'Exploit' is the word

Dear visitor,

Yes, you're in the right place! Clicking on the tab "How to Use" or at least choosing to take a look at this post was the best decision you've made this week! So, to honour this superb decision don't look away, let the food burn in the kitchen, forget the boiler on and continue reading.

If you're planning to use this blog, then you may as well want to use it properly.

In the next three minutes you'll learn how to organise your self-study so as to make the most of the material provided here, as well as your time and effort, and hence accelerate your progress.

What you need

 For that purpose, you'll need the items shown in the picture.

• a computer with a good Internet connection
• headphones
• a voice recorder
• some paper and a pen

The computer, Internet connection and the pair of headphones are self-explanatory.

As for the voice recorder, you'll need it to make the most of the oral exercises and your practice time (read why below). If you don't already have a voice recorder or if you don't have the money to buy one (I got mine 3 years ago and it cost me £80; though I'm sure there are cheaper options out there), then you can use a free online recorder, such as  this one.

There will be some exercises in the upcoming videos which will be largely oral exercises but some may require you to grab a piece of paper and a pen and jot down a thing or two. 

Got all these? Perfect. Let's get started..

Step 1

Click on the 'Received Pronunciation' tab. Read the post 'An Introduction to RP'. I simply cannot stress enough how important it is for you to learn a bit more about the 'tool' you'll be working with throughout your self-study before you make a start.

How to Go Through the Lessons

Step 2

Read the text of the x Lesson and listen to the audio (if any). Listen carefully. We don't want it to go in one ear and out the other, now do we?

Step 3

When you've finished reading, listen to each recording again and repeat until you're satisfied, until your pronunciation resembles or mimics the one in the recording. 

Step 4 

Find a voice recorder, a voice recording app or website and repeat once more what you've been practising. Record your voice. Listen to it. Found flaws in your pronunciation? You don't like it? Listen to the blog's recordings again and try to spot the differences. Record your voice again. It's all about trial and error really. Time-consuming but incredibly rewarding!

Step 5

Watch the video. (I know I know.. there is no video here whatsoever! The equipment will arrive around mid-July, so by the end of the month I'll have made my first-ever videos. Exciting and scary stuff.)

Step 6

Go through all the exercises of the video. Don't just skip them and watch the video passively. Do the exercises (both oral and written) and practise. 

Practice makes perfect; a saying that couldn't be more suitable for pronunciation improvement. Your tongue is just another muscle. The more you practise, the more you train the muscle of your tongue. Eventually, in the middle of a conversation in English you'll find yourself utilising and applying what you've learnt without even realising it and, most importantly, without struggling (thanks to the endless hours you spent training your tongue muscle and your brain).

Step 7

Relax. Sit back and enjoy a nice cup of coffee or tea.. or a nice, cool beer.. or whatever. This step is just as important as the previous steps. You should always treat yourself after a lesson's hard work! :)

Hope this helps.

Take care.

An introduction to RP

If you’ re reading this, this means that you most probably have a more or less strong  native accent when speaking in English and always, often, sometimes or rarely (the frequency of the incident is irrelevant, at least in my book) find it difficult to make yourself understood by English native speakers solely because of your  pronunciation.

It is true that a non-native could have a very good command of the English language, impressively rich vocabulary and profound knowledge of the English grammar and never fail to apply it correctly both in written and verbal speech, and yet find themselves struggling when it comes to oral communication with native speakers.

The reason being that (a) they pronounce some words incorrectly (b) their speech sounds ‘flat’ or fragmented and lacks a natural flow - in other words, their rhythm and intonation are very poor (c) they just talk with a very strong foreign accent or (d) they have a combination of the characteristics mentioned above which really only makes matters worse.

The good news is that, for you to be here, you have finally come to grips with this issue and you are minutes away from discovering the first building blocks of your improvement in that domain.

But before you sail on that boat, I think you need to have some more background information.

One term.

Two words. 

Received Pronunciation. 

RP for short.

Hopefully, RP will be your friend helping you in your time of need communication-wise. RP will be the tool you’ll be using to cast the foreign accent off your English as well as to patiently ‘sculpt’ and shape your pronunciation and accent.

It doesn’t matter if you never master or learn RP to perfection. Very few people do. However, it’s important to realise that it is the study of Received Pronunciation that will be the bridge you’ll have to cross in order to achieve tension- and embarrassment-free communication. 

What is RP? 

In a nutshell, RP is the standard accent of English as spoken in the south of England. It’s a neutral, non-regional accent, so it’s no surprise that is so commonly used as a model by teachers of English as a foreign language and in dictionaries giving pronunciation. 

The Story behind RP

Once upon a time.. 

