped, maybe. All of these words mean just I was surprised by what I was hearing. Man, I couldn't catch a single word exactly because of that. Like, as soon as it started, it's like, what am I listening to? Do you know who it is? It's Adele, right? What kind of accent it is? I recognize that voice. Yes, yes, it's Adele. It's super...

Strong Cockney accent. So she's basically talking about her experience that even though she was at this point already famous, that she still would get starstruck, meaning that that feeling that when you meet someone famous, it's like you lose your words when she met Beyonce. She was talking about that experience and can play it again so you can see the subtitles. Yeah.

and see what she's saying. You know what? I even think whoever did these subtitles, they got it wrong. Because she said, thanks for having me in the show B, as in Beyonce. Yeah. There's a showbiz there. For having me in the showbiz. And that's not what she said, I think. See, it's confusing. You got it.

Let me share you one more. I'll share one more with you. Probably be better for you not to look. Divert your gaze. Avert my gaze? What does that mean? It means look in the other direction because there's something here I don't want you to see. All right.

Is that it? I didn't know, like I heard like this lovely, a real full circle owner or something? Full circle moment? Moment. That's a nice expression. Yes.

It's like if something comes full circle, we say, it means that it's kind of like it comes back to its origins or its beginnings. I'm trying to think of an example of that. Like Lord of the Rings, right? I guess they come back to the Shire in its full circle because they're experiencing again what they're so happy to experience in the beginning, but not a whole other level. Yeah, from a different place. So I don't know if you watched...

White Lotus, but this actress that we just listened to, she became very famous recently in the third season of White Lotus. But she's also been in other series. She was on Netflix's Sex Education.

And she's really famous because she has like very big teeth. Like she hasn't done orthodontics or anything, but it's kind of like become her claim to fame is these teeth. And people really admire her because she hasn't fixed her teeth. She just kind of like owned it as part of her personality and her character and everything. You said like her claim to fame? What does that mean? Someone's claim to fame is the thing that they're famous for. The thing that makes them famous. So let me play it for you one more time. You can...

watch and try to listen to it and then going to look at one piece of vocabulary because this stood out to me as well when I watched it. And it's like oh my god it feels so lovely after a real full circle moment after being bullied for my teeth forever now people are clapping in an audience because I've got these lashes. Did you catch the last thing that like it's obvious that she's referring to her teeth because she's pointing to her teeth she said because I've got these did you pick up what she said there?

I did not. So for me, neither. I kind of like heard it was like dashers or something like that. And I had to ask ChachiBT, is there some slang for teeth that sounds something like this? Because I heard it in an interview and I'm not sure what word it is. And it said the word that you're probably looking for is nashers, which is with a GN at the beginning.

And it's a British slang meaning teeth. I don't know if you know the equivalent in English, but we might say chompers in American English. I think I said in English, but I mean, American English, we'd say chompers. Chompers. No, I haven't heard about that one either. Now, I do know the verb gnaw, to gnaw something, which is like to kind of chew it. And it sounds similar to gnaw. Maybe it comes from that.

Yeah. Nash. It'd be like Nash probably is the verb and Nashers is like someone who has like, like a way to refer to big teeth and chomp is just like, like taking big bites of something. And so chompers is anyways, I had to like look for kind of like difficult British accents. Cause I knew if I picked any American, you would get it probably no matter how challenging it was. So Izzy, we're talking all about fast English. You, you,

or definitely someone who I admire for being at such a level in a foreign language that you speak it as effortlessly pretty much as you do your native tongue is Portuguese.

But I'm curious, as far as speed is concerned, like, is that something that you've actually focused on yourself is speaking English fast? No. And I don't think I've ever met a successful learner who's had that focus. Maybe they're out there. There's somebody who's done that that way by really fixating on having that goal. But my students and people I've met,

who speak fluently, that's not a goal, right? I want to speak fast. But you do get there. It's something that happens naturally. And I do know also of the things I did that got me here, you know, at this level where I can speak faster. There were things I did, but that was not the point of it. I was not prioritizing, like, let me see. I was not measuring success by how fast I can speak, basically. Yeah, I think when people say that they want to speak English fast, it probably is...

referring to other goals that are below that, like being able to have be thinking in English and that becoming words coming out in a rather fluid way. So the other person isn't waiting. And it probably has to do also just with like the level of fluency, their ability to speak fluidly and naturally. Right. So we're going to be looking at

Three exercises that they'll help you to speak English faster, but ultimately they're going to help you to speak English more fluently and naturally. So the first exercise that we have for you guys, we're calling glue your words.

