This is Elliot from ETJ English.

And today, we're talking about probably one of the most important parts of pronunciation, actually, probably one of the most important parts of English in general.

Intonation.

Let's do it.

Your intonation is just as important as the words you choose.

This is something I have read in many books about phonetics.

Linguistics?

Yes, vocabulary is important.

Yes, grammar is important.

Yes, vowel sounds and constant sounds are important.

But Internation is the heart and the soul off.

All of this and we all want it.

All of my students.

One of the first things they want is a better Internation.

And yes, there are rules.

There are things you can learn about Internation.

You could definitely learn the techniques and tips of what natives do, but it's very, very particular, and things can change and things could be very specific but also very non specific.

At the same time, it's such a complex topic on we all want it.

Why?

Because we are human.

You, my students are human on.

Humans always want the thing which is the most difficult to get.

And that's the truth.

There are lots of things I want in life, which are very, very difficult.

I could easily have something else, but I want the thing, which is more difficult.

I'm sure you are the same.

Anyway, I'm going to give you just a few useful tips for improving your Internation some things which you can do to make your Internation better.

Now, of course, the first thing I need to mention is you need to learn the rules.

You do need to know the reasons why we use particular tones and understand the names of different tones just so you know how it works.

And of course, you need some stress and rhythm.

These are all things you could learn in my pronunciation course or from an English teacher.

The link to my pronunciation course is in the description box below, but it's not just that you can learn rules, but there's only a certain distance that the rules Congar Oh, which leads me on to point number one.

I want you to imagine Internation is a bit like a song, right?

Imagine you're driving in your car on.

Do you do this every morning on the way to work on every time you're you're driving into work.

The same song seems to come on.

The radio is a very popular song at the moment.

Everybody loves it.

It's really, really popular.

Maybe you like the song.

Maybe you don't like the song, no matter what you're hearing it every time you go into work because the radio keeps playing it on.

Then you find maybe after a few days of hearing this song, you started singing it to yourself.

You start hearing it in your head because you're around it So much.

A good way to describe this in a native expression were to say that you have the song stuck in your head.

Okay, great expression that this can happen with Internation if you do the right things.

So the reason why the song is stuck in your head is because you're hearing it all the time on your brain.

Naturally, just wants Toe wants to, wants to replay it on.

That's what intonation is.

If you are listening to the accent a lot, you're hearing the tone the way that people sing the song of English.

Naturally, you're going to want to do it yourself now again because it's such a difficult topic.

I can't just say imagine English is a song.

Hey, now you have good Internation.

That's not how it's going to work.

There are lots of other things you need to do is well Number two.

I want you to understand that intonation is also your personality.

Okay?

My intonation is very different to my sister's Internation.

My Internation is very different to my girlfriend's Internation or my dad's Internation anyone's Internation.

The reason why is because I have my own personality.

So lots of people say that imitation technique is perfect.

It's the best way to improve pronunciation or intonation.

Yes, it's fantastic, but do you want to sound like an actor or an actress?

No.

Imagine you.

The only person you've been listening to is Princess Diana on.

Do you really want to sound like Princess Diana?

She did have a fantastic pronunciation, a great Internation, But then imagine.

You know you're trying to copy Princess Diana, but you are a 50 year old man with a very deep voice.

Yes, imitate people imitate the way that they go up and down.

But remember, you're not trying to be someone you're just trying to copy the techniques they use.

So instead of thinking how they say this or how they sing the song, if you like instead think about the technical side of it, Are they going up at the end of a sentence?

By the way, we do that to show we have more to say, say, or are they going down at the end of a sentence?

We do that to show that we finished speaking.

Think about those technical things.

Once you know the rules, you can analyze the way people speak.

Be yourself.

Use your own tones on bleeds.

This leads me on to my next point point number three.

Be play for Have fun.

Okay, The more fun you have with Internation, the more you're going to be again yourself.

For lots of people, the most uncomfortable part of learning Internation is the fact that British people go up when they speak quite a lot.

In the middle of our speech, we might go up, particularly my Chinese and Russian students find this very difficult.

They find it very, very difficult to go up.

The reason why is because lots of people are used to always going down every time they speak, they have to go down on.

There is no tone in their voice.

But when you listen to British people were stressing words to show that they are important.

We're using our tone as a tool to make ourselves hurt, to make ourselves sound interesting and to make people want to listen to us.

Be playful.

Go up, go down, experiment with different things on.

Remember to mostly play with your Internation around the stressed words, the words which are important in your sentence.

Give them Cem Internation.

Give them a bit of up downtown.

It's instead of saying it's really good.

Say it's really good.

Good.

Okay, on up, down tone is a fantastic way off, showing emotion, some other really useful things, just some really important words.

I mentioned this in a lot of my videos, and it's kind of becoming a meme now.

It's the word patience, but this word is Justus important, and this word is repetition, repetition, repetition.

You need to be repeating lots repeating the tones, the waves, the sounds that we make on do you can do this.

Like I said through imitation on.

You can also do this from learning the rules.

So on one hand, you have patients, right?

You need to take your time.

Understand that Internation in particular, not just pronunciation, but Internation takes a very, very long time.

So you have the patience.

If you also have that repetition on you, push them together.

Patients on repetition.

Sorry about my blisters.

I've been going to the gym.

If you have that patients on that repetition and you're using them together, you are on to a winner.

Repeat, repeat, repeat every day, Do some training.

Imagine it's singing practice, okay?

And finally step out off your comfort zone.

If you go up to a native and you start using some different tones, which you're not familiar with, it might feel uncomfortable because you are so used to maybe always using a falling tone.

But remember, that's not normal.

To us.

So you're learning something new, which is normal for us, So using the thing which is normal for us isn't going to sound bad.

It's going to sound good.

It just might feel uncomfortable for you.

In the beginning, you could learn everything about intonation, and I guess speed the process up by learning with me on my pronunciation course.

I also give feedback on what sat with voice messaging on wechat from only for members who join my course.

Okay, is only available for people who joined the course.

You can joined my course by clicking the link in the description box below.

If not, I will see you next time in my next YouTube video.

Cheers, guys.

Bye.