“Welcome to the InFluency Podcast. I’m Hadar, and this is episode number 13”. And today we’re going to talk about how to improve your intonation.

Hey, hey, everyone. I hope all is well. Have you noticed what I’ve done there, in the first sentence? If you listened to the previous episode, then you know that I talked about how I introduced this podcast, the first sentence that I say.

And last time I really wanted to change the way I say it. So, you’ll say to yourself, “What is different?”, or “What is up with Hadar?” And I wanted to do something like, “Welcome to the InFluency Podcast”. But I try to do it now and I, it’s just so not me. And I decided that this is not that they direction that I want to go in.

And instead, I took out the melody completely off my speech. So, I spoke in monotone – “welcome to the InFluency Podcast”. And the moment I changed, I’m sure that you felt something different.

I’m sure it opened your ears all of a sudden. You’re like, “Hey, what, what has changed?” Because melody is really important in delivering messages and engaging people, and in just making it interesting.

Because if I were to speak like this the entire podcast episode, I have a feeling that pretty soon you’d be tuning out, right? And me changing the melody, going up sometimes, going down, helps you understand what I’m trying to say.

Because melody is like the audio punctuation, if I can say that. So you know when there is a comma, when there is a period, when I ask a question. So you have a good ideaa as to what I’m trying to say, and how I’m saying it.

But if you don’t have any indication, if I’m not using my voice to tell you when there is a comma, when I’m pausing, when I’m asking you to think about something or answer me. If we were, you know, speaking to each other face to face, it would have been a lot harder for you to keep up with what I’m trying to say.

Now, why am I telling you all of this? First of all, just for you to start recognizing around you people who use varied intonation versus people who are more monotone. So that’s the first thing.

But another thing that I want you to be attention to is that sometimes our language may be more monotone than English. And when we speak English without thinking about the melody, we immediately apply the melody of our native tongue, which might be a bit more monotone than English.

English is a very varied language. The pitch changes quite often, and there’s a meaning to the pitch change. If you listen to the previous episode, you know what it means. You know what it means when I go higher in pitch.

If you haven’t, then I’m going to tell you that higher pitch means a stressed word. So, I actually convey my message, I help you understand what is more stressed by using my pitch. Higher pitch – more stress, lower pitch – less important, you don’t really have to pay attention right now.

So, if I don’t have this variety, because also English has so many words in it, then it’s harder to understand what I’m trying to say, to decipher what’s more important and what’s less important.

And a lot of languages, Hebrew, for example, my native language, is a lot more monotone. And if I were to apply the Israeli intonation, my English would sound monotone. Now, in Hebrew, it works. We use other things to stress. We use volume, for example. Volume. That’s another thing we use, and we use volume, too.

Yeah, so we basically go louder when we want to stress something, we basically go louder when we want to stress something. This is why Hebrew may come across as aggressive, but it’s basically the way we stress words. It all comes down to the language, people.

Now, awareness is the key. Recognizing these patterns, being aware that the variety is important for clarity to deliver your message, to engage people, to influence people, to persuade people – that’s like the most important thing.

So, once you’re aware of it, you start hearing it. But it’s not enough because you also need to change your speaking habits and your intonational habits. And that takes a little more practice.

And I know that because when I first started learning the American accent in school, in my acting school “Circle in the Square”, no one spoke about intonation. We had speech classes and it was all about pronunciation.

So I never thought that it was such a huge part of speaking with a better accent. And I think that I would subconsciously imitate people. I remember working on a scene and having my friend recorded the way she would say it, and I would just like imitate it.

But I focus mainly on pronunciation. I think subconsciously I kind of imitated the melody, but I didn’t think about it. I didn’t analyze it, or I wasn’t aware of it, as I was aware of the pronunciation.

And in the second year, when we started talking about dialects, that’s when we discussed intonation a bit more, and the melody patterns and the rhythm. But it was really quick, like for, we had one lesson per dialect.

And we just had to imitate the teacher and do the exercises, but never went in-depth, understanding what are the, the elements that comprise this idea of intonation, prosody.

