Now, there are two types of fast English: the good fast and the bad fast. The good fast is normal American speech that is considered as fast by non-native speakers. And today we’re going to talk about that, and the three things you need to in order to be a good, fast English speaker.

The bad fast is that when you just speed up your entire speech, and you sound something like this: <unintelligible super fast speech>

And the reason why it’s bad fast – and it doesn’t matter whether you’re a native speaker or a non-native speaker – is because it makes you sound unintelligible, unclear. And a lot of times people associate fluency with speaking fast, right? So, and they think that if they were to slow down, it would reflect on their fluency and their level of English, and it’s gonna sound like their English is not good enough.

Which is a huge mistake. First, because when you speak fast, your brain and mouth are not usually synced. You lose your breath and you start making silly mistakes that you wouldn’t normally make. Also, when you speak fast, you don’t allow the long vowels in English to exist, and then you start narrowing down sounds, the accent is more noticeable. And then the result, may be that the words are less clear. So ultimately, you are going to be less clear when you speak fast.

And also you need to allow what you say to sink in with the other person. And when you speak fast, you don’t give that time for them to understand what you’re actually saying. So, this type of fast speech is not something that you want to go for. However, if you want to speak English faster, I’m going to tell you the three things that you need to take into consideration to be a good fast English speaker.

You have to understand that not all words are created equal. For some words, you might want to go really, really fast and speed up through them. And for other words, you might want to slow down. Words that deliver the message, words that carry the content, words that describe something are words that you need to take your time with.

These are usually the nouns, and the adjectives, and the adverbs. And in comparison to that, words that connect those words: all the small words, all those words that we usually confuse when we try to structure a sentence. So all of those words are less important. I don’t have to emphasize them. Those are the words that you want to speed through.

So let’s look at an example: “If I had gone to bed early, instead of watching Netflix all I would have been a lot more focused today.”

Now, if you’re we don’t take into consideration that not all words are created equal, then we will put the same emphasis on each and every word. “If I had gone to bed early, instead of watching Netflix all night, I would have been a lot more focused today.”

So, let’s say I say it fast. If I just say everything faster, it’s going to be hard to understand what I’m trying to say, and maybe just simply unclear.

So, not all words are created equal. So here, if we look at the sentence, we need to look and see what are the most important words? Is it ‘if’? Is it ‘I’? Is it ‘had’? We can see that some words are going to help me convey the message better than the other words.

So for example, the word ‘gone’ or ‘bed’ or ‘early’ and ‘Netflix’ are going to be a little more important than ‘had’ or ‘to’ or ‘of’. It’s not that these words are less important. They’re important to structure the sentence or at least a grammatical sentence, but I don’t need to emphasize them. Okay?

And even within the words that I’ve mentioned: bed, early, Netflix – even among them there are words that I might want to slow down more on. And other words I might want to say a little faster, right? I’m going to slow down on the words that convey my message. “If I’d gone to bed early, instead of watching Netflix all night, I would have been a lot more focused today.”

So, these words are going to be pronounced a little slower. But for the rest of the words, I can go faster, okay? So you need to detect the words that will convey your message in the clearest way. And the rest of the words can be a little faster. Okay? So, there is a balance between the more important and the less important. And the more important is slower, and the less important is faster.

Usually, function words: on, in, at, could, would, should, am, is, are, has, have, a, an, the, this, that – function words are usually less important. So usually, these words are going to be pronounced faster, but that’s not just it. Here are two other things that can really get you to speak English faster.

The second thing you need to take into consideration, if you want to be a good fast speaker of English is that you need to tame your tongue in order to control your speed. So, a lot of times people confuse fast speech with reduced speech. All those less important words, function words: on, in, at, could, would, should, am, is, are – are usually reduced when they’re unstressed.

So whatever vowel you have in them, this vowel is pronounced as a reduced vowel, which is the schwa. Let me explain. So for example, if I take the word ‘and’, ‘and’, here I have a pure vowel- A, when I say it properly. ‘and’, right? And then my tongue is doing something like this: ‘aaand.’