So, something that I think both Izzy and I have noticed is that when we meet a lot of learners, they fully pronounce every word and it can make you sound quite robotic if you speak this way. And I know that's like a lot of learners, they feel uncomfortable. It doesn't feel like it flows like your native language, right?

What do you find is important, Izzy, to have your English flow in a natural way like this? Yeah, now that you're saying this, it makes me think that in Portuguese, which is my native language, we do speak like that a little bit more. Like every word is more emphasized than it is in English. And the thing is like English has this rhythm and this dynamic where if you use word chunks, if you notice that word chunks are a thing in English...

That's a great first step. Just knowing that. And then you're starting to notice where they are and practice with them. And by the way, I just noticed I didn't explain what a word chunk is. So how would you explain that? Because we say that a lot, right? So you can think of it like Legos, like the children's toy, that each piece, Lego piece is like an individual word and certain pieces naturally go together well to build a

a certain creation, right? That looks nice, that isn't just like a little kid's thing of whacking together random colors and pieces and stuff that it doesn't actually look like anything, which can be nice as well. But...

When you have like these pieces that seem to naturally go together, that's a lot like a word chunk. It's these words that when combined, they form a sound unit. And so, you know, it flows in a single way. It can sometimes sound almost just like one word, which is something that throws off a lot of learners. Yeah, throw off. Nice. Like you get some confused or distracted.

I think probably the best way for people to understand this is through examples, right? To actually show them what are some different word chunks. Exactly. And I was just going to point out exactly one example in what you were explaining there. You said that these words, they go together.

So go together is a collocation. It's just it's two words, but you pronounce them as if they were just one is one single sound unit. Go together, right? Go together, go together. Or it makes me think too of the Beatles song like come together, you know, come together right now. So music can be a great way to pick these out as well as kind of see like where does the rhythm fall in a song naturally? Yeah. Well, these are everywhere. They're in music, they're in movies, they're everywhere. You're speaking right now. If you guys listening to this lesson,

Pay attention. I just said it like go together. That was in Ethan's speech and me speaking right now. I challenge you right now. Just pay attention and see how many you can catch, how many of these. So let me give you just a few more examples to help you identify them. It can be a phrase as simple as I don't know becoming I don't know. And even the more advanced, the more casual, I don't know. I don't know. Right.

What's happening there, by the way, with the sound? You're being really lazy with your speech is what's happening. Yeah, it's just basically that we are kind of like lazy with our... I like to think of this always the time is that part of our culture, I think American culture, British cultures were kind of known as being like lazy Americans and so on. And this goes as far as speaking as well. So like connected speech, we look for shortcuts to make speaking easier and faster and

And so like a native speaker, if they're having a very casual conversation with a friend, it's not necessary to pronounce a full I don't know, which isn't so efficient, but rather you can shortcut it to I don't know or I don't know, which if you've been trying this to yourself, like try saying I don't know. And then I don't know. And then I don't know.

You can just feel like it's less effort in your mouth as you get more accustomed to... If your muscles or articulation are accustomed to making these sounds. So it's kind of a thing about just being able to speak more efficiently and get our message out faster. There you go. Yeah, even Homer Simpson. I think that's...

How I've heard him say, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. So let me give you other examples that are like longer phrases where it kind of blows your mind once you notice that there is connected speech there and these are word chunks. And if you learn these one at a time, it'll help you with other phrases that have those little units there.

Like we just saw that I don't, you can say, I don't, I don't. So you just said one at a time as one at a time, which sounds like, like what's a one at a time. There you go. So that's a longer one, I guess. Right. One at a time. But how about, uh, what are you going to do about it? How would you say that? Oh, there's so many ways that you could say this. So you could say, what are you going to do about it? But you could shorten it even more to,

What are you going to do about it? Or what are you going to do about it? Yeah. So there's individual little pieces, like Lego bricks, as you're saying, like Lego pieces. What do you, like, what do you can become what you or what you already or what you actually, right? Watch it. Yeah. Watch it.

and going to is gonna, gonna do, bout it, bout it, even with the stop T. So there's so many examples within one phrase. And if you learn these, they're gonna apply. You're gonna see them in lots of other places. Or how about the phrase, is it okay if I sit here? Is it okay if I sit here? Right? It's like, is it okay? Yeah.

