THIS is More Important Than Grammar (feat. my dad)

🌟 Episode Highlights

• Strategies to improve your confidence
• Why is pronunciation so important?
• How to practice pronunciation

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Transcript

[Jean] Today, I'm happy to introduce a very special guest, my dad. His name is Brian, and he's been an English tutor since 2021. Before that, he worked in supply chain management for 30 years, working for companies like Bank of America, Whirlpool, Proctor and Gamble, and Schneider Electric. He specializes in helping business people improve their CVs and resumes, prepare for interviews and presentations, and boost their overall fluency. 

He's joining us here today on English Extras to tell us his biggest piece of advice for learners and not only learners focusing on business English, but all learners of English. So, thanks for joining me, Dad. 

[Brian] Well, you're so very welcome. It's always good to see you. 

[Jean] So, jumping right into it, you've been tutoring and maybe we can also say coaching for several years now. What advice do you find yourself giving most often? 

[Brian] Well, you know, that's uh that's always an interesting question because, you know, when I first started doing this, I had really no idea. And the biggest epiphany or surprise that I had is people from all levels–from CEOs that I deal with all the way down to people who are just graduating from…from college–is that their biggest challenge in speaking English is confidence. 

It's this concept of “I just don't feel confident speaking English. I don't feel, uh, other people speak better than I do.” 

And so we go through this question-and-answer around their confidence in speaking English, but what it really comes down to really more than anything is their pronunciation. 

And so even though they have–they may have issues with grammar, grammar is really overstated in my opinion by a lot of people. And I always–I always tell my students: pronunciation is king. 

If you can say words, pronounce words correctly–well you can absolutely communicate in English. So if I were to say to you: “me family goes park Saturday.” Well most of you would probably understand what I was saying that my family and I are going to the park on Saturday. But the grammar was absolutely terrible, but the pronunciation was spot-on, was correct. 

So, it gives you a way that you can absolutely understand what someone's saying, even if the grammar isn't quite right, if the pronunciation is correct. 

[Jean] We're often taught in school that grammar is most important. And I know you and I both hear this a lot from students that grammar is usually the primary focus in English classes all around the world. So why is focusing on pronunciation more important in your opinion?

[Brian] It's the way to more quickly get to–to actually communicating. Typically, at least the–the people I'm dealing with, you know, they're going to meetings, they're having phone calls, they're having presentations in English. And so many of them have this really high degree of urgency. And so, you know, again, if you want to–if you–if you want to focus on grammar, well, I mean, you can do that, but the reality is grammar is not going to get you to the point of being able to communicate better, quicker.

 What you really want are for people to understand you. So, for example, I had this uh this student from China. He worked for Mastercard. When I first started meeting with with him, one of my first questions is typically, "So, what company do you work for?" And I couldn't understand what he was saying. 

And so, we practiced him saying Mastercard. And he was he was really almost angry about it because (not at me), but because he had been at Mastercard for three years, and no one had told him that he wasn't saying the name of the company well enough to for people to understand it. 

And the challenge again that most people have, your boss might give you some hint. Your manager may give you some, you know, may help you a little bit, but the reality is no one in the business world is going to help you with your English. Your clients are not, your customers are not, your suppliers are not. The expectation is is that you can communicate in English. And the best way again to communicate is with pronunciation. 

And typically what I focus on is to scope, really, around what are you saying typically in a given day or week in English in your business because again there's–there's very specific vocabulary. You know you don't want to focus on all vocabulary. You don't need to. You–you scope it to specifically the words that you're using. And if you're not saying the words that you're using every day in your business life correctly or just in your life in general, well, you're not going to be able to effectively communicate. 

[Jean] So that leads in really nicely to my next question. Focusing on just the vocabulary that you use most often–that's a great place to start, I think. So what other strategies do you recommend for practicing pronunciation? 

[Brian] Now again my background is, is in business, in corporations, in big corporations mainly, uh, in–in management, executive management and so you know my background is not in teaching English and so I had this kind of same question when I first started doing this. I'm thinking, “Well, you know, what's a–what's a good approach?” Well, when I started, you know, I'm thinking, “Well, what type of people spend a lot of time trying to change the way they speak?” Well, actors do that.

I found a number of actors that talked about how they go about developing a voice for a part because a lot of times they they will use a different voice in a part. And so I found like Tom Hanks for example who talked about how he developed the voice for Forrest Gump. Well, the way he did that with–without going into the details of it–is really by listening to someone speak the way he wanted to speak and repeating, listening and repeating. 

Now again, Tom Hanks does, you know, when he was doing Forrest Gump, he didn't have a year to be able to develop this voice. He had probably, at the most, weeks to develop this voice. If you anyone has seen the movie Forrest Gump, you can listen to Tom Hanks and that voice is not his normal voice. He's using a–a voice that he developed based on another actor that had this kind of voice. So, but he would listen and then repeat what that person had said and it was to try to speak in the way that that person speaks. 

The primary approach that I take is using the same approach but with TED talks. And part of the reason for TED talks is you have, you know, they're business people or academic people. And so you can find people who have different accents. 

