How to Improve Your Phone Skills to Sound More Like a Native English Speaker

Go Natural English with Gabby

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Hello. Hello. I don't think this thing is working. Hey naturals, what's up?

It's your American English teacher Gabby Wallace here for go natural English

And in this video you are going to learn how to improve

Your phone skills to sound more like a native

Natural English speaker. I know these days that everybody prefers to text like does this thing even work for phone calls anymore?

I mean everybody just

but there are certain situations when it just makes more sense to have a phone call or you

Have to have a phone call

Like maybe you have a phone interview

Or maybe you have to make an appointment and you need to actually speak

With your voice on the phone and in that kind of situation

you need to sound like a

fluent English speaker because we can't rely on things like gestures or

Lip-reading or the written word like we can for text so I'm gonna teach you a lot of things in

This lesson about how to speak more clearly more

naturally on your next phone

Conversation so this is gonna be super helpful and I want to invite you if you would like to learn more with go natural

English with our ebook the English fluency formula

I have a free sample for you to check out so you can click right up there on

The card to get your free sample. Oh my gosh

and in that for example

You're going to learn so many strategies to help you to improve your English and speak more naturally

this video presentation from Google's sundar Pichai came out where he was presenting the new

Assistant and it blew my mind. I was insane how

Robot sound I mean really the Google assistant not a real person

but she sounded just like a real person to me and to

The real person that she was calling so I thought we could actually take a look at this video clip

It's sure and analyze. What makes this

robot this machine

sounds so natural because if we can analyze that and if this machine can sound like a

Natural native English speaker then obviously, so can you because you're a human right?

So if this machine can do it, then you can definitely do it. Okay, so let's take a look

Let's say you want to ask Google to make you a haircut appointment on Tuesday between 10:00 and noon

What happens is the Google assistant makes the calls seamlessly in the background for you?

So what you're going to hear is the Google assistant actually calling a real salon to schedule the appointment for you

What time are you looking for well at 12:00 p.m

We do not have a quality available. But closest we have to that is a 1:15

Do you have anything between 10:00 a.m. And

12:00 p.m

Depending on what service she would like. What service is she looking for?

Just a woman's haircut for now. Okay, we have a 10 o'clock

10:00 a.m. Is fine. Okay. What's her birth name?

The first name is Lisa

Okay, perfect. So I will see Li five ten o'clock on May third

Okay, please Thanks great. Have a great day. Bye

Hi, so the first word that we have here is just a simple greeting

Hi, but let's pay attention to the intonation

It goes up and down and it sounds very friendly. You can even repeat while you're watching this to practice with me

Hi, so it's different than just a flat intonation. Hi, that sounds a bit

gruff a bit aggressive a bit

Not very nice, actually. So if we go up and down hi, it sounds so nice

so our first thing to focus on is

next we're gonna take a look at how we can stress words blend sounds together as a sound more native-like in our

pronunciation and

Use intonation again in order to indicate that we have an open

Question that we're inquiring about in this conversation. We're asking about booking a haircut

So again, the question was or is that it's not even a question

It's a phrase but it's it's it's stated in a way where the intonation goes up at the end. So that sounds like a question

I'm calling a book a woman's haircut for a client

For a client so the intonation is going up and this is sometimes referred to as up

Speak because this is not actually a question. It's a question would be something like

Haircut for a client and of course at the end of this question

The intonation would go up because we're asking may I but this is a statement, but it's phrased

Like a question because we're ending the statements in an upward intonation

So if you're calling to inquire about an appointment

Or you're asking to set a certain time or you're kind of asking permission

Like can I may I if that's the intention even though that's not the way you phrase the sentence?

Well, then your intonation can go up and that's quite common in the United States in North American English

Haircut for a client I'm calling a local woman's haircut for a client

So let's look at how we're pronouncing the words and how they're blending together. I'm calling

We don't say I'm calling we say I'm calling to book call in to book a woman's haircut

for a client we don't say for a client for a client so

Those words that are not

Stressed get blended and the sounds change slightly

so because we're stressing other words like

client and of course the main verb

Calling and book then other words are not stressed and those sounds get a bit mushed or blended together

Haircut for a woman's haircut, it's but again haircut is stressed more than women's

Clients so stress words are really important to say more

Strongly so louder and longer than the non stressed words

Which kind of get blended together and that's part of what makes this machine sound so natural

I'm looking for something on May 3rd. Um

this little pause is so

important and it's kind of ironic because most language teachers would tell you not to say

Um when you're speaking English when you're presenting or when you're practicing English, don't say it

Um, it's a filler. It doesn't mean anything. It's not academic

Well, you know what? It may not be good for your presentations

I mean academically speaking and it doesn't mean anything but it makes your speech sounds so much more natural

um, I think it's a good idea to use, um every once in a while because it is a

it is a marker of

Natural English speech so if you want to sound more natural use, um, not all the time

But every once in a while you notice in conversation, it's only used once I'm looking for something. I'm a third

I'm looking for something on May 3rd. So we're using words like I'm looking for something on May 3rd

Looking first so this is a common way to express

What date you would like or?

something that you are

Searching for I'm looking for something on May 3rd. So why do we say something?