Is it okay? Yeah. Becomes, is it okay? Like, is it on your face? Is it okay? Is it okay? If I, if I, if I sit and then sit here, could even be sit here, sit here, like more connected. We're going to make that longer. Like, is it okay if I sit here for a bit? Sounds so fast. And you don't need to speak it that fast. That's like final piece of advice here. Speaking fast is not about speaking fast. Like what you think is fast is just connected a lot of times. So if you just say, Hey, is it okay if I sit here for a bit?

It's not fast. It's connected, right? If you know what you're doing, it makes a huge difference. I think that's a really good point is that we believe that native speakers speak really fast and there are natives that speak faster, but connected speech really is more what it's about. It's just that you're not, especially if you just learn through traditional schools and so on, they don't teach you this. You're not used to hearing all the words flow together. So you perceive it as being really fast because you're not hearing every individual word.

So before we move on to the second exercise, I did find like a really great example from The Simpsons, as long as you're mentioning Homer. So let's quickly watch Homer, who's a master of connected speech. You're the one who told me I could do anything if I just put my mind to it. Well, now that you're a little bit older, I can tell you that's a crock.

It's like in such a short, like two seconds, literally. And he said a whole really long phrase. Now that you're a little bit older, I can tell you that's a crock. What's a crock, by the way? So that's another way to say if something's a crock, it's another way to say something is BS or bullshit, which means that it's nonsense. It's so Homer to say that. All right. So let's move on to the next exercise.

which we're calling adopt an English speaking parent. So, I mean, this is perfect because, you know, maybe Homer Simpson, if you're a big fan of the Simpsons, could make for a great English speaking parent. So Izzy, I want to ask you if when you were learning English, did you have any models that really helped you to develop your fluency? I did several. And I think I had my phases with each one. But I think the one that's the biggest reference for me would have to be

Yeah.

What does that mean? Yeah, so psych comes from psychic, but we have an expression like to psych someone out, which means to trick them, to fool them. And even as a slang, there's a slang use that maybe you play a trick on a friend and then you say or you tell them something that's actually a joke. It's not true. You'd be like psych being like, you know, you fell for it. You believed me, but it was really a lie.

I was like, I gotcha. Right. Gotcha. Okay. So let me, let me show you guys. Actually, I have a clip here where Sean, a section of two clips, and I'm going to play them together where you can see Sean speaking and you can see it speaks fast, but this idea of having an English speaking parents, uh,

For me, it was key because I learned not just connected speech, but vocabulary, intonation, the whole package, right? I think the reason that this is so effective of choosing a parent, choosing someone who is the model that you prioritize for your fluency, is that if you're always listening to different people who maybe have different accents and different ways of speaking, different

maybe specific vocabulary slang that they use, then you're not really going to be picking up any specific accent or specific flow of speaking.

So this really helps you to focus on one particular way of speaking. So you can have many different inputs, but if you do spend some deliberate time listening specifically to someone who you really admire their way of speaking, you really would like to speak like them. It's going to help to give you more of that focus so that you can develop a fluency and even reduce your accent if that's a goal that you have. Guster, what the hell? That's a good way to get yourself shot. What the hell are you wearing, Spencer?

I ain't Spencer. I'm Soup Can Sam. And unlike some detectives, when Gus and I show up for a stakeout, we try to blend in with the regular people. Who's Gus supposed to be? I'm a regular guy in a car. I blend in fine. Well, at least someone finally realized who the right suspect is. Okay, the Mantis is a bit eccentric, and I wouldn't go as far as to say that I support what he's doing, but you have to admit, he's done a better job than we have of slowing down the Caminos, and he's just one guy. I'm just one guy. I've solved more crimes than I can count, because I've solved a lot of crimes, not just because I can't count very high.

so yeah that's sean and i just wanted to show you guys like everyone i think ethan has seen this like at this show or our producers here so i just wanted to show you my maybe my my biggest reference for english speaking did you catch any interesting words there that he was in that clip by the way because they're uh they're uh working right at night it's

Staking out. He said blend in with regular people. What does that mean to blend in? Yeah, in this case, like if you look similar to regular people, you're blending in. You're not going to be able to distinguish that person from the regular people that they're among. So that's blending in. It's like being inconspicuous.

