Lindsay McMahon

So yeah, give us the second tip here.

I'm excited.

I love this first one.

It is so true, right?

And being aware of the sounds that are problematic in English, what you're replacing them with is the first step in being able to improve that for clearer speech.

It might always still be there some, or it might be a little more subtle.

The people you are connecting with understand.

That's the goal, as long as they understand and you can have a good conversation.

Okay.

This is so true because I will be speaking with someone who has a very heavy accent and can understand them perfectly because they're using correct word stress.

They're linking correctly.

And I have no problem.

I could transcribe.

I can understand.

But then another speaker who would have a much lighter accent, they may be using inappropriate word or syllable stress.

not having those features of connective speech or just not enunciating clearly.

And I would have a lot of difficulty understanding.

And all of that is learnable, right?

All of this, the word stress, the phonemes, everything that will make your speech clear is really unrelated to your accent in your first language and more about the features of speech that can be learned.

Right, exactly.