Now, when this word is unstressed, I completely reduce the vowel there. And instead of pronouncing the, ‘aaand’, I just pronounce it as ‘ənd’, ‘ənd’. So if this is my tongue for the A, this is my tongue for the ‘ənd’: bread ‘ən’ butter, ladies ‘ən’ gentlemen, boys ‘ən’ girls. ‘n, ‘n, ‘n. So, it’s completely reduced.

So you need to train your tongue and control your tongue, and ultimately tame your tongue. Because right now it’s doing its own thing. You have no idea whether it’s going up or down. When you want to stick it out, it comes in. When you want to pull it back, it goes out. Sometimes it behaves like a little toddler that does its own thing, and doesn’t listen to anything that you say. So that’s your tongue. So, you need to train it and tame it and control it.

And when it comes to those words, instead of pronouncing the full vowel, you need to teach your tongue to go down and pronounce this very neutral sound: ‘ə’. Instead of ‘on’ you say ‘ən’, instead of ‘of’ you say ‘əv’. Okay, get the point? So, all of these words, dozens of words are actually pronounced with this very reduced vowel. That the only way to be able to do that is by training your tongue and teaching it to pronounce these words differently.

So, it’s not at all about going fast. It’s not at all about just saying one word after another really, really fast without breathing. No, it’s about changing the position of your tongue. So if we go back to our sentence, let’s take a look at what happens there. “If I had gone to bed early, if I had gone to bed early.”

So, the content words here are ‘bed’, ‘gone’ and ‘early’. gone, bed, early. The function words here: ‘are’, ‘if’, ‘I’, ‘had’, and ‘to’. So instead of just thinking: “Okay, I’m just gonna say them fast”, change the vowel in them into that schwa sound. So instead of ‘if’, you pronounce ‘uhf’. Now, what happens here, is that instead of pronouncing a vowel that is this long – ‘i’, you pronounce a vowel that is just shorter: uhf. You’re changing the pronunciation, but ultimately it changes the length of the word because it’s a shorter word.

‘if’ – ‘uhf’. I’m not saying it faster, I’m just changing the vowel. “I had”: I want to connect those two words together to contract them. And instead of saying, “I had” with a pure A sound, I will probably drop the H and the ‘A’ will turn into ‘ə’: I’d, I’d, I’d, I’d. “If I’d gone to bed TO”. Listen what happens to the word TO:” if I’d-gone t’bed”.

So, instead of saying the full ‘oo’ sound, I’m just pronouncing it again with the schwa: to – t’, t’, t’. And the T also turns into a D, but that’s another story, that’s another lesson. “If I’d gone to bed early, instead of watching NEFTLIX all night”, okay, i-wudda-b’n, I-wudda-b’n, I-wudda-b’n” would have been. Again, I’m reducing ‘would’ turns into ‘w’d’. ‘have’ turns into ‘ə’: I actually dropped the H, dropped the V.

Function words are less important, I take out some sounds. And I take the vowel and I change it: I reduce it, I lower it, I flatten it, and I shorten it. Okay? And then when I put it all together, everything is more squeezed in together. And it sounds like it’s fast, but it’s not fast, just squeezed in together. And the pronunciation has changed. Okay?

‘I would’ve been a lot more focused today”. And I slow it down on the parts that are more important: ‘a lot’ and ‘focused’. Now, let’s try together. “If I’d gone to bed early, instead of watching Netflix all night, I would’ve been a lot more focused today.”

Third thing, is that you need to chill out. Okay? Because it’s not enough that you choose the right words to reduce. It’s not enough that you actually reduce the vowels in the words that are less important to function words. If you still invest a lot of energy in those parts that are supposed to be spoken a little faster, in those parts that are a little less important. Okay?

Because if you enunciate every single consonant super clearly, and you invest a lot of energy in it, then you’re gonna get stuck. Then everything is going to feel heavy, and you won’t have that nice flow that you’re looking for. And you won’t be able to transition from one sound to another smoothly.

Let’s take a different example this time. Let’s begin with a full pronunciation, and maybe that might be how you are pronouncing it right now.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do about it.”

