Vicki Hollett, the video producer. It originally aired on WizIQ. Enjoy! The Best in ELT with

Fluency MC. Listen, oh, listen. Rachel, it's so nice to be sitting down

with you to talk. I met you once in real "real life." That's right.

But like many people, I feel like I know you from seeing

your videos and following you. I have a lot

of respect for your work. Thank you. And I'm so happy

to have this chance to talk to you.

I guess the first thing I want to ask,

and I know a lot of people are interested in, is how did, how did you get into teaching

in the

first place? Was it English as a foreign language or a second language, was it something else

and then, how did that connect or evolve into teaching pronunciation?

Yeah, well, I think it was a bit of an unusual path. I did teach a little bit of

ESL but mostly Rachel's English grew out of something totally different, which was, I

went to school for opera singing. Right. I have a Masters of Music in Opera Performance.

And so through that I was getting really connected

to this part of my body. So it was pronunciation first, in a sense,

because you had this background in opera. Yeah, the ESL work that I did was useful

but I don't think it actually is related at all to the Rachel's English thing that I'm

doing, even though I did have that experience. So, mostly it grew out of myself singing in

other languages. And so I was studying the pronunciation specifically and the phonetics

of Italian, French, German, English for the stage; I had studied Spanish. So, there was

that, my relationship to learning the pronunciation of other languages. But maybe even more so,

it was just spending a decade really focused on

breath and you know tongue placement and these

kinds of things. And I think that gave me a really clear language to talk about pronunciation

for other people.

Did you have a language teacher helping you with that or, and a music teacher, or

were you learning the pronunciation of the languages through the music?

It was in a class that specifically "Diction for Singers". I see. So it was always

related

to the goal of singing for the stage. And it was focused on pronunciation and not so

much the languages, although I the did take a semester of Italian, a year of German, and

a semester of French.

So you almost had no choice; they focused you on pronunciation.

Yeah, they did, because, you know, if you only have one year and you need to get all

of these things under your belt, then that's what's the most important; because as a singer

you can memorize a translation and, you know, the feeling of what goes where, but in order

to sell it, you have to really sound like you know what you're saying.

And you were teaching English during that time or where you'd taught before?

I did teach English as a second language a little bit during that time at a place in

Boston where all of my students were Korean and it was mostly one-on-one or two-on-one,

thirty minute sessions, and I really loved it. I think the rhythm of the language is

so important, and the melody. And for me, having

the background in singing has been really helpful for that, partially because, you know,

singing

is rhythm and is melody, but then also I think I developed

an ear through that for when I hear someone

do something, I can imitate it quite well. And then I can find out what needs to be changed.

So, often with students, I'll imitate, think what needs to shift, and then be able to articulate

that to them. Ah, that's interesting. For their pronunciation.

And do they know you're doing that or is this your best kept secret

you're revealing right now?

They do they know because they'll be talking and I'll say "hold on," and then I'll do it

myself and I'll say, okay your tongue needs to make whatever adjustment.

I do that actually with grammar and vocabulary, if something's high frequency, and I'll kind

of tune in to the collective use of English somehow from listening but I don't have that

gift

with pronunciation; so that's great. For the W consonant, the tongue tip is down

here, and the back part of the tongue stretches

up, so the tongue stretches this way. Ww, ww,

wow. For the R consonant, the back part of the

tongue does stretch up, here towards the middle part

of the roof of the mouth. The front part of the

tongue pulls back. So, with the W, the tongue is

stretching. With the R, the tongue is sort of

pulling up into itself. I think I just have a real interest in

the human voice and how we produce sounds,

and vocal health, and this kind of thing. So that's where my interest lies, not so much

in even teaching a language, or, I mean, certainly not grammar! Sometimes teachers will correct

my grammar in videos because it's not always perfect.

It's all about your passion; follow your passion.

That's right. And so, like, pronunciation and the human voice, that's where it is for

me.

So what happened as far as getting your work up on YouTube? Did you first imagine

putting a video of yourself up there and reaching just your students or more students? No, actually,

I didn't have students when I first started the videos. I first started

the videos when I was living in Germany and I was studying at a language institute there,

so most of the people that in as in contact with were not American and also were not German:

they were from all over the world studying German. And so I had a friend there from Turkey.

And he was interested in American English because Hollywood is such a great exporter

of American English, and wanted to sound more American. So we just played around a little

bit with a few of the sounds, and I was telling him, you know, what his tongue should be doing

and this kind of thing. And he was like, wow, you're really good at that. And I thought:

hmm,

idea! Actually, in undergrad, I studied computer science and in order to keep that skill set

going, I had been wanting to make a website;

I just didn't really have a topic yet. But I knew that was something that I wanted to

create and so when he told me he thought I was good at that, I thought, maybe that's

my idea. And so I made a few videos, put them on YouTube, connected them to a website, and

just went from there.

And how, what was the reaction at first? Nothing! There was no reaction for a long

time. Why?

Well, I wasn't doing them with a business mind; I wasn't promoting at all; I was just

exploring, basically. And that was ok probably, at that point,

or did it make you worried and nervous: nobody

likes my approach?