There you go. Yeah. The word blend is like mix, right? That's what it means. Yeah. So this is great because, you know, he has a very specific way of speaking a specific accent used a lot of great vocabulary there. So I think it's a great idea using a character that you love from a TV series. You love that's a great idea. You could use a celebrity. So I had a student who,

who I would do this with a lot of my students, like I would kind of present that idea for them as if they wanted to choose an English speaking parents. And one of mine students really loved how Oprah spoke. And so she would every week listen to like an interview or her podcast and choose a clip. And she would like shadow it, imitate it and record herself. And then she'd send it to me and I would give her feedback on how she could get closer to Oprah's way of speaking. But this was really great because she over time, she did pick up a way of speaking that was closer to Oprah's way of speaking.

And for myself, when I was kind of like learning, I was more focused on learning Spanish. I really loved the accent from the Canary Islands and actually found an influencer on YouTube from the Canaries. And I would watch his videos and imitate him so I could pick up more on that specific accent. So it's.

That can be really great as well. It's like if you want an accent from a very specific place, maybe you can find an influencer who's from that place. Can you think of any other instances of this, Izzy? I can. And I was thinking about what you were just saying.

Like picking a celebrity or a person to be your parent. And I think one important thing is I need to connect with that person, right? Maybe values wise, like to share values or still like him in any way that you feel more internally, like that you resonate. That's one important thing because if you pick randomly...

Maybe that's not going to work, right? So in my case, you asked if I had another reference, another English-speaking parent. And I had a few Sportcasters...

back in the day that were big reference for me as well and they do speak quite fast in this case it's not just connected speech they tend to speak loud and fast and i brought another example here that we can show he lost a home playoff game 33 to 14 to ray rice and company managed only 14 points against the ravens turned around one year later and lost to mark sanchez at home in foxborough turned around one year later and lost lost to mark sanchez in foxborough that's

Like if you know what he's talking about, it makes it easier. Right. I feel like when I learned that about you, that you were really into American football, it kind of something clicked for me that sometimes you have a certain way of your speaking that it fits well with the way I think you were even into. Was it Houston, your team? Dallas. Yeah.

Dallas. Yes. Dallas. So I think maybe listening to some of the sportcasters from Dallas, you picked up like a slight bit of the Texan accent. Southern accent.

- Yes, some of the draw there. I don't know if I still have it, maybe I do. I don't even know where in my speech I can still find it. So I think that's what naturally happens, right? When you're living your English and you're just out there finding what you resonate with, as I was saying. - Most definitely. So if you guys wanna try out kind of like imitation or shadowing, one thing I might recommend is if you find it's really difficult at first is you could even start, for example, at 0.5 speed

And then you can imitate several times until it becomes comfortable and then speed it up to 0.75, try to do it at that faster pace and then, you know, work your way up to the original, the normal speed. So this is a way that your speaking will get faster. It'll start to flow more and everything. Um,

And a really great way you can do this as well is with the RealLife English app actually shadowing with our app because you have the full interactive transcript. So you can follow along with our speaking and you could even pause the video or the audio. You could read it at first so you can try reading it several times and then listen and try to see, okay, am I pronouncing things correctly? And then you can even try to listen to it and speak at the same time and you can

adjust the speed and everything as well, depending on how easy it is for you to keep up with Izzy or Mai's speed of speaking. And if you want to take this to the next level, I think it would really be recording yourself while you're imitating and then listening back and kind of giving yourself feedback. Or if you have a teacher who can give you feedback, like I was talking about with my student, that's even better. So here Izzy is going to quickly demonstrate for you how you could do this with the app.

So if you don't have the RealLife English app yet, you can download it for free and get access actually to the premium version of this episode for free by clicking the link in the description down below on your phone. All right, guys, now let me show you how I do the exercise of shadowing myself. So there's different ways that people do this. The most basic way I believe is by playing an audio or video, then you listen to a sentence or two, then you pause and repeat.

So, it's a repetition exercise.

and you can evolve that, get longer and longer sentences and parts. You can try to read at the same time. Reading is an option as well. Now I'm going to open the RealLife app and I'm going to show you with one of our lessons how you can do the next level, which is speaking at the same time. Now it can be confusing if you're just watching somebody do it, but you got to try this yourself. If you have the text, the subtitles, which you do on the app,

It works perfectly and it's great for working on your muscles of articulation and your ability to just think fast and speak fast. Let's do it. Alright, so in this lesson that I'm going to play here, Ethan is talking about the importance of pretending to be an actor as an exercise. So this is kind of similar to what we are practicing here with shadowing. So I'm going to hit play and I'm going to speak at the same time while reading.

