Oh, that's really hot, you know what that's called?

That right there is called commitment to the bit.

I'm going to share with you four fire tips on how you can improve your English, especially if English isn't your first language.

Believe it or not, English isn't my first language either.

It's not even my second language.

It's my third language.

The first language I learned when I was young is a Chinese dialect called Di Jiu.

And then after that, I learned Vietnamese.

By the time I got to school, I was about five to six years old.

And for the first time at five or six, I then had to learn English because English was not taught at home, obviously.

And I wanted to tell you all of this because I want to address the problem that many of you and many of my students ask me all the time.

And if you're new here, my name's Vin Zhang.

I'm a communication skills teacher.

I run communication classes every single month and I get students joining me from all over the world in Germany, the US, Australia, Brazil, India, China, Malaysia, Mexico, you name it.

It's incredible the global audience that we have today.

And the most common question I get asked from my students who are trying to improve their English, Vin, how do I improve my clarity when I speak?

Vin, how do I reduce my grammatical errors?

Where do I practice speaking English more?

I don't have anyone to talk to.

And how do I do all of this without burning out and make it more enjoyable?

And before I even get to answering any of these questions, I want to address the biggest elephant in the room, me.

No, no, I'm not an elephant.

I just, I feel like an elephant because I've been eating a lot of carbs lately and getting a little bit weight conscious.

But let's address the biggest metaphorical elephant in the room with this situation for this video.

Hey, Vin, I don't like my accent.

It's holding me back from being a better speaker.

Let me shift you on your perspective right here, right now.

Your accent is not a problem.

The problem is poor articulation and poor pronunciation.

I want you to realize that your accent is beautiful.

It's what makes you unique.

So don't ever look down on your accent.

Instead, focus on improving your articulation and your pronunciation.

And soon your unique accent will become your greatest asset.

I first of all, would record a 20 minute video of myself speaking.

I know that's a lot.

You're probably freaking out at this point.

You're thinking, wait, what?

Film a 20 minute video of myself?

I can't even do a one minute video.

You can do a 20 minute video.

Just go to Google or chat GPT and type in top 10 deep conversational starters.

Get those 20 questions, put them in front of you.

Turn on the camera and answer the questions and just answer it on camera.

You're not allowed to prepare.

You're not allowed to rehearse because I'm trying to tease out all of the problems with your everyday speech.

You will get 20 minutes plus if you were going to answer all of those questions and elaborate on those questions.

Preferably also do these videos while you're standing.

Once you've got that video, now what you want to do is also get the video transcribed.

So you've got the text version of the video as well.

Take that video, send it to a speech pathologist.

You can pick one of your choosing in your local area and it'll probably cost you, when I did this, cost me about 150 bucks.

So when you do this, you send it to the speech pathologist, you say, hey, I wanted to send you this because English is my third, fourth language, second language, even only language and say, I've been struggling with my pronunciation and articulation.

However, I don't know what sounds I'm struggling with.

Could you watch this video and give me your top 10 exercises to work on the sounds that I'm struggling with?

It will be one of the greatest investments you ever make in your communication because now they're going to come back to you and go, oh yeah, no worries.

Look, I reviewed the video and there are 10 key sounds you're struggling with.

And with each one of these sounds, here are three exercises I would suggest.

You had someone use 30 years of their knowledge to review a 20 minute video, distill everything in their career and say, here are the top 30 activities you should do every single day.

I used to say the number three as free.

Can I have free of those?

And I used to slur all of my words and use so much slang like, um, I was gonna, but I didn't wanna.

Do you hear how bad that sounds?

Yeah, I was gonna, but I didn't wanna.

I was gonna, but I didn't wanna, where I should, I should say and complete the entire word.

I was going to, but then I decided I didn't want to, but that's how I use the dog.

There was so many incorrect mouth movements that I was making.

I didn't realize it until I did this activity.

So that's fire tip number one.

Oh my goodness.

Once you do this and you start to improve your articulation, I know you're going to send me an email and go, then that changed my life.

I get those emails coming through quite often and that is one of them.

Next thing you're going to do, take the transcript of your speech that you did, that 20 minute video, plug it into chat GPT and ask chat GPT this specific prompt.

What are the top 10 grammatical errors that I'm currently making inside this transcript?

And chat GPT will go through the entire thing in approximately 30 seconds and help you identify the top 10 grammatical errors that you currently make when you speak.

And usually with people who have English as a maybe second language, third language, there are a lot of grammatical errors when it comes to past tense, future tense, plurals, use of plurals.

And I don't mean to go back to high school English.

However, this is very important because one of the quickest ways to lose credibility, one of the fastest ways to lose authority in the Western world, especially if English is your second, third, fourth, fifth language, right?

Is not using the correct grammar.

Because when you don't use the correct grammar, it immediately makes people perceive you as being less intelligent.

And also if you slur your words, if you mumble, and if you don't articulate, this is why we think of the British people as being smart.

Do you notice that when someone has a British accent, you kind of go, Oh, this person seems really smart.

They seem sophisticated.

And you think that because they over articulate.

What that means is you don't now have to become British all of a sudden, if you want to come across smart.

I don't have to all of a sudden now go, would you like a spot of tea?

I don't have to all of a sudden now sound British.

In any accent, you can sound smarter by articulating more.

And you'll be able to improve your articulation and pronunciation with the speech pathologist's help in thinking about how to make all of the mouth shapes.

The other component was the transcript into chat GPT to get all the grammatical errors out of the way.

If you're new to communication skills, and you want to begin your learning journey, then you can join me in one of my classes.

It's completely free and you can click the link in the description below, or there's also a pinned comment below.

You can click as well.

Two more things I would say, speak English as often as you can.

You will never get better at something if you don't practice it more, find more opportunities to speak English.

And now you're going to say to me, cause I already heard these excuses before, but Vin, I've got no one to talk to.

I've got everyone I talk to who speaks Vietnamese when I'm at home.

Everyone I speak to speaks Chinese, speaks Russian, speaks Italian.

Well, I'm going to remind you of something, my dear luminary.

Then talk to yourself.

Yeah, that's still a form of practice.

Talk to yourself.

Can you open your mouth and talk by yourself?

By yourself?

When you're by yourself?

Yes.

I'm talking to myself right now.

There's nobody else in this studio.

What is this?

This is a form of practice.

And if it excites you more, put your camera down, turn it on, record yourself talking.

Practice speaking your mind more.

There's a mind and mouth connection, and this links in with the practice while you're practicing by yourself.

What I'm doing here is I'm training myself to be able to speak from my reservoir of knowledge, shaping that information, using metaphors, stories, and everything, and then articulating it almost immediately.

I'm doing a form of practice here.

The more of this I do, the more I strengthen the ability to retrieve information immediately from the bank of knowledge, and then almost spontaneously then being able to communicate that across right away.

That is a skill.

There are neural pathways that you've got to strengthen.

And if you never are put in a situation where you immediately have to go into your head and retrieve knowledge and then speak it spontaneously, well, then you'll never be good at it.

So a wonderful way to get better at English and on top of that, get better at speaking impromptu is you need to practice.

Last thing I'll say to get better at it is to play.

When you're doing the practice session, play.

Play with your instrument.

You know, go a little bit silly.

Have a little bit of fun.

And then just play.

It's okay.

And while you're doing this, while you're trying to get better at English, in that same practice session, you can practice vocal foundations, you can practice body language.

And then if you stick to this consistently, oh, you're going to get good so fast.

You're going to get good so fast, you're not going to know what to do with yourself.