Speaking more fluently in English

1. Rising and falling intonations

The choice of tone (voice going up or going down) has a meaning.

At the end of a statement, the voice generally goes down. This shows that we have finished saying what we want to say.

Watch out! If the voice goes up at the end of a statement, it is perceived as we are asking a question.

If we are saying a list of things, our voice goes down at the end of the last thing to show we have finished. On the other things, the voice goes up to show the list is not finished.

In “Wh-” questions, the voice also goes down.

Remember that your video is there to convince universities to choose YOU, that is why you must pay attention to going down at the end of your statements, otherwise, you do not sound so assertive and sure of yourself.

Hi, I'm Alex ↘

and over the next two minutes, →

I'm going to share my passion and explain why I'd love to be a part of the Global solutions programme. ↘

So what excites me to get out of bed in the morning? ↘

well, the short answer is ↗ empowering others ↘

be it a young person in school ↗ or an entrepreneur living in poverty. ↘

2. Using stress effectively - Sentence stress

Sentence stress is the music of spoken English. Like word stress, sentence stress can help you understand spoken English. Sentence stress, which gives English its rhythm, is accent on certain words within a sentence.

Hi, I'm Alex  and over the next two minutes, I'm going to share my passion and explain why I'd love to be a part  of the Global solutions programme.

So what excites me to get out of bed in the morning?

well, the short answer is  empowering others be it a young person in school / or an entrepreneur living in poverty.

Over the past few years, I've been pursuing this passion in two main ways.

You notice that the words that are stressed are content words. Content words are the key words of a sentence. They are the important words that carry the meaning or sense—the real content.

3. Pausing in the right places

Speaking English fluently does not mean speaking fast but speaking in a smooth way. To do so, you must learn to think and speak not in individual words but in complete phrases (a phrase = a group of words).

When writing your script, think of the pauses you can make. Of course, you can use punctuation marks:

. = a long pause

, = a short pause

Even when there is no punctuation, you can make pauses and group words.

Hi, / I'm Alex // and over the next two minutes, /I'm going to share my passion / and explain why I'd love to be a part / of the Global solutions programme. //

So what excites me to get out of bed in the morning? //

well, the short answer is / empowering others //