Stress & Melody in British and American English. A quick intro

P.S. Don't go UP⬆️ at the end of your sentences. "Upspeak" doesn't help you sound more competent or confident. Instead, you come across as someone who is not sure.

What people say and what we do in the community of practice.

Every Sunday we meet and practice as a group. All members are welcome. Every day we follow our individual practice routines.

Here, you will find a system of exercises to develop your spontaneous speaking skills in English and correct stubborn, unconscious, and often unnoticed speaking patterns.

It’s a place where people come to practice and receive professional feedback from those who have mastered the skills they’re learning.

We have 250+ exercises, tutorials on how to do each exercise correctly, as well as specific practice routines to improve your reading, speaking, listening, writing, and thinking skills in English.

Here, we learn by doing.

Become a member and start practicing today. And join us on Sunday! Apply here nataliatokar.me/community

My spotter fell asleep while on duty😁

How to express your feelings in English.

Try reading poetry. Learn from poetry.

We have a 14-day practice routine going on right now in the community. It’s all about poems. Listen to the amazing work that people do there. Learn from each other.

https://youtu.be/-kdkH5T2Dog?si=rODijwRPUc4WeQk4

Join Sunday Practice Sessions and improve your spontaneous speaking skills in English. Self-correction is a vital skill that is taught literally nowhere.

It must be modeled. This is what I do for the community members every Sunday.

Become a member and practice regularly. Nataliatokar.me/community

The more advanced you get as a language learner, the more you need to practice internalizing good vocabulary instead of memorizing new words.

"Learn 100 new words in a week" is a message that speaks to beginners. It sells very well.

Everyone who's not a beginner knows they can't learn 100 new words every week. Your progress slows as you get better at a skill.

The real problem is not that people don't know the words. That's why the solution can't be to learn new words. The real problem is that people speak on autopilot, unconsciously repeating the old patterns while paying expensive coaches to learn new patterns at the same time.

Students focus on learning new words and completely ignore the fact that to do so, they need to stop the old behaviors.

I say, "Stop learning new words". What's the point if you use them incorrectly in your speech? What's worse, you probably never use these fancy words in your conversations.

Start internalizing good vocabulary instead. This should not be NEW vocabulary. It can be a phrase you have heard many times, but you never use it or use it incorrectly.
Example: you know that it's correct to say "I ended up havING late dinner in the cafe next door", but you say "I ended up TO HAVE late dinner in A cafe VERY CLOSE TO ME"

Focus on using words correctly instead of collecting words you don't plan on using.

I call this routine: "The internalization routine". In the community of practice, you will find:

1. Full video lesson where I show you how I work with my internalization notebook
2. Video lessons that explain what this notebook is for and how to add words to it
3. A step-by-step practice routine that explains how to work with the notebook daily
4. Hundreds of vocabulary exercises to help you get to more advanced levels and sound more natural in English.

Become a member and practice with us.
nataliatokar.me/community


If you're a member, the full video lesson is here. Press PLAY and follow along.

This is the longest poem I've read. This poem helped me not only correct my vowels, melody, and pace, but also find the answers to the questions my heart kept asking for weeks on end.


The poem helped me slow down big time! Slowing down is my daily practice these days, and it ain't easy!


I discovered it by accident as I did our 14-day practice routine in the community. It's one of the most popular routines. See how other people read, what poems they choose, and how magical and tangible their progress gets.



Become a member and improve your accent and spontaneous speaking skills in English with us. nataliatokar.me/community

I practice complicated moves in my workouts because they require intense concentration and help me get out of autopilot every day.
We do almost everything on autopilot. We speak on autopilot, especially in our first language.



When people expect to speak a foreign language with zero effort, as they do in their native language, I ask: "Are you happy living on autopilot?" They speak English or any foreign language inadequately because they rely too much on autopilot.
The goal is to develop a new language identity, meaning you will end up sounding speaking, and maybe even thinking differently in another language.
You can’t apply the same automaticity from your first language to a new one. First, recognize your automatic behaviors. Then question each and every one of them. Do you want to keep them when speaking another language? Do you want to continue repeating these behaviors effortlessly and unconsciously? Or do you want to develop new ones consciously?

People hurry. I get it. But the truth is, the more advanced you get, the more your progress slows. You need to do a lot more inner work to develop native-like fluency than if you need to pass a language test.

Self-remembering on a daily basis and questioning automatic behaviors you see in yourself is a life-long practice.


You will make significant progress when you surrender to the realization that it's a lifelong practice.

When people say, "I want to speak English as effortlessly as my native language. Please take me there as fast as possible", I tell them: "Do you think this acrobatic move that you see in the video can be done as effortlessly and quickly as sitting down on a chair and standing back up?"

Sitting down on a chair is a metaphor for speaking your first language. It requires zero thought. Doing what I do in the video is a metaphor for speaking a foreign language. You must slow down and consciously perform every move. You need to be conscious of every word you say, even in your first language.
Try that. It's damn hard.

"Learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior or knowledge that results from experience."

Find 'The Presence Exercise" in the community of practice and learn FROM and WITH advanced English learners who practice their spontaneous speaking skills.

You can't prepare every next word you're going to say. This practice is futile.

You can only prepare yourself. That's what self-regulating your inner state is a more important practice.

We're paralyzed by our own fears, thoughts, and emotions. Not by the lack of words. The problem of not having enough words is easy to solve. We have fantastic exercises and routines in the community. With the right practice, you will sound natural and correct in English.

The real problem in spontaneous speech is automaticity. People start speaking before they're ready. They end up saying what they don't mean to say. They fear disapproval. They wait for approval. They get frustrated by ambiguous feedback or no feedback at all. They want to do good and they can't. They feel like they're taking up space and stealing everyone's time. They can't remember the words they need.

The real problem is that this problem repeats. A pattern will repeat until it doesn't need to repeat because you've changed it.

Join the community of practice. Join weekly Sunday Practice Sessions where we practice self-correction in spontaneous speech and learn to express our authentic selves in a foreign language.

nataliatokar.me/community