My dear pronunciation freaks: you may feel slightly frustrated by the challenges you have already encounter. If sequences such as "the day" are something of a tongue twister to you or you still struggle to say "decision" you might get a kick out of this video:
As you will notice, this video was edited in the U.S.A., where a significant number of people believe that "white" people are never native Speakers of Spanish, that is to say, they don't even consider European Spanish Speakers and, well, all those Caucasian Latin Americans simply don't exist. Anyway, take comfort in the thought that pronunciation is tough for everyone.
To my C1 students: we have started to explore that overwhelming world of words and expressions. For the time being you should probably concentrate on how to broaden your horizon in terms of vocab. Some C1 features that have been mentioned in the classroom include: a learner's ability to hesitate, to be vague, to use idioms or colorful phrases, in other words, to sound "interesting". Check the differences between these two utterances:
B2 student: I felt really uncomfortable but I don't have much money so I had to accept the situation.
C1 student: You know what it's like... I was out of my comfort zone, to say the least... But I'm a guy on a budget so I had to basically grin and bear it.
Idioms are, by definition, unnecessary, they just add some flavor to your speech and generally make you sound more natural. If you're interested in idioms I suggest you take a look at this funny list.
Oh! I forgot my intermediate students. Okay, okay... How about this list of REAL celebrity names? Not bad for a Tuesday morning, isn't it?
