How R Sound is Practiced | #053

Today, I give a few tips on how the R sound can be enhanced, and the muscle memory practiced effectively. The R sound is by far the most difficult in the English language, and will require MUCH practice and patience to get clearly.

Practice by reading the story on the following link, and stressing each R with extreme exaggeration.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DV4U0jCL0Yc790CLLfg699YrrHCItWtM5FDc112MVSw/edit

COACH WITH ME 1 ON 1

Transcript

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Speaker 1 0:47

Welcome to the English out loud podcast, a podcast where I give you tips on how you can enhance your spoken English. Today's tips are going to follow up with our previous little lesson there on the R sound R you see , I want to talk for a moment here about muscle memory, because in order to develop a clear our sound, you need good muscle memory, and that's what we're here to work on. Muscle memory. Have you ever seen the movie Rocky, you know , played by Sylvester Stallone? It's a movie about a , an extremely skilled boxer becomes a champion is from the 1980s, seventies, seventies, and eighties. Rocky's a great movie. Now. Here's the thing that you'll notice if you watch the movie Rocky. And honestly, if you watch really any skilled boxers shadow, boxing is something that people do to enhance their muscle memory. If you watch the movie Rocky, the first Rocky, at least you'll see this guy, he's always punching the air. He's walking around, he's got these massive fists and he's just always swinging his arms in the air. Why does he do this? Well, every time that he does this, he becomes more accurate. His punch is faster and stronger than the punch before it, every time that a boxer throws a punch practicing means that he's probably going to throw a much more effective punch when it's needed. Right? I want to do the same thing with your speech here. That's the goal. That's the goal is shadow boxing of the R sound. What we're going to do is I am going to read a quick little story that I've written and you are going to repeat it after me. I'm also going to post this story in the description of this podcast. So you can actually check out the story, read along with it. There, enjoy yourself. The point of this. What is the point of this? Well, the point of this is that you get good at making that our position, because if you practice more, when you don't need to use the R , we know when you're just on your own, then when you do need to use an R and you're speaking with somebody else, it won't be that difficult to recall. Will it. Now, this is something you can do in the car. I mean, don't read the story in the car. We've, we've spoken about this in the past. Don't read in the car if you're driving, but you can do this by listening along and repeating after me. You can , uh, you know, if you have the chance, check out the doc that I got, and you can get really good at the R sound just by listening. Now, before we get into this, a little R muscle memory enhancement exercise, what I want to do is cover something real quick. This is something I may have spoken about a little in the past, and I want to make sure I really drive the point home. You see the words, R a R E and another kind of R O U R have the same pronunciation are , are a very common mix-up that I'll notice is people will pronounce the word R O U R as our, now this should always be avoided in the American accent. The word, our however, like, you know, when you're referring to time does receive the pronunciation hour and should always maintain that pronunciation. So repeat these couple a words after me here. Those are ours On our lunch hour. When are our hours?

Speaker 2 4:50

Okay .

Speaker 1 4:50

I'm sure you've got a little work to do on your, our sound still that's okay. The point is today, we are going to repeat that our , our motion learn and episode number 51, we are going to repeat that a lot in this little reading. So let me jump right into it because I don't have a lot of time try repeating it after me. And like I said, I am going to post this in the description of this podcast episode here. So look for it. There we are going to our favorite restaurant.

Speaker 2 5:28

Our plan

Speaker 1 5:30

Is to start our meal by ordering our appetizer, then washing it down with our shared pitcher of

Speaker 2 5:40

Water. Our

Speaker 1 5:43

Dinner options are looking more savory than our first course, our appetizer, which truly roused more hunger than it relieved. Well, we are waiting for our food. Forgetful waiters are sharing our drinks with our neighboring table. We are not impressed, but are relieved. When the manager resolves that our drinks are now free. Our second course comprises our preferred salad, our regular red wine and radishes, which are surprisingly large fried rice with carrots and red salsa are a bonus side dish that our friend Omar couldn't finish. Our choice. Dessert includes fresh Sharise and our own creme brulee brownies are our second option. Well , raspberry pie and Rocky road ice cream are our third and fourth. We are now ready to request the bill, but realize that our credit card is not recognized by the register in this restaurant. Ooh . Okay. Stretch it out real quick. A little , uh , uh , let me just stretch your muscles cause that that's tough. That's tough. So stretch it out. Cause we got a little bit more to go pause this. If you need pause this and stretch your muscles in your mouth, and then we're going to jump back into it. I'm going to start reading. Now our choices are to work off the dent, washing dishes, or try our luck rushing towards the doors. Considering our cars are not far from the entrance by the bar. We ready ourselves for a rapid departure. However, before our race towards the doors, we are reminded that our rides are out of gas and are our only means of transportation with our capture inevitable. We resign ourselves to hard labor cleaning the restaurants floors. Before we are able to admit our mistakes, we run into a roll of cash on the ground with more than enough to cover our entire bill. We are relieved to resolve our debt and leave without a reason to worry. Now that if you followed along with that and , uh , and you feel confident in your ability to reproduce that, then good for you. Good for you because that is how you practice a clear our sound. If you didn't feel so confident with it. Well good for you that you tried because the more that you try this, I promise you the easier it'll be to remember the are so many words have ours . And if you have a habit of rolling your R you will be well understood. However, I've noticed that that is one of the things that my students are usually most keen on overcoming is that our sound they don't want, they want our , well, I'm happy to have given you the tips today that hopefully help you reach that goal. Well, I'm going to get to wrapping this one up for today. As I mentioned, I got to keep today's episode a little bit short don't I, well, thank you for listening today. I very much appreciate having your attention. I want you to keep practicing that our sound keep practicing that this document is Google doc. It's in the description. Check it out, click on it. Whenever you got the opportunity to press it with your finger, whatever you gotta do, but review it because this is how your art gets better. Anyway, have a wonderful morning, a wonderful evening day time. Enjoy it. Enjoy your breakfast, enjoy whatever you're doing. Just put a smile on my friend, put a smile on and uh, and go about your day. Happy because it's good to be happy. Isn't it is nice. And when you're happy, well, maybe you'll do something nice for somebody else. Now you've put that person in a good mood and now they may also go ahead and do something nice for a stranger. And then that stranger may go do something for another stranger. We're in all strangers, but we're all in this together. So we've all got to participate in making each other happy. So have a wonderful day and you'll have many more good things to hear from me in the days to come have a good one.