And it was only when I started teaching the American accent. Of course, I started teaching just pronunciation, where I started to explore intonation. And I felt that something was missing, but I didn’t find good enough resources to teach me that, like to tell me, “okay, this is what American intonation is all about”.

So I would do a lot of research. I would analyze speeches and try to understand the patterns. And I would mark words on the page, trying to figure out if there is a system behind it. And I did try to explore it more when I studied linguistics at the university. But even there, I don’t feel that I got all the answers.

And I think I’ve put in, you know, hundreds of hours of research and work and practice, until I kind of understood the system behind it. And I recognized what are the things that I’m doing differently. And mind you, this was into my teaching career, right?

So I started doing this. As a teacher already. I started teaching pronunciation in the American accent without having full grasp of American intonation and prosody.

I’m just saying, just so you know, that it’s possible to teach the accent, when only talking about pronunciation, but it’s definitely not enough. Especially because for some speakers, they need to mainly focus on prosody and intonation.

Because some languages divide the sentences differently. And the melody is so varied that it makes things sound unclear in English, if this melody is applied.

And this is why I feel that it’s such an inherent part of English, not of the accent of English, of spoken English. And it should be taught since day one.

Also, understanding this concept, and I talked about it in the previous episode too, helps you understand native speakers better. Which is probably one of the most important things because if you can’t understand, you feel helpless. And it’s pointless, like it’s great that you can speak, but what would you respond to if you don’t know what you were just asked, right?

So, understanding native speakers. Is essential. And a part of it is understanding all those reductions, and what words are stressed, and making sense of all of that together. Also, how to listen to people.

And I think this should be a different episode – how to understand people, how to take notes, how to listen to people. If you’d be interested in learning more about that, then send me a DM on Instagram. I’m at @hadar.accentsway.

And let me know if you’d be interested in learning more about how to take notes in a meeting or in class, when it’s an English. Cause I actually have a few cool tips about it.

So, now that you’re convinced that intonation, prosody is important, and if you have already listened to episode number 12 – great. If you haven’t, I think, you don’t have to pause and go back to it, but you should definitely go back to it and listen to it. Because you need to understand it before practicing it.

And today we’re going to talk about the practical aspect of improving your intonation. And I’m going to give you some strategies and tips and exercises that you can use.

But if you don’t understand the basic concept of content, words and function words, stressed words and unstressed words, and how we stress words in English, then you’ll be wasting your time a little bit.

So for that, go back to episode number 12, listen to it, it’s not that long. And then, I mean, not that long. Come on, it’s probably half an hour, I like to talk. And then come back here. Okay.

So, now I’m going to share with you the tips and exercises that you can do in order to improve your American intonation.

Okay. The first thing is not going to be something that you’ve never heard of before. Because you have, if you’ve listened to at least one intonation video, intonation related video, or you’ve been listening to my content for a while. And that is imitation exercises.

Now, I want to be creative and tell you all these new stuff that you’ve never heard before, but at the end of the day, this works. And I’ll tell you why. Because in order for you to start understanding intonation, and hearing it and using it, you have to perceive it. You have to recognize it in your brain, right?

And sometimes the only way to do it is through our mouth. So by saying it, the brain all of a sudden registers it. Because if you just listen to it without doing anything about it, the brain filters out a lot of information. And what you’re hearing is not exactly what your ear catches.  Does that make sense?

Like it goes into your ear, and then it goes through this filter that takes out stuff that are not relevant. Because it doesn’t exist in your native tongue, and it’s definitely the case with intonation. And then you are hearing other things.

It’s how we perceive reality too, right? Something happens and we interpret it. So your brain interprets the music as well. But if you try to imitate it with your mouth, all of a sudden you are trying to be as accurate as possible to the facts.

Which is how it’s actually pronounced, or the actual music of the sentence, or the word, or the phrase. And then it’s easier for the brain to perceive it.  All of a sudden you notice all those nuances.

And when you start hearing it, you start making it. Right? And this is why imitation exercises are so great. Especially now, with technology that you can play a video and half the speed, or a podcast and half the speed.

So you have time to do it at ease. And it’s okay if you don’t get the message so much or you don’t really understand what you’re imitating because you’re so focused on other elements, so your brain is not actually analyzing the words, or the message, or the sentence, and that’s okay.

