Jorge Lake has a wide knowledge of English grammar, he has a lot of vocabulary and understands the structure of the language, but when he came to the United States to speak with native people, very few understood him, once he was singing, everything changed.
Many people who have learned a language outside of a country will be fine, they will have enough vocabulary to compete in scrambble, understand all the grammar, give classes, presume that they understand Hollywood movies perfectly, but put them to talk with a native speaker is to meet many what, I don't understand?
It happened to me when I decided to visit relatives in Denver for the first time, the desire I had to know the culture of my grandparents born in the USA motivated me to start English classes after leaving school. Many years of self-study, exchanges and a few months living in Texas made me speak quite fluently. Some time behind my trip to the United States, after having designed a learning system and an application like Rosetta Stone, I began to send emails to my aunt, who lives in New York, however speaking is very different. to read, write and listen.
The grammar rules and my vocabulary were quite correct, I knew that some English words could be used in different contexts, for example like, it is used as a verb and as a preposition, for example : The cookie tastes like mint. So I never imagined that people would have a hard time understanding me However, my talks with the North Americans ended in a tangle between fillers and noises, I ended the talks by saying I have to go. I still had to learn the rhythm, accentuation and tone correct language. I was confused by the situation, until a guy with a passion for Jazz was practicing Fly me to the moon, a very well known song, performed by many jazz bands and singers, singing is something that I have been passionate about for a long time. Then I started to sing some parts that I knew with my uncle accompanying me, later I went to my bedroom and downloaded the complete lyrics to learn it, I listened to many singers while I was learning it. In a short time I had all the lyrics, not only by heart but could act it out. Being distracted by something he could say word for word, silences, all sounds.
When we, as Spanish speakers, learn another language, we learn English-like sounds, this can be misleading. A clear example with Spanish are the d and t that are softer compared to English, they are done with the whole language instead of the tip, when they teach us to thinking about sounds from other languages like Spanish, it is difficult to see the slight differences between them.
By imitating what they do in the song on a daily basis, to the degree that it became an everyday thing, I had unconsciously taught my head and mouth a number of sounds other than their words or meaning. When I switched to just speaking English instead of singing, the sounds stuck and my accent dramatically improved.
The singing as a support for pronunciation was very surprising to me. Despite speaking English fluently, I had problems, like many native Spanish speakers, with classic is written one way and pronounced another, for example: town, I read many articles, videos and tongue twisters to correct my bad pronunciation, but I couldn't, until one day I let the spotify auto-player run and a Bruno Mars song uptown funk sounded, how nice that song is, I sang and danced every day , I began to pronounce the difficult word many times without realizing it, until one day I was showering I said: Wait, did I just pronounce that? How long have I been doing it? Now I solve some words like this and then I verify them by talking in an application that has a chatbot.
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