English Teacher Melanie: Study Tip – How to Improve Your Pronunciation!

(Photo by Leo Reynolds)

I am often asked:How can I improve my pronunciation?Short answer: you need to practice and work hard!Long answer:

1) Decide what kind of accent you would like – American or British?
These are the two major accents in English. There are others, like Australian, Irish, or South African, but American and British are the two dominant forms.

American pronunciation and British pronunciation are completely different. Most of the consonant sounds are the same, but the vowel sounds are wildly different.

2) Have your pronunciation professionally assessed
When your pronunciation is assessed by a teacher, he/she can tell you exactly what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong. He/She can tell you exactly what sounds you need to work on to sound more like a native speaker.

Rachel at Rachel’s English can also evaluate your pronunciation.

3) Learn the IPA and the individual sounds of English
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a collection of symbols that represent the different sounds of a language.

British Pronunciation: BBC Learning English

American Pronunciation: Rachel’s English

When you know the IPA you can look up any word in a dictionary and know exactly how to pronounce it.

4) Watch YouTube pronunciation videos

Teacher Melanie (me!) – American English
JenniferESL – American English
Lisa Mojsin @ Accurage English – American English
Rachel’s English – American English
Pronuncian/Seattle Learning Academy – American English

5) Try to imitate spoken English
Rachel (from Rachel’s English) has an interesting idea:
Imitation Exercises

You can do this with anything: podcasts, English songs, English TV shows, English movies. Try to imitate the sounds that native speakers make!

6) Listening activity
Before you listen to an English podcast, song, etc. read the words first. Highlight, circle, or underline the sound you want to work on. For example, if you have trouble with the /I/ sound, highlight all the words that you think have the /I/ sound. Read the passage out loud to yourself, focusing on the words with /I/. Listen to the podcast (or song, etc.) – can you hear the /I/ sound? Try to imitate what the speaker is saying.

7) Practice for at least 30 minutes a day
There is no way around it – the only way your pronunciation will improve is if you practice, practice, practice.

8) Record yourself
The first thing I do when I work with a new student is record them reading a short passage in English. It’s important to hear what you sound like speaking English so you know what you need to improve!

9) Pronunciation Books
Here are the two books that I use to understand and teach American pronunciation:

Mastering the American Accent – Lisa Mojsin

This is quite possibly the greatest book on American pronunciation for both teachers and advanced learners! It does not go through each and every sound (like the book below does). It focuses on the things that will help a non-native speaker speak with a standard American accent (like the kind you hear on CNN!): difficult consonant sounds, linking, syllable and word stress, intonation, and the difference between casual and formal speech. At the back of the book there is a ‘native language guide’ that explains what different nationalities (Chinese, Spanish, Russian, etc.) need to focus on. The book also includes 4 CDs so that the learner can listen to someone speaking almost every exercise.

English Pronunciation Made Simple – Paulette Dale and Lillian Poms

This book explains each individual sound in standard American English, as well as all the other elements of spoken English: rhythm, stress, intonation, consonant clusters, plurals, contractions, past tense verbs, etc. This is a great book for teachers to use as a classroom textbook as there are a lot of exercises teachers will find useful in the classroom. It is better for teachers than for students, as the 2 included CDs don’t say all the words and exercises. This book also helps to learn the IPA as it uses the IPA symbols to help explain American English pronunciation.

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Those are my suggestions! What techniques, methods, activities or resources have you used to improve your pronunciation? Let me know in the comments below!