No it didn't make me worried and nervous, no, not at all, because I wasn't doing it

for an audience. I was mostly doing it as a way to explore a website-production kind

of thing. It's great that you had this interest in

both pronunciation and computers.

Yeah, no, definitely.

You weren't an expert right? It just got you more into thinking about

... In pronunciation? No, not pronunciation, I mean that I'm

just wondering, especially for people out there thinking about doing any kind of online

anything, but especially teaching, or students who want to study online, who might be a little

afraid of technology thinking that they can't do it. It sounds like you kind of dove in.

One step at a time.

Oh totally. I mean, when I realized what I needed to learn, I learned it. I did not

start Rachel's English at all with an idea of what it would be, like, in no way, and

I'm still not sure what it will be.

And that's important to the point now, because it's gotten, it's so well done now.

I think that someone who hasn't followed you for as long as I have or as long as many other

people here may have, would just think that wow that she just, boom, but it didn't happen

that way. Definitely not. No, no. It grew.

It started out in a dorm room in Germany. When was that, by the way?

That was 2008. This October will be my 5th year anniversary of posting my first video.

Congratulations in advance. Thank you. That's great. I want to ask you more about the rhythm

of English, because I focus a lot on that

too. What techniques have you found most useful? Because there are a lot out there. Yeah, well,

I'm still developing that actually. But I've had a lot of fun recently working

with students where I actually take the actual words out of the picture, and we just work

on rhythm. So, for example, let's just take that phrase da-da-DA-da: for example. And

when you take the text out, you're just focusing on the rhythm. Then the main thing I have

to do with my students is to make their short even shorter, duh duh duh duh, trying to make

them comfortable with that kind of length; and then once they start having, like, the

rhythmic language down, and they're comfortable with that contrast and with making things

that short, then when they put the word back in it's just unreal how much better it sounds.

And then they're so aware of the difference s if you don't hear it yourself, feel it

yourself, then you're not going to catch it when people say it.

Yeah. It's such a matter of boiling things down to the most simple units for teaching.

So, like the L consonant,and just drilling that,

or in this case the rhythm, just drilling

that, out of the context of the word or phrase. And then you know you can teach people that

this rhythmic pattern can apply to all of these different words. And so, yeah, then

as they really drill one word and one pattern, they're actually making themselves comfortable

with the pattern that can be applied to tons of different words and sentences.

And you said you're still developing this, so imagine where she's going to go with...

Yeah, I'm excited about it! ...teaching the stress and what I call "shrinking

and linking".

I just wanted to go back to ask you, when you first started out and you were making

those videos, did you think about the fact that so many students don't have enough time

in the class? I mean, you were teaching a group of Korean students.

Yeah, that was about a year before I started the Rachel's English thing. Was part of it,

were you also inspired or motivated to try to deliver something to

individual students who wouldn't necessarily have that kind of attention to pronunciation?

Well, yeah, in a way. When I was teaching at the institute in Boston, all of my students

told me no one else cared about the pronunciation the way I did, and they really cared. So they

really wanted a teacher who really cared.

Well, can you imagine someone who is trying to learn a language who's not concerned about

pronunciation? But it's true, what you're saying. I hear this complaint from a lot from

students that teachers aren't focusing on it. So definitely that was in the back of

my mind and the videos were made completely for

self-study. I know that teachers do use them in the classroom but

my original idea was just to have a great resource to learn on their own because for

me,

since I left college, everything that I've had

to know, I taught myself.

The library, or online resources, or whatever. I mean languages, computer stuff.

That's interesting. I love that kind of learning. Well, I can

see how that has benefitted you and your work.Yeah, definitely. Basically, I wanted

to make something for English like I wished I was finding for French,

and German, and Italian. So yeah, I thought it was

really fun and I wanted to sort of provide this

service for students.

I think it's really interesting that you made them for self-study.

You didn't really think about a teacher bringing them into the classroom

. But now, I notice a lot of teachers using it in the flipped classroom model.

The other day, literally the other day, at a college where I was doing a workshop, teachers

were talking about the problem we just talked about, about pronunciation and how students

want more and what should

they do because they don't feel trained enough. I think that's a big reason why it's not...

I think so, too. I've had teachers say the same thing: I don't know how to teach

that.

So it's interesting because I'm a teacher trainer, and I used to think OK, well then

my job is to try to train up teachers to be able to do that

and now I'm wondering if that is the best way because the other day these teachers were

gathered

at a college in New Jersey. And they were talking about this and then one teacher

said, "You know there's this great teacher

online, that teaches pronunciation. Students can

just watch her, she's ..." and I knew she was going to say your name,

and she said, Rachel's English! True story.

That's awesome! I smiled to myself. "I'm going to have a

conversation with her!" What she said was, "What I do with my students

is just, you know, ask them to watch those videos, and then do some stuff in class but

then they watch on their

own or, and/or I learn from Rachel as a teacher how to do this in ways that I haven't been

able to do from books or even from taking classes."

It feels great to know that I'm providing something that can be helpful to teachers,

too. Because you know teachers, obviously, it's one person, and they're reaching many,

many, many so if I can help the teacher, then there's just that many more people that are