And I tend to direct my students to somebody like a Bill Gates who just kind of sound, you know, he has this American accent. He speaks at just a moderate pace. He doesn't speak really fast or really slow. He just speaks at a moderate pace. And again, you can listen and repeat. Just listen to what he says and repeat it. And if you do this just a little bit every day over time, you're going to start to see improvement in how you say those words. 

Part of the other piece is is that a lot of the sounds connect to other words. So there's that you, Jean, that you had taught me around was this sound that is a difficult sound for Mandarin speakers, uh, Chinese speakers to say. And there's so many words that use that sound. 

Well, if you can if you can master saying that correctly, well, now that translates into many, many other words that you can now say correctly.

[Jean] In linguistics, that sound is called the dark L sound. And it is very tricky for Chinese speakers because they don't have that sound. That sound does not exist in Mandarin. It's a very common sound in English. You have it at the ends of very common words like “well”. And so what very often happens is that Mandarin speakers will change that to a W sound and they'll say “wew”.

[Brian] And that can be very difficult to, um, to change. You’re learning, you're retraining these muscles, how you use them. And for that specific sound, you know, so you have this sound, it's literally you're just kind of parsing, you're just separating your lips a little bit and don't move them. And then you just really move your tongue. 

And actually the thing I do, I break it down and don't voice it at all. And you just do. And I tell them, look, I said, just spend the next week going around when you have time just kind of making that movement. Get get used to making that movement. And then we work on the voicing and adding the voicing to it. So it's just oh, and you just add the voice to it. 

So, I mean, a lot of times you have to break it down because even though it seems like a very simple sound, it's really complex as to where the voice starts, where the voice ends, when the muscles move, when the, you know, it's just it's it's a fairly complex thing that we kind of, you know, as native English speakers, we kind of take it for granted because, but again, you know, I've been making that sound since I was a little kid. 

So, it's, you know, again, I've been trained, I've trained these muscles to do that. 

[Jean] There's two things that I want to mention there. One is a little anecdote about how when I was trying to learn Brazilian Portuguese several years ago, in Brazilian Portuguese, they have what's called nasal vowels. So vowels, you know, a e, e, u, like that, those are all vowels. Well, in English, we don't push these sounds into our noses. We have nasal consonants like the N and M and NG but we don't do this with vowels. 

And so, it's very important in Brazilian Portuguese to be able to make like an sound but through your nose because it actually changes the meanings of words.

 So when I was learning that, I sounded like a crazy person, but I did exactly what you just said where I was going around my house doing chores and I would practice, I would practice making this, you know, ow ow and trying to figure out how to get it into the nose.

And then eventually after doing that for I think several days eventually I was able to oh like that but you'll sound crazy and you'll look crazy and you will feel stupid but if you do it consistently you'll get there. 

And the second thing I want to mention is that I've come across this idea on YouTube and I wonder what you think about it. “You cannot produce what you cannot perceive.” So what does that tell you about the importance of listening? 

[Brian] So when I'm telling someone to listen to a TED talk, let's say they're listening to Bill Gates. Well, you know, they're going to start listening to Bill Gates and you know, I tell them, look, you're focused. You're not necessarily listening to words. I mean, you're going to perceive the words, but you're really listening for sounds. Sounds at ends of word, at the beginning of words. And usually, matter of fact, I usually have very specific sounds I have them just focus on because, again, trying to narrow the scope of what they're focused on. 

And so, you know, as you listen to the sound, you're not necessarily going to hear the difference between, let's just take that /ɫ/ sound. I mean, you're not going to necessarily hear respectful, and you're not necessarily going to hear that the way your brain can translate it into something that you're going to say. 

But let me just give you an example though of how over time you can learn something. It applies to hearing, it applies to taste, it applies to smell, it applies, you know, this is how people develop, uh, who are in, you know, certain industries, they have to smell certain things and be able to develop a smell for a certain thing.

But I when I worked at Proctor & Gamble at the JIF peanut butter plant, we used to get these thousands of pounds of–of peanuts from different places. And so you'd have Georgia peanuts, Chilean peanuts, Mexican peanuts, California peanuts, all these peanuts from different places. 

Well, I started just tasting the peanuts. And when I first started tasting them, they all I mean, they tasted like peanuts, you know? They just tasted like a raw peanut. It's like, okay. I couldn't really tell the difference. 

There's two things, though. One is that on the box it told me where they were from. So then I'm seeing where it's from and then I'm tasting it. Tastes like a peanut. I go to the next box. Oh, these are from Mexico. Taste. Tastes like a peanut. Visually they're a little bit different. Okay, these are from Mexico. Then I go to the Georgia peanuts. And I'm tasting. Okay, visually I can see their difference. And the tag is and my mind is seeing, oh, this is from Georgia. 

Well, over time, and again, you know, how long did it take? Maybe a month. And I was doing this a little bit, you know, several times a week, but within like a month, maybe two months, you could give me a peanut. I go, "Oh, that's a Mexican peanut." After about a year, I could just about tell you what farm it came from, or certainly the county in Georgia where it came from. 