Actually it was the 1900s when more and more students coming from middle class backgrounds were going to public boarding schools. These schools were populated with teachers from prestigious places and universities like Cambridge and Oxford.

Inevitably, the middle class students got influenced by their teachers and their peers and vice versa. One thing led to another and a new accent was born around the middle of the 19th century within the walls of those public boarding schools.

This newly-emerged accent was free from regional elements and therefore did not contain any clues about that speaker's region of origin before attending the school.

Daniel Jones, British phonetician at UCL, named it for obvious reasons 'Public School Pronunciation' in his first edition of the English Pronouncing Dictionary in 1917. It was in the second edition later on when he changed the name to 'Received Pronunciation'. His definition of the term was the following: "everyday speech in the families of Southern English person whose men-folk had been educated at the great public boarding schools".

In 1922, John Reith, the first General Manager of BBC, established a committee including Daniel Jones to decide on what type of speech should be used in the British Broadcasting Company. Should RP or a variety of regional accents be broadcast?

In the end, RP was adopted by the BBC and as a result this young accent gained popularity rapidly. Throughout the era before the second World War all the announcers spoke RP; thus explaining one of its alternative names, 'BBC Pronunciation'.

Largely due to sociolinguistic factors RP started to have connotations of prestige and authority. Soon it became the accent of those with power, money and influence. The prestige it had gained was so great that working and lower social classes tried to learn or even imitate RP in order to move up socially.

With RP being one of the most recognisable and best-known UK accents, one would think that at the time it was widely spread throughout the UK. But in fact it was estimated that by the 1970s only 3% of the British people were RP speakers. 

And they all lived happily ever after.. THE END.

Oh, hey! Wait.

Did they?

What happened next? What about the present day? Nothing changed? 

RP Today 

Well, RP may still be widely known (it’s actually the accent most people typically associate with the UK) but it’s not widely spread since only 2% of British people are RP speakers.

To this day RP continues to be associated with educated speakers and formal speech, but by no means is considered to be superior to the regional British accents. One might even say that its popularity has suffered a slight decline over the years as some arbitrarily like to think of this allegedly posh accent as indicative of that speaker’s privilege and arrogance.

More and more BBC announcers are speaking in their regional accents and teachers of English as a foreign language are beginning to expose their students to a wider range of accents.

Blog till you Drop

Friday 20th June 2014. Home alone. In the wee small hours of the morning. Sitting at my office in almost complete darkness. Glued to the flickering screen of my computer, spending my holidays slacking off as much as possible to make up for all of the last year's productiveness.

"I love blogging" I thought to myself. Hmmm.. I cleared my throat. "Well, at least I love the idea of blogging, as I've never been an official or, indeed, a very active blogger or blog watcher before." Too many a time I wanted to start my own blog but something would always halt me like the lack of time and the ability to make up a ton of excuses like this one. Apparently, it had become clear to me that I had the PFCAD Syndrome. Procrastination-favouring confusion and absence of determination syndrome.

In the midst of my blissful procrastination I started again to do some research on something I'm crazy about. English pronunciation. Pronunciation websites, pronunciation videos made just for kicks, pronunciation channels on YouTube made by serious professionals, articles, pronunciation books and book reviews, you name it.. 

After two mugs of coffee and one cup of tea, what I realised was that the free pronunciation websites and YouTube channels weren't much helpful in what I think they had been set out to do, and that is to help somebody with poor pronunciation improve through self-study in that domain to ease their communication in English. Most of them were ineffective, boringly structured and unfriendly to the user; allegedly helping you to improve your accent or pronunciation by presenting only bits and pieces of relevant information in a completely random, fragmented manner.

And then it just dawned on me..

"I'll do it!"

That very moment my chaotic, dark bedsit was instantly lit from one corner to the other by a huge, blinding bright light buld. Made my eye pupils contract. Shed light to all my blog-related concerns and problems. What should I write about? What do I want to blog about? What do I enjoy doing the most? It all was now crystal clear..

"I'll make a blog about English pronunciation!"

Brainstorm. Two million five hundred thirty six thoughts and ideas crossed my mind. It will be a blog about.. a straight-forward guide.. a complete pronunciation course.. Blown away. It'll have an accompanying YouTube channel.. complementary.. Carried away. Then social media support.. more, more.. Excited more than I could possibly say. All of a sudden, wide-awake. Hyper. Creative. Insanely enthusiastic. Like a mad scientist listening to the first breath and heart beat of their Frakenstein monster. 

Friday 20th June 2014. Home alone. In the wee small hours of the morning. Lying in my bed. Cloud nine.

"I'll blog about it till I drop" I thought to myself, called it a night and fell asleep.. with a smile.