Like, you need to acknowledge that it’s okay to do the mutation exercises and not to really listen to the podcast. And if you’re really interested in listening to the podcast, then don’t do imitation exercises the first time around. You can do it the second time you listen to it.

So, playing it at half the speed, and then repeating it and imitating it, is something that is extremely, extremely helpful. Because it helps you understand this idea of American intonation. Even if you don’t get it, like even if you don’t know exactly what it is that you’re doing, your body gets it.

You start feeling the language, which is really important. You start developing intuition. And that’s how you’ll start recognizing in the future if something is right and smooth, or if something is a little strange or it doesn’t fit so much. Because it doesn’t fit that experience that you’ve experienced when you imitated someone else’s speech. Okay. So, imitation.

Now, the most important thing here is that you take a voice that you resonate with, so don’t take a speaker that you really don’t like because everyone else is doing it. Or don’t take someone who has a very different vocal quality than yours. Find someone that you like his or her voice, and you like to sound like them.

So that’s, that’s always good. And if you have the text in front of you, that’s even better. This is why I have the transcript ready for you, if you want to work with my voice and my episodes. So you can download the transcript and listen to it, and then repeat it, and imitate what I’m saying.

Okay. Next, we have analyzing a TED talk. I love TED talks because they’re very varied, especially the good ones. They’re varied in terms of intonation. They’re more conversational. Again, the good ones. There are some TED talks that are very, that just feel recited and over the top, so I wouldn’t choose them.

But the more popular TED talks are usually the ones that are better in terms of how they deliver it. And a good TED, talk to my opinion, is very conversational. It feels like someone is just speaking to you. It’s not someone giving the speech of their life. It feels like, you know, two people speaking in a room.

And when you work with TED talks, first, it’s interesting, it’s super available – you can download the transcript. And what I would do there is take a marker, a magic marker, and first listen to a small part of the talk.

Then, as I’m listening, I would mark the words that are stressed. Again, if you’re not sure what is the difference between stressed words and unstressed words, I urge you to go back and listen to episode number 12, where I talk about it. And then apply it in the exercise that I’m giving you here. I’m going to put a link to that episode in the show notes.

So, then you just like mark all the stressed words. Usually they are content words: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. And you can then take a pencil and cross out the vowel in all of the reduced words, all the function words: on, in, at, for, is, could, would. So you cross it out and then the script becomes very visual.

And it’s kind of like the imitation exercise, but it’s more in-depth. Here, you’re actually doing some research in a way. And you’re analyzing the script and it’s more of a listening exercise before you put it into practice right away.

Then, of course, practice it. So, do the imitation exercise, but after you will have marked all the stressed and unstressed words. Then it’s a lot easier, and you get it on a deeper level. And I think it’s extremely valuable.

Another thing is to memorize a monologue from a movie or a play. Here’s the thing. This is sheer experience. Only in hindsight, I know this because I was trying to understand what made it extremely valuable for me, like, or what has helped me improve my accent.

And I think having worked with.A lot of texts, having memorized a lot of texts really helped. I had to memorize, I think at least two long scenes a week. And maybe another monologue here and there, and some Shakespeare.

And, uh, I had to work on something for speech classes. So I worked a lot with texts. And I think that when I did that, I had to memorize it, and I also memorized the melody. And by doing that, I created patterns of speech in my head.

And by the way, that was also great for grammar because I memorized patterns and paradigms of speech in my head. And years after, I remember like using sentences that I’ve heard before. Just changing, you know, some of the words, they’re changing it to fit my needs.

But I’ve been using those things that were stuck in my head because I’ve memorized them. A lot of, a lot of those phrases and sentences, a lot of other people’s words. And I started giving this to my students as well.

And you know, in my Accent Makeover program, we have different modules. And towards the end I give them exercises that are a little out of the box. Just to get them more comfortable and confident, and give them more power.

And one of the things that we do, I ask them to memorize a powerful speech, where they have to kind of like use their full voice and get all emotional and angry. And the results are remarkable. I mean, the stuff people do there is just beyond this world.