We're not talking about a thing. We're looking for a time. We're looking for an appointment

So why don't we just say I'm looking for an appointment on May 3rd. Well

Natural English is sometimes really general. Sometimes people use words like

Something and sometimes and thing and that's really common

So again, you don't always have to use the more academic word

If you want to sound more natural more like a native speaker

You can use general words sometimes on May 3rd again

the intonation is going up because we're kind of asking for information here and May 3rd is

Stressed because this is the most important keyword in the sentence. They're like, give me one

The best part of this google assistant conversation was when she uses

the sound or the filler word

Mm-hmm, everyone cracked up because this is so

surprising from a machine because this is something so

natural and so human to use a filler

So another key takeaway is to use fillers sometimes as I mentioned. Um

Might not be something that your teacher would recommend but it's very natural just like. Mm-hmm

so when you're listening when you're waiting when you want to show that you are hearing your

Partner or the other person on the phone line use fillers like this. Mm-hmm

That means I'm listening or I'm waiting or what time are you looking for? Well

At 12:00 p.m. Next at 12:00 p.m. So I'm looking for some at 12 p.m

The intonation is going down to confirm and to say that you're looking for the specific time

Do you have anything between 10 a.m. And

12 p.m. Uh

Again, this natural pause and natural filler is something that distinguishes

humans from machines we use these natural fillers to think and to make our speech

More flowing so use these again not all the time every time but every once in a while

Um. Mm-hmm. It's gonna make you sound a lot more

Natural so we also are blending sounds together depending on which words are stressed or unstressed

Do you have anything between 10 a.m. And

12 p.m. So, do you have anything between 10 a.m. And

12 p.m

So you can see where the words are stressed and doors that are not stressed are blended and do not do

You but do you do you have anything?

Just a woman's haircut for now

Just is another very natural word meaning only or simply but we use it a lot

also for now is a nice way to

Confirm what you want at this moment, maybe next month

You want something additional just a woman's haircut for now and notice that we stress haircut. We're not stressing

Just or women's because they already know it's a woman

We're stressing haircut because that's the service that we want for now. Okay, we have a 10 o'clock

10:00 a.m. I'm

Confirming the time 10 a.m

Is fine when you're confirming information, you can drop your intonation down 10 a.m

Is fine and notice the way that we say fine, it's not fine. It's fine

So it's longer and we have that little up-down intonation today

I'm fine, and that sounds really nice and friendly unlike today. I'm fine. So

longer and up-down

Intonation sounds very friendly just like I mentioned in the beginning

When Google assistant said hi not high

You know, okay look their birthday

The first thing that believed that now this is interesting because we have up speak again the first names Lisa

It's because we're expecting to be asked more

Information. The first name is Lisa and I expect maybe the person at the hair salon would ask for the last name or the

Phone number or give me some additional information. So again, the upwards intonation indicates that the conversation will continue

It's not over yet. Okay

But this last sentence. Okay, great

Thanks has a downward intonation and that is confirmation that the conversation is

Ending and we have that upward downward information on grade. Okay, great. It's a bit longer

Thanks, so you can see how we can use intonation in so many ways to show our

Our attitude that we're nice and we're friendly we can also use intonation to say that we are

Awaiting more information or we know that the conversation is not over yet

we can use natural pauses and filler words like um, uh or

Mm-hmm to show that we're listening or to just sound more natural we can use

Stress to make sure that our communication is clear and we're getting the key words, really

communicated haircut

10:00 a.m. 12:00 p.m

Those are all very important words in this conversation

So how can you improve you're in to sound more natural and have better phone conversations? Well, first of all listen to more

Natural conversations, it could be between Google assistant, which it's so weird to say that she sounds natural

But she does because so many

Linguists have put so much

investment into actually figuring out how to make Google assistant sound natural and it's working so you could listen to these

Conversations and of course listen to real human conversations, which is something that we do inside the go natural English fluent communication

Course you can also

Practice because once you listen to the conversations, you're going to improve your knowledge

Really focus on what you're hearing. Not just the vocabulary word. Not just the

The words themselves, but really listen to the information

Listen to the stress. Listen to the pauses. Listen to the filler words that you're hearing and

Practice those now before you practice them in a real life conversation

I highly recommend one strategy that I use with my students which is

recording yourself

Listening to yourself and also sharing that with other people who can give you feedback

That's something that we do inside my course as well, but you can learn strategies like that that you can do on your own

No matter if you take a course or just study on your own and those are the kind of strategies that I teach

Inside the go natural English eBook the English fluency formula

So record yourself listen compare yourself to other

Natural or native English speakers, and then finally practice in the real world make a phone call

I remember the first time that I made a phone call in Spanish. I was so nervous

I was sweating from every pore of my body, but

practicing makes perfect practice makes perfect as they say is so

Make some practice phone calls make some just easy

and phone calls

I mean you could make a reservation at a restaurant you could cancel your reservation at the restaurant

You could make an appointment for a haircut just like in this example

You could call one of those customer service hotlines and ask questions about

An item or a service or product? There's so many ways that you can practice your English without really

there's big consequences if you make a mistake, or if they can't understand you so make use of

Those little opportunities to practice and that's how you gain confidence and improve your fluency

so I hope that you enjoyed this analysis of the Google assistant and the tips for improving your

English on the phone for sounding more natural and native like if you'd like to get all my best tips strategies and

Practice for learning English should check out the English fluency formula ebook right over there

You can get a free sample when you click up there if you'd like to continue watching

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Notifications. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you next week in the next English tip video. Bye for now