Tag Archive: speak english

Tara Musich > speak english

Tara’s ESL VLOG: American Pronunciation – Part 3 – Consonant Sounds

 

Today’s video is the third installment of a series of videos about pronunciation that I am making for my students and YouTube viewers. In the first video we went over the Alphabet and the names of the letters that you are familiar with. The second video discussed the vowels and the use of the Color Vowel Chart. This video will focus on the Consonants, and the sounds they make. The most important part of today’s’ lesson is to remember that the “names” of the letters, ARE NOT the sounds they make. Today, we will practice the sounds. If you study the sounds of English then you will be able to improve your fluency by mastering STRESS and LINKING – 2 important components to sounding like a native speaker, and being understood by native speakers. So, let’s get started, and take a look at how to produce the consonant sounds of the English language.

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Tara’s ESL Blog: Speaking English With Confidence

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Today’s blog is about CONFIDENCE, which is such an important topic when it comes to learning a foreign language. I would say that almost all of my students came to me looking for help with confidence in speaking English. They want to be able to speak without pauses, express themselves clearly, and be able to talk about a variety of topics. In my classes, we work on all of these areas — learning new vocabulary, discussing important issues and daily activities, practicing pronunciation — but how do you LEARN to be more confident? Well, after having studied three languages, I discovered that even though many people think that vocabulary and grammar are the essentials to confident speaking, there are other changes you must make in order to BUILD the confidence you need and want to have. So, what should you do?

To start, STOP being scared of making mistakes. Mistakes while speaking in English are the best way to learn new things because they help you REMEMBER key vocabulary in the future. The mistake leaves an IMPRESSION on your mind and for that reason is easier to retrieve from your memory in the future. As a student of foreign languages, it is impossible to avoid making mistakes here and there, so the sooner you become COMFORTABLE with it, the better you will feel and communicate.

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Tara’s ESL Blog: Learning English with Books – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Chapter 1

Tara’s Lessons for ESL Students: Learning English with Books

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Many of my students and I enjoy using different types of fictional and non-fictional texts during our classes. One of my favorites (and one of my students’ favorites as well) is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by the beloved British author Roald Dahl.  Although considered a children’s book, it is a story that is fun for young and old readers and appeals to people from all over the world.

There are so many reasons why this novel is great for students of English! First of all, the vocabulary used in this book is interesting and very useful in everyday life. The new words and idiomatic phrases you learn are repeated throughout the story, and will STAY in your mind because you are reminded of them from start to finish. Also, there is lots of SPOKEN English used in this book, so you get an idea for how native speakers really talk to each other, and then hopefully go out and use it! Finally, this novel allows ESL students to have fun while accomplishing the goal of reading a complete book in English!

In today’s blog we will take a look at a typical lesson for this novel. I hope you enjoy it!

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Tara’s ESL VLOG: The Future Part 2 – Simple Rules

 

What’s up everybody! My name is Tara Musich and I am a certified and experienced teacher of American English. Today I am presenting you with a video that’s part of a series that I am making on the Future Tense. Today’s video is about some special rules for using the future tense. These are some rules that I have shared with several of my students while working on using this tense and I thought it would be nice to share with you – my YouTube viewers and subscribers. So, we’re going to go over four rules together. We’ll go over the rule and then take a look at the example. You can look in the text below to follow along, if you like!

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Tara’s ESL VLOG: How to Choose the Right Teacher for YOU!

Hello again, Tara Musich here, teacher of American English. Today, we are going to talk about how to choose the right teacher for you, whether it be an online teacher or a live teacher, like face to face, a live face to face teacher. Most of us educators will sit here and try to tell you why you should choose me or this other person to teach you. So today I am going to give you a few tips on how to choose a teacher that is suitable to you and your personality.

So, there are three, three tips, three things that I think that are important when choosing a teacher, and the first one may sound a little funny, but I really think that it’s important. The first one is the person’s voice, the teacher’s voice. When you are learning a foreign language your teacher’s voice is very important. It is the voice that you are imitating. It is the voice that you should want to sound like. So that’s why I think that this is very important. It needs to be appealing to your ears, you should like it! It should be something you want to try to sound like. So, first and foremost the voice of your teacher I think is very important when you’re trying to work on speaking skills and pronunciation skills. Sounding good is always great, you know, in any language that we are learning.

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Tara’s ESL VLOG: Why Listening is NOT Enough!

Hello everybody! my name is Tara Musich and I am a teacher of American English, currently teaching online while living abroad. Today I am going to talk to you about a topic that many of my students and I discuss together. The topic that we often discuss is “Why listening is not enough.” Now, when I say that to you, you might think “Hey wait teacher what do you mean listening is not enough? Everybody tells me I should listen like a baby and I should just be listening all the time and then this will help me speak”…and in many ways listening does help you, but let me give you an example of why it is not the best way to start speaking.

So, imagine you want to learn to swim, swim, right? In the pool or in the ocean. You know you start reading books and watching documentaries about swimming. Maybe you watch some sporting events about swimming. Maybe you decide to talk to someone about swimming. Someone who is a good swimmer, for example …And they can give you some advice about how to swim correctly and how not to make mistakes and things like that. Maybe you join a special group guided by an experienced swimmer and you know, you can discuss all of your worries and difficulties in regard to swimming. After you’ve done all of these activities, have you learned to swim? …Well the same is true for speaking, truly. You can read about it, and you can watch movies and you can think about it, do all of these things, but unless you truly use it and practice with it, you’ll never really be able to speak in a foreign language, any foreign language, if you don’t really start speaking.

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Three Good Ideas about Learning Language

1. Reading allows you to connect with the language, and it builds your vocabulary within a specific context – which makes your speaking stronger.

Many people “moan and groan” when presented with the prospect of having to read something – anything! As a lover of language, written or spoken, this was never a problem for me as I love to read literature of all types. However, as a teacher of English, I realize that not all my students feel the same way that I do, and so I asked myself how I could help my students to enjoy reading more. It seemed like the best answer was: only read what you are interested in!

You should put extra effort into finding a form of literature that is appealing to you – don’t read anything that seems boring to you! I have found in my experience that there is something for everyone, whether it is a paragraph of text or dialogue, a comic strip, a news article, a famous poem, a short book or even a series of novels! If your teacher has presented you with a text that you are not interested in, SPEAK UP, and tell them! The most important thing for you and your English language learning is to choose a subject that is not only useful in daily life, but also very interesting to you.

 

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