I have worked with actors for years. And some of the videos that those non-actors created were as good as some of the best audition pieces my actor students submitted. Really, it was incredible.

But beyond this beautiful experience, memorizing a text and speaking freely in English without thinking about what words to use was a very freeing experience. And it has stayed with them, and it was extremely valuable.

And definitely, when it comes to intonation, they all shared that it really helped them notice things and do things that they’ve never done before. So memorizing a text, memorizing a monologue – especially a powerful monologue or a really funny monologue that requires versatility – is so useful. So next time you watch a movie, or you watch a TV series, and there’s like a really good monologue there… just remember the scene. Remember the episode, search for the script, because all scripts are out there online. You can find a script for everything and just take that part, memorize it, work with the original. You can even analyze it like, you know, uh, we do with the TED Talks and then… just go for it, do it in front of the mirror once a day.

And as we say in Hebrew, “fly on yourself”. That’s a poor translation to a really good expression. Uh, just like, go with it and love yourself and do it with all passion. And it’s going to be a really interesting experience.

Okay, another thing you could do is take a two-people scene… Right before we talked about a monologue. This time, take a scene and either practice it with someone, so do this exercise with someone – and this is a good opportunity to invite you to the In.Fluency community on Facebook where you can find conversation partners and practice with us in the group. We have weekly discussions. So it’s a great platform for you to find conversation partners, or practice partners. So you can find someone there and practice the scene with them – it’s a lot more fun – or do it alone.

Now, here’s what we want to pay attention here. Here it’s both the intonation of the back and forth dialogue. So you want to pay attention to how we end sentences when we make a statement, or when we ask someone a question. It’s different than a monologue. So this is really useful in that sense.

And also the timing, like how much time goes between one sentence to another. How long do people wait before they respond? Of course you want to work with the original, right? Like with an actual scene, and then you take the script and you work with it, but you’ll listen to the original and you should pay attention to all of these things because these are things that we can’t pay attention to in a monologue and on top of intonation, you get a better sense of rhythm and of conversation, like a back and forth conversation.

Another thing that is helpful is to sing the melody. So for example, if you’re listening to a movie or a scene or YouTube video, you can play it, ideally in half the speed. And then instead of repeating the words, just repeating the melody. It’s where you focus. That’s where your brain starts noticing things and changing things.

So if you focus only on the melody, the brain will start noticing it more. Ta ta ta, ta ta, ta ta, TA. That’s a melody of what I just said. Ta ta, ta ta, ta ta, ta TA.

And then you noticed this up… going up in pitch and down in pitch and this wavy feel of the voice, right? Cause it’s not one tone, it’s not ta ta ta ta ta ta, it’s a lot more varied: ta ta ta ta TA ta. And when you play the music with ta ta TA or with mmmMMM, then it’s easier for you to start hearing just the music.

So I would just do the hum or the ta-ta-TA-ta, and then say the sentence. It’s really interesting because even though we know what the music is, when we use our own words, our habits will take over. And even though you’re thinking, Hey, I’m using this new melody, your mouth is going to do something else, unfortunately.

You need to tame your tongue. You need to tame your vocal cords. And to do that, you need to first break the pattern, break the pattern of speech, and turn it into melody, and you just identify the melody. And that’s one layer, and then you add the words, but even then, it’s not enough. I would recommend for you to record yourself and listen to the recording and try to pay attention if… Or try to notice if the hum resembles the melody of the actual sentence where you use the words.

So you never want to take anything for granted when you practice your melody and when you practice your pronunciation. Now you could say that practicing melody in words is also useful. I think that’s less effective. Honestly, I think maybe using songs is better for vocabulary or for pronunciation. For pronunciation, it’s definitely good, but for melody, because you have like this external melody.

Determined melody, it’s not very helpful to recognize your brain does this separation. Oh, that’s a song. That’s okay. In a conversation, I can’t do it because then it’s going to sound like I’m singing, or then I’m going to sound artificial, which is important to note because a lot of times when people try to apply the American intonation, they start feeling artificial, so they stop doing it.

