7 Tips to Drastically Improve Your Pronunciation in English

7-tips-to-improve-your-pronunciationDo you have a hard time pronouncing certain sounds in English? Do you believe that it’s nearly impossible to improve your accent? I´m here to tell you that you can drastically improve your pronunciation in a short amount of time.

It´s going to take an open mind, consistent effort, and experimentation with new strategies, but it’s not as hard as you may believe. With pronunciation, a little effort goes a long way.

You just have to want it bad enough and be consistent on the fundamentals.

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1. Open Your Ears to Youtube & Podcast Pronunciation 

There are a lot of very helpful, well-done youtube channels that focus on pronunciation. Beyond our very own Youtube Channel, RealLife TV, which teaches pronunciation in dynamic ways, Rachel’s English is a series of free pronunciation videos that teach phonetics and English pronunciation. Other recommended youtube pronunciation channels are listed below.

Here’s a site that enables you to download and convert youtube videos into MP3 audio format so you can listen in your car or on the bus. It’s recommended to listen to the same sounds every day until you feel like

3 Youtube Channels That Teach Pronunciation

2.Lifestyle English: Listen to Podcasts Every Day

Podcasts Teaching Pronunciation: There are some phenomenal podcasts dealing with pronunciation. Podcasts are free, downloadable audio programs that you can put on your mp3 player. If you’re new to podcasts, you can learn more about podcasts here, or check out our very own podcast, RealLife Radio. They are an excellent option because you can listen in your car or on the bus while you’re stuck in traffic, or whenever is most convenient for you. Here are few recommended podcasts for pronunciation and in general:

Native Speaking Podcasts: Whether its ESL podcasts (English as a Second Language) or podcasts that are made for Native English speakers, exposing yourself regularly to native speaking speakers will naturally condition your brain to understand and produce the sounds of the language in a more clear and smooth way. Here are 3 very extensive podcast directories that can help you find good native speaking podcasts in English. To learn more about podcasts, read “What is a Podcast, and Why You Should Care” 

Improve Your Pronunciation with this scene from Friends TV Series

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3. Intonation: Focus on the Music Behind the Words

Whether you pay attention to it or not, the musical element of a language is essential to good pronunciation. You don’t need to become a musician or listen to more music in English (although both of these could help), but you should pay attention to the intonation of native speakers. It is the melodic pattern of the language that is so fundamental to communication and human connection.

If you had to hum the language, what would it sound like? Making this awareness a part of your learning process is important. Check out this youtube video of an Italian group singing in words that don’t exist. The funny part is that it totally sounds like English but they are speaking unintelligible gibberish. If you weren’t paying attention, you wouldn’t notice the difference.

https://youtu.be/Kj5TL1l9QYQ?t=1m37s

The application is more of an attitude rather than a strategy, as it involves constant awareness rather than routine, but it’s definitely something to keep in mind.

We also Recommend How Music Can Make You FluentIntonation: The Secret Ingredient to Great Pronunciation (with Audio), and Is Bad Pronunciation Killing Your Fluency?

4. Practice: Read Out Loud Every Day

I would reserve this one more specifically for people who have already learned some degree of correct pronunciation, because reading without correct pronunciation, or a teacher helping you, you’re just reinforcing poor pronunciation. Before you start, you should at least have some idea of what it feels like to pronounce things correctly.

If your pronunciation level has not been stabilized, I don’t recommend reading for more than 10 or 15 minutes, because people tend to lose their concentration, and go back to their vices (which is to reinforce them). Remember, pronunciation can be improved quite quickly with small, concentrated doses even only a few times per week. Here’s a helpful article on reading out loud.

One way around this, however, is to listen to the audio book while you read the text and imitate the speaker. For greater effectiveness, record yourself speaking and compare it to the audio book.

5. Self-Awareness: Record Yourself Speaking

Record yourself reading out loud on a tape recorder or a computer. At first, it will be really difficult to listen to your own voice. Relax, as you will get used it to pretty quickly.

Most people hate their voice, even in their own native language, so the combination of your voice and hearing yourself speak a foreign language for the first time will be painful, but it’s a necessary step in developing the self-awareness to improve.  You could even record yourself reading the same reading passage every day or every week as you implement these techniques.

As mentioned above, recording of a native speaker reading the same passage (such as an audiobook, podcast, or a native speaker friend) could facilitate your process.

Here are a few recommended web sites that focus on pronunciation. Ship or Sheep  is a good place to experiment with recording yourself.

6. Imitation, Shadowing, and Role Models

I’m going to break this one up into two categories: (a) language learning role models, and (b) role models to imitate. Both of them can help you become a better speaker, but in different ways.

