Improve Your English Pronunciation in 7 Steps

Pronunciation is the manner of speaking a word or a language. This may refer to generally agreed sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or language in a particular dialect, or simply how a particular person speaks a word or language.

In this article:

1.    Learn to listen.

2.    Practice Tongue Twisters.

3.    Pay attention to your tongue.

4.    Break words down into sounds.

5.    Add stress to sounds and words.

6.    Listen and watch podcasts and videos.

7.    Record yourself.

1. Learn to listen.

Hearing is one of the greatest abilities you can have. How well you listen has a significant impact on the efficiency of your work and the quality of your relationships with others.

So why we listen,

We listen to obtain information.

We listen to understand.

We listen for enjoyment.

We listen to learn.

To become an active listener

You can use these five key active listening techniques to improve your listening skills.

1. Pay Attention

2. Show That You're Listening

3. Provide Feedback

4. Give your Judgment

5. Respond Appropriately

2.          Notice how your mouth and lips move.

Tongue twisters are a great way to practice and improve English pronunciation and fluency.

They can also help to improve accents by using alliteration, which is the repetition of one sound. Below, you will find some of the most popular English tongue twisters. Say them as quickly as you can.

“If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
How man pickled peppers would Peter Piper pick?”

“A skunk sat on a stump.
The stump thunk the skunk stunk.
The skunk thunk the stump stunk.”

“A tutor who tooted a flute
Tried to tutor two tooters to toot.
Said the two to their tutor,
“Is it harder t toot or
To tutor two tooters to toot?”

3.          Pay attention to your tongue.

One of the biggest factors in how someone speaks an English word is how that word is formed in their mouth by their tongue.

Every language involves using your tongue and throat differently and depending on what your native language is, pronouncing a word that doesn't match your typical movements may be very strange for you.

4.          Break down the words into sounds.

To help people think about words as sound, we can help them break words into smaller parts.

One way to break down the syllable is into onset everything before the vowel (the vowel and everything after it).

For example,

Sleep could be broken into /sl/ and /eep/.

5.           Use stress to sounds and words.

Word stress is the idea that in a word with more than one syllable, one (or more than one) syllable will be stressed or accented.

And the rest will be unstressed, or, unaccented. Notice that I'm using the words 'stress' and 'accent' interchangeably. So, in English, not all syllables are created equal.

Some of the Examples for practice:

Stress the first syllable in the word: Most two-syllable nouns (examples: CLImate, KNOWledge)

Stress the last syllable in the word: Most two-syllable verbs (examples: reQUIRE, deCIDE)

Stress the second-to-last syllable in the word: Words that end in -ic (examples: ecSTATic, geoGRAPHic).

 A team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has dubbed this tongue twister the world's most difficult. 

6.          Listen and watch pronunciation podcasts and videos.

There are a few phenomenal podcasts that deal with pronunciation. Podcasts are free, downloadable audio programs that you can put on your mp3 player.

Here are 2 very extensive podcast directories that can help you find good native speaking podcasts in English. 

NPR Podcast Directory (National Public Radio: American)

BBC Podcast Directory (British Broadcasting Channel: British)

7.           Record yourself.

Record yourself speak and then listen to the results.

Why you should record yourself speaking. Recording your voice and then listening back to it has lots of benefits though when working on improving your speaking.

Use your smartphone to record and listen to the recording. And find out the negatives yourself and improve your pronunciation.

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