Because intonation is something so intimate and so deep that it feels weird to change it. Intonation and rhythm. Also changing the rhythm is extremely uncomfortable, but the more you do it, the more you make it your own. This is why practice is important, especially if you’ll record yourself and listen to it and you’re able to give yourself objective feedback.

Don’t judge yourself so much. Be like, okay, it doesn’t sound like me, but it doesn’t sound bad. It sounds like the original, right, like the person I’m trying to imitate, which means it’s good. If I want to use intonation to be more persuasive when I speak to native speakers. Because they expect to hear the language a certain way, and if you’re doing something differently, let’s say stress… You stress different words, or let’s say you don’t distinguish the more important words by going higher in pitch, it’ll be just harder for them to understand you.

Now, we don’t care so much about how they feel necessarily. We care about you getting what you want, right? I mean, of course we want to be clear. So we are communicative and it’s fun for other people to communicate with us. But what I’m trying to say is that you don’t need to do all that so people feel more comfortable with you because you sound like them. No. They should feel comfortable because you are communicating clearly. That’s the most important thing and even what’s more important than that is that you need to feel comfortable. And you feel comfortable when you’re understood. When you see that spark in the eye of the listener, and when you see that people are engaged in, they’re answering you and you get them to take action if needed.

And this is why intonation is my passion. Intonation is my passion. That’s a rhyme, my friend. That’s a rhyme. Let’s move on. I have two more things for you. The next one is to identify your own native intonation pattern in comparison with the American intonation pattern. And what do I mean by that? Let’s say you are listening to someone and that person says a certain phrase in English, and you’re trying to imitate that phrase. What I want you to do first is to listen to that phrase in English and listen to the melody, and then I want you to say it, to translate it and to say it in your native tongue, and then to say it as neutral as possible, right?

And then to recognize the melody pattern there and to see how it is different. And what you mainly want to look for is big differences. For example, is there a place where you went really low in pitch and the other person went really high and pitch on that part? Maybe you want to listen to how they connected words together. Was there anything different there?

Or maybe the rhythm, how long it took you to say it versus how the person said it in English. So you want to start paying attention to all of those things. Why? Because when you recognize your own patterns, it’s easier to change. Because it’s easier to say, this is sort of the same, but this is really different, gotta pay attention to this. Because if there is a huge gap between how you say something and how the native speaker says something, then that’s the place where you want to focus in on. You want to pay closer attention there because that’s the place of un-clarity. That’s the place where people would expect it to be one thing and you might be doing something else.

Now I know what you’re thinking right now. You’re thinking, wait, but intonation is so dependent on the context. If it’s a question, if it’s a statement, if you want to stress something, it’s in the red BOX. It’s in the RED box. Of course. I’m not talking about really unique situations, or situations that require further context. I’m generally talking now about neutral intonation, how things are said in a neutral way.

I’m going to talk more about that in the future, but because I can’t talk about everything today, you are going to just feel overwhelmed. So yes, this is why we’re only gonna focus on neutral intonation. And as I said, you want to pay attention to the differences.

I’ll give you an example. I always give this example when I teach my students. I’m going to say a sentence in English, and then I’m going to say it in Hebrew. And I’m going to use the American intonation, then I’m my Israeli intonation. And I want you to think about the difference between the two. The difference in melody.

I don’t want to go HOME. I don’t want to go HOME. [Same sentence in Hebrew]. So in English, the melody was something like ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, TA, and in Hebrew ta, ta, ta, ta, ta. Right? I started rather low and then I kept going down. Now here’s what happens when I apply this intonation and to English, I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to go home.

And then this is where I want to start recognizing the differences. The main difference that emerges from this is that in English ‘home’ was higher in pitch. I don’t want to go HOME. Right? And in Hebrew, what I did was that I just dropped down. I don’t want to go home. It was really low in pitch.

Now, you may not know what the issue is, but if there is a gap, then you want to pay attention to it and just look for it when you listen to English. But for now, I will tell you that the problem is that when you stress a word, you want to go higher in pitch. And usually the last content word in a phrase or a sentence is higher in pitch, is stressed. That’s the pattern. And if it’s not, then people will look for other words that are stressed.

