You're listening to the Rachel's English podcast, made especially for non-native speakers,

where we study the way Americans really speak. My goal is for you to listen to this podcast every week,

and sound more natural when speaking English, and improve your listening comprehension.

If you need a transcript of this podcast,

it's absolutely free to download,

visit rachelsenglish.com slash podcast and look for this episode.

In today's episode, we're speaking with an American

about how he learned to speak English.

Now, most Americans don't know how they learned because they learned when they were kids,

and it happens naturally by immersion.

Dave learned that way, but when he suffered a stroke as an adult, he had to relearn how to speak.

He has some great insight into how an adult can train to sound more like an American

and to participate in American English conversation.

Let's take a listen.

I'm here with my friend Dave.

Dave and I met only online, but several years ago we had a Skype call.

I want to say that was like five or six years ago.

Yeah, I think so. And Dave contacted me because he had been using my videos to practice his

English and he was using them in a way that I had not thought about before, and that was as a native speaker

who had suffered a stroke and was needed to relearn speaking. And I thought, whoa, you know,

I'm making these videos for non-native English speakers, but this is an obvious application as well.

So, welcome, Dave.

...