And you can do the same thing with your ear so that you can, as you listen to sounds and as you repeat that over and over again. And especially and this is why to me it's so important when you're listening that you also see the word. 

So but in TED talks they have a button called ‘Transcript’ and you can turn that transcript button on so you can really, you can read, you can see what's going to be said before it's said. So this way you're connecting visually words with what you're hearing. And so again, as you do this over time and you spend a little bit of time every day doing this, you're eventually your ear is going to start your brain and it's going everything's going to start to connect and you're going, "Oh, this is an /ɫ/ sound." And then you're practicing saying it and then you're going to start getting this sound. You're going to start being able to say this sound. 

But you have to, as you said, you have to be able to perceive what is actually being said. 

[Jean] So, as we're talking about techniques and strategies, something that is continually coming up is this idea of time. So, your clients, your students are serious business people and they have serious goals. Often, ambitious learners are looking for hacks or shortcuts or methods that will give them the biggest impact in the shortest amount of time. What do you have to say about that and what do you recommend for learners like that? 

[Brian] Well, in terms of challenges from a teaching perspective, this is probably the greatest challenge that I have, you know, and again, everyone's looking for the magic pill, you know, the uh magic bullet, you know, the swish and flick, you know, they're looking for some, you know, again, a hack, something that can I can now um quick more I can quickly do this. 

Well, you know, these things that we've been talking about technically are hacks. The challenge is they're easy to do. You don't necessarily have to go out and buy something new, you know, and again, most people want, you know, I want a program. I want, you know, something somehow, well, this can't be the way that it's done. And the reality is it's exactly how it's done. This is how the professionals do it. It's how actors do it. you know, this is how Tom Hanks and Val Kilmer and I could name off others that that uh absolutely do it this way. 

So, and what I would rather see them do is spend a little time several times a day. So, you're sending 5 or 10 minutes in the morning, 5 or 10 minutes in the afternoon, and 5 or 10 minutes because again, this is muscle training. 

And so, it's no different than going to the gym. Well, you don't walk into the gym and pick up you don't pick up a kilo of weight, you know, you're going to you're going to start really with just a very very light weight. You know, you're going to start with something light and then you work up to it. 

It's the same way in training this. But it's something you gradually work into. If if you're thinking, "Oh, I'm going to do this in a day or two weeks." That's just that's unrealistic. But again, I think at the same time to say it's going to take me a year, I think that's also unrealistic. I think if you actually spend consistent time, there's no reason within say one to three months that you don't see significant improvement. 

[Jean] How do you recommend your clients to track their improvement? Because what I recommend, what I recommend as a teacher is to record yourself, not every day although certainly you can, but for the purposes of tracking record yourself at the beginning. 

[Brian] So again, business people understand the term ‘benchmark’ because that's part of project management. So you know I said you know you need to establish a benchmark and you know you need to set a benchmark at the beginning. 

So, you know, we all carry around these video recording devices. And I said, you know, so you're going to listen to Bill Gates. You're going to repeat what he says and record yourself. Then you're going to listen to Bill Gates and then actually watch yourself saying it. 

Now, this does several things for you. You know, number one is that we all hear ourselves when we speak. Well, the challenge is we don't sound like what we hear in our own head is not what you actually hear when you hear yourself recorded. I've had clients or had students that say, you know, “I've recorded myself and and I don't really sound that way.” And the reality is you sound exactly that way. The the difference is you become instead of listening to yourself within your own head, you now become the observer of yourself. You're now an observer. 

And I try to tell them, you need to be objective in what you're observing. People can be very critical of themselves. “Oh, I don't like the way I look on camera.” “Oh, I don't like the way I sound.” And this can be, again, this is this is this can be a challenge. But the reality is if you really want to take your learning to the next level and more quickly be able to improve, in my opinion, this is by far the best way–is to actually listen, repeat, record, and again, even if you only do it the first time. 

Let's say if the first time you start doing it, well, now you have a benchmark. So now 30 days from now, you can record yourself and say, "Hey, have I have I actually improved?" Because again, this can be a challenge people have because they act they may have actually improved, but they don't know they improved because the improvements are so in, you know, they're so incremental, you know, they're just kind of these little steps and they don't hear it. 

Now I hear it because, you know, I haven't, you know, I, you know, I might see them once, maybe twice a week. It's like, "Hey, you sound better." And they're like, "Oh, I am? I do?" Yes, you do. And if you had recorded yourself, you could absolutely verify that. 

So yeah, I think recording yourself at a minimum at the beginning gives you a benchmark of where you're starting and then 30, 60, 90 days, you can now record yourself again. You at least you now know, “Am I improving?”

[Jean] Well, thank you so much for joining me here today. For those who are interested, my dad is a teacher on iTalki and I can leave a link to his profile in the description for you if you'd like to book a class with him. So, Dad, thank you so much for joining me today. 

[Brian] It was absolutely my pleasure.