Now, I did not intend to stress ‘I’ or ‘want’ when I said it with my Israeli intonation, I wanted it to have the same meaning, but by not raising the pitch on ‘home’ and dropping down, it made it seem less important.

So while this is not that of an important sentence, if I were to say something more important, not stressing the right words, just because of my intonation pattern, it would result in miscommunication, especially when over the phone or speaking on a video conference. It’s harder to really get what the other person wants, and this is why we want to make sure that we’re stressing the right words. And recognizing your native patterns versus the patterns of English is really helpful, recognizing the pitfalls that you might fall into when communicating in English.

So identifying your own patterns and comparing them to the patterns of American english and American intonation is the first, is yet another step in developing your awareness and changing your patterns, or knowing how to change your patterns when you want. Because I always say that an accent is like a costume. You can put it on and take it off depending on who you’re speaking with. Because when I speak to people who struggle with English, I may reduce my accent to help them understand me better. So I speak with more neutral vowels. My intonation is more monotone. But when I speak with an American speaker, especially over the phone, I have put on my best American intonation because I want to be clear and I want to get what I want from the other person.

So it’s not just about changing your English, it’s about knowing how to use English depending on the situation and the circumstances. The last thing for today, and I actually really like this one because I think this was also extremely helpful on my journey, is to recognize common patterns. What I’ve come to learn is that American intonation or English intonation in general is not that original.

People use the same patterns in different places, and you may hear the same melodies when a certain person speaks, right? So that person may use the same melodies in different places. If it’s very much the same, that person may sound monotone and yes, English speakers, American speakers may sound monotone as well if they use the same pitch or the same melody pattern over and over and over again.

So we want variety, but when you listen to people, you’ll notice that they all have the same pattern. For example, when people start a new idea, there’s always what I call that wavy intonation, where they start really high in pitch and then they go into that… “normal” American intonation. For example: “last time we spoke, you weren’t that interested in going to the party with me” “I never noticed that they put up this new building there” “I locked the door in the bathroom, so don’t freak out”. Ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta, ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta, right? That’s how people usually start sentences and they start new ideas when they speak.

Now I want you to start noticing it. I want you to listen to English through this lens that I’m giving you, right? First, the stressed words versus the unstressed words, but also these built-in intonation patterns where, especially at the beginning or at the end, “did you like it?” “So I went to my friend …” That Upspeak, that’s another pattern. “So I went to my friend and we talked the entire night, and it was really cool.” Now Upspeak is okay. Especially in the middle of the sentence. I use it a lot when I speak, but then I always close it. A lot of times you’ll hear people just going up and up and up, and it always sounds like a question mark at the end, which I guess creates more uncertainty. It sounds more uncertain than certain. But that’s another episode, Upspeak.

But that’s another pattern that I want you to pay attention to: Sarcasm. “Oh, really?” “Like I’m going to do that.” “That’s really interesting,” right? That tone, that quality of voice, that little rise in pitch at the end, that’s another pattern that people use.

So I want you to start recognizing common patterns that people repeat over and over and over, and then if you like it, you can use it. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to use it. But sometimes it’s helpful. As I said, treat it like a costume. If you want more about this, about common patterns, if you want me to analyze a lot of patterns and actually analyze audios of people using the same patterns, let me know.

Again, send me a DM. I’m… you can find me at hadar.accentsway on Instagram. Start a conversation with me. I’m always there. Okay, that’s it. I hope you enjoy this episode and you have some practical tools to start improving your intonation. Again, if you haven’t listened to episode number 12 I’m going to link to it in the show notes below. It’s also a video on YouTube, so you can watch the YouTube video as well.

If you like this episode, please, I invite you to subscribe to whatever platform you’re listening to or coming over to my website,  hadarshemesh.com/influency-podcast, and you can subscribe there to get email updates, and if you happen to listen to this on iTunes,  please rate and review. That is going to really help me spread the word and allow this podcast to reach more and more people, so everyone will be able to practice their intonation one day.

Thank you so, so much for being here, for tuning in, for doing the work, for being passionate about English. I love you and I will see you. No, I won’t see you because that’s a podcast. I will speak to you in the next episode. Bye.