Breaking Down "She Starts Making Fresh Coffee"
This is sentence number four from the Sarah's Morning story.
Sarah has checked her phone. She's felt the cold kitchen. Now she starts making fresh coffee.
Let me show you why this simple sentence is difficult for so many listeners.
The Sentence
"She starts making fresh coffee."
Say it out loud three times. Listen to yourself.
Did you hear six separate words? Or did it sound like one long stream?
That's the key.
English Has a Constant Rhythm
Think of a heartbeat. It is steady and regular.
English sentences work the same way.
In this sentence, there are two main beats: STARTS and FRESH.
She STARTS making FRESH coffee.
Everything else moves faster around those beats.
You can hear the word "coffee", but it's softer and faster.
When you listen to English, don't try to catch every word equally. Listen for the strong beats first. The weak words will fill in around them.
The Consonant Clusters
Here's where it gets interesting.
English words don't stay separate. They crash into each other.
Cluster One: starts + making
The end of "starts" has three consonant sounds: r-t-s.
The beginning of "making" has one: m.
Put them together: r-t-s-m.
Starts-smake. Starts-smake.
Your tongue barely lifts between "starts" and "making." It's almost one word.
Cluster Two: making + fresh
The end of "making" is ng.
The beginning of "fresh" is f-r.
Put them together: ng-f-r.
Making-gfresh. Making-gfresh.
Again, they blend. There is no pause. There is no separation.
Why This Matters
I've taught English in Japan since 1998.
I've seen hundreds of students who know every word in a sentence but can't understand it when they hear it.
Why?
Because they're listening for separate words.
English doesn't work that way.
Words blend. They crash together. They create new sounds at the borders.
If you expect six separate words in "She starts making fresh coffee," you'll miss the sentence.
But if you expect two strong beats with words flowing around them, suddenly it becomes clear.
Your Practice Assignment
Here's what I want you to do.
Shadow this sentence twenty times today.
You can find it right on this site. There’s even a button to make it easy to play 20 times.
Say it with the rhythm. Feel where the words connect.
She STARTS making FRESH coffee. She STARTS making FRESH coffee. She STARTS making FRESH coffee.
As your mouth gets better at making these sounds, your ear gets better at hearing them.
As your ear gets better, your mouth improves too.
They train each other.
The Real Secret
Most English teachers focus on grammar rules.
I used to do that too.
But grammar is procedural memory, not descriptive memory.
You don't think about riding a bike. You just ride it.
You don't think about rhythm and clusters. You just hear them.
But first, you need to practice them.
Twenty times today.
Make your mouth do what English speakers' mouths do.
Then your ear will start hearing what English speakers hear.
That's how you get better at listening.
Not by thinking more.
By practicing more.
Ready to practice? Listen to today's podcast episode where I walk you through this sentence with audio examples. Shadow along with me.
The full Sarah's Morning story has twelve sentences. This is just number four. Master this one, and the others become easier.
Because once you understand how English rhythm works in one sentence, you start hearing it everywhere.