If you want to, you can listen to, you know, a couple of times before you try that. I think actually that will give you more familiarity with the material, but I've already listened to this. So for me, it's easier. Let's go.

We all know that actors, when they're playing sort of a part, they're acting differently than they normally would. That might sound obvious, but you might have someone who is normally very loud and outgoing, who is having to play someone who's more quiet and reserved. And you might have someone who is generally more introverted, more quiet and having to play someone who is larger than life, you know, super confident, super boss, whatever.

And you can do the same when it's, you know, almost thinking about your English speaking self, your English speaking identity as a role that you're playing. And that role is this person who is super confident. And you can even look to someone who you admire for their confidence. All right. So you can do this so easily with our lessons. You can listen to it once, you know, as I said, and then you go back and you play it again. I know of people who...

don't just watch our lessons once, you know, they go through it multiple times because there's just so much value in them, you know, not just the tips, not just the vocabulary but even this, you can try shadowing and you can gain so much more out of our lessons on the app. Alrighty, let's move to the last exercise, this is a really fun one. So, this is "Wrap Your Way to Fluency".

And I discovered this through a guy named Idalos Ines. We've actually had him as a guest on the podcast a while back, but I really admire his way of teaching. So he has a course called The Mimic Method that he teaches actually several languages. And I did this many years ago for Spanish.

And he does something similar we were talking about with shadowing where he'll take very small bits of rap songs and he slows them down and has you listen to them and imitate them. That's why it's the mimic method.

And the point here is not even to pay any attention to the context, to the words that are being said, but just things like the rhythm, the intonation and the individual sounds, especially because when we learn another language, oftentimes there are sounds that do not exist in our mother tongue. And we need to build up both our listening capability to hear those sounds and our ability to

of our muscles of articulation to be able to pronounce those sounds. So that's going to make a big difference in your naturalness and your comprehensibility when you speak. So Izzy, I was curious, what do you think about this? Have you ever used rap to improve your fluency? I have. It's the craziest thing. There is one song by De La Soul. I think that's the band's name. And the song is called Trying People.

that I actually learned it by heart and I don't know why, it just got me, I just got hooked onto it. And this song was introduced by a friend of mine back in 2014 when I was teaching at this language school and Henry-- 'Sup, Henry? I don't know if you're watching this, I'll send this to you later. And

Yeah, I can actually sing it by heart, meaning I don't need to read the lyrics. Why don't you put your money where your mouth is? Yeah, what does that mean? To put my money where my mouth is? It's like when you're making a claim about being able to do something, if someone tells you put your money where your mouth is, it's almost like you're, you know, putting down a bet or something that you'll be able to do it. You're putting down money. But we'll just use it figuratively to say like, you know, show me. All right.

Alright, let me play the backing track here and see if I can do this. It's harder with the backing track, but I think I can do it. ♪ Throughout my change to grow ♪ ♪ Some of my people got left behind ♪ ♪ They didn't listen for the gun ♪ ♪ As I leap from off the line ♪ ♪ 13 years deep in this marathon I'm running ♪ ♪ Paid dues and still got bills to pay ♪ ♪ When I came back around the way ♪ ♪ Old friends me gave me dead eyes ♪ ♪ And fake smiles half wide ♪ ♪ We're supposed to rid the world of danger ♪ ♪ These days we nod head and small talk ♪ ♪ Like polite strangers ♪ ♪ It's natural to fall off ♪ ♪ Just lean close to the tree ♪

I'll be there if they need me to be and I know all my local shorties cause they all know who I am and lately wanna flip grammar instead of grams like that's the only choice they got. They tell me how they're gonna shake up the game but came to me to see if I can give 'em guidance for change. Shit y'all, I need guidance myself and I chose the right words to make jams. Got fans around the world but my girl is not one of 'em. My relationship's a big question cause my career is a clear hand-remised to hood progression.

Says she needs a man and our kids need a father. I'm not at all ready to hear her say don't bother. That was very impressive.

Amazing. And by the way, guys, I want to let you know that the rest of today's lesson is exclusively available for those of you watching on the Real Life English app. If you want to watch the next part of this lesson, including our conversation about the lyrics of the song that I just rapped and our adventure to Portugal, Ethan and I will go on a trip to Portugal and we talked about what we expect and different places that we want to visit. And at the end of the lesson, we also talked about funny experiences that we've had

flying on the airplane with other passengers. So to get all of that, plus resources like vocabulary practice, just click the link in the description below and you unlock this lesson for free if it's your first one.