LANGUAGE LEARNING ROLE MODELS are people in your life who speak well and have worked hard to get there. Maybe it’s a teacher or a friend, but they are someone who has learned through hard work and can explain the process to you.

Even if they don’t have perfect pronunciation, they can help you understand the process and what it takes to improve your pronunciation. Naturally gifted people rarely fall into this category unless they are very aware of the processes that help them speak well, so they would usually be “accent role models to imitate.”

ROLE MODELS TO IMITATE are people with accents that you want to imitate. Native speakers and people who are naturally talented usually don’t understand the processes that guide their pronunciation (although a few do), but they are good role models to imitate.

As you watch TV and movies, choose somebody who has your type of voice, communication style, and who you would like to emulate. If you don’t know, ask your friends to recommend somebody. You could even memorize parts of movies you like, imitating the actors.

The act of imitating somebody speak is called SHADOWING. Check out this helpful video below on the topic.

7. Experimentation: Reverse Accent Mimicry

This is another idea that deserves its own post, but I’m going to post the article and summarize it here. I’ve met several seemingly gifted language learners who swear this is how they learn languages.  Here’s a basic summary from the study/ article by Laurence M. Hilton.

Humans possess an innate biological capacity to hear, differentiate and mimic fundamental prosodic and phonological characteristics of any language. My purpose is to describe a mimicry based foreign accent reduction method developed from my own personal experience. I first will present myself as a case study, detailing how using a reverse accent mimicry method rapidly and substantially minimized my own L2 accent. I then will share suggestions for implementing the technique in the classroom or clinic.  I have employed it with good success with people from diverse language backgrounds over several decades of clinical experience. Read the whole article 

The idea, in a nutshell, is to imitate a native speaker of the language that you are learning, speaking your language, and apply it back to the target language. Let me give you two valid examples.

  • If you are Brazilian learning English, you would imitate a native English speaker who is speaking Portuguese, and apply the sounds structure back to English. It sounds like a joke, but if you can effectively imitate a native English speaker speaking Portuguese in the most exaggerated way, it will activate these sounds in your mouth and enable you to use them in English.
  • In my case, I am American, so I need to find an example of a Brazilian speaking English with a really exaggerated accent, learn to imitate it, and apply it back to Portuguese.

Does this work? My intuition tells me that it does. It really fits into what I’ve learned from the “master” language learners.

Conclusion

IN CONCLUSION, while the title includes “English Pronunciation,” most of these tips and strategies can be applied to any language. Interestingly, as a native English speaker, I would like to point out that my own best insights and teaching do not come from a superior understanding of the English language, but from my own personal learning processes of Spanish and Portuguese.

Finally, I would like to clarify that my own pronunciation in Portuguese is far from perfect, but in all the years of teaching and learning languages, and observing the best language learners, the answers have been put in front of me.

Subscribe to our mailing list to get a really awesome and FREE mini-course on how to make English a part of your life, and you’ll also receive our newsletter with exclusive language learning tips, updates as to events, and access to our vast database of articles. Finally, we would really appreciate it if you spread the word about the project and tell your friends about it. Thanks a lot!

This is a continuation of our pronunciation series, and “How to Reduce Your Accent in English,” which addresses some of the attitudes that impede people from improving their pronunciation. Another extremely helpful article that we wrote is “Top 5 Mispronunciations Made By Brazilians”(which covers the sounds: ED, TH, EE at the end of words, CH/SH/T and H vs R).

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  • Laith Basem says:

    THX for the advices.

  • Laith Basem says:

    THX for the advices.

  • Eric S. says:

    The article is invaluable to me, I have been in Canada for almost 2 years, enunciation is one of the things I have to work on. I got called out a couple of times for my bad enunciation.

  • Eric S. says:

    The article is invaluable to me, I have been in Canada for almost 2 years, enunciation is one of the things I have to work on. I got called out a couple of times for my bad enunciation.

  • Necto Necto says:

    The article is very useful, but there’s too many M’s in the world “imitate”. This literal error isn’t crucial at all, but some people may become confused by it. I, for one, looked it up to make sure I remember its spelling 🙂

  • Necto Necto says:

    The article is very useful, but there’s too many M’s in the world “imitate”. This literal error isn’t crucial at all, but some people may become confused by it. I, for one, looked it up to make sure I remember its spelling 🙂

  • Smartkeeda says:

    excellent idea..it really works!

    Regards
    Team Smartkeeda
    India’s no 1 test preparation website

  • Matheus Rosa says:

    I loved this article. When we are studying a new language, it’s always necesary improve our language skills and when we find a topic to talk about or a way in order to learn it…it’s GOOOOOOOOOOOOD.

  • Matheus Rosa says:

    I loved this article. When we are studying a new language, it’s always necesary improve our language skills and when we find a topic