[Normal speech]: “I don’t know what I’m gonna do about it.” Now, I know it seems like I said it really, really fast, but let’s break it down. Now, I’m gonna prove to you that I didn’t just say it fast. I did those three things. One, I chose the right words to stress, and what words I don’t want to stress.

And then I changed the pronunciation in the words that I don’t want to stress. And third, I chilled out. So I pronounced those parts that are less stressed effortlessly. I invested very little energy, a lot less energy in the words that I did want to stress.

“I don’t know what I’m gonna do about it.”

‘know’, ‘do’. First of all, you can see right away that these two words are more stressed. They stick out more, they’re longer. Everything else is sort of reduced. “I”: I just said it kind of fast and low – ‘I’. ‘don’t know’: I cannot reduce these words to a schwa. ‘know’ is a verb anyway, so I can’t reduce it. But I just said it effortlessly, softly: ‘don’ know’. Notice that consonants are so soft. I’m not saying ‘don’t know’, right? The consonants are super-super soft: ‘I don’ know’. It’s like I’m investing 50% of the energy that I would normally invest in pronouncing a word separately: ‘I don’ know’.

And then we have this chunk: “what I am going to”. Listen to how it sounds: ‘wuh-daim-g’nna’. What-wuh, I am – I’m, going to – g’nna, g’nna. That’s how I reduced it. So, I reduced the vowel, and I also connected it. And then I just set it together with very little effort: ‘wuh-daim-g’nna do’, ‘wuh-daim-g’nna’, ‘wuh-daim-g’nna do’. ‘wuh-daim-g’nna’.

And then I have the time to linger on the ‘do’, ‘do’. ‘wuh-daim-g’nna DO abou-d’t’. ”t, ‘t’. See how I reduced it as well? ‘abou-d’t’. I did not say it fast necessarily, I just reduced it. ‘wuh-daim-g’nna do abou-d’t’. ‘I dunno wuh-daim-g’nna do abou-d’t’.

Now, I know that chilling out in your speech is not something easy, and you might have to work on it. Sometimes the hardest thing is to dial it down, is to say everything with less effort. But it would only do you good. I always tell my students to imagine English as this classy lady, dressed in black sitting on the couch, holding a glass of wine. She doesn’t want to work hard, she doesn’t want to mingle with all, you know, with all the people there. She’s just like chilling.

And that’s what you need to think about. And that’s how you need to feel when you say ‘what I’m gonna’, ‘what I’m gonna do’, ‘what I’m gonna do about it’. You can choose your own imagery of English, if you want. But that’s mine, that’s my, that’s how I see my English. Okay? She doesn’t need to work hard. People come to her. Okay? ‘what I’m gonna do’. ‘I don’t know what I’m gonna do about it’. Okay?

Okay, let’s wrap it up. To be able to speak English fast, faster, and to be a good fast speaker of English, here are the things that you need to do. 1. understand that some words are pronounced slower, but other words can be pronounced faster. So you don’t need to just speed up your entire speech.

2. the words that are less important, you need to change your pronunciation: tame your tongue, control your speed. So instead of pronouncing the full vowel, you’re pronouncing a shorter vowel, a reduced vowel, and that is the schwa sound. And it happens throughout the entire speech, as you pronounce function words: all those small words that connect content words.

And 3. when you have those chunks and parts that are a little more reduced, that you want to go a little faster, you have to chill out and invest a lot less energy in the pronunciation of the consonants in the entire chunk. Because that’s the only way for it to come out smoothly and effortlessly. Okay? Remember that practice makes better. So you have to do it over and over again. Understanding it is not enough, you have to do it, and drill it, and practice it.

Now, if you’re looking for good sentences to practice with, and to implement everything that we’ve done here, then come on over to my website. And in the blog post, I added a bunch of sentences that you can practice with.

So, I’m inviting you to come and check it out and practice. And while you’re there, be sure to subscribe to my newsletter, so you can get a new video lesson to your inbox every single week. I don’t spam, I promise.

So, thank you for watching. Have a wonderful, beautiful, lovely day, fast and slow. And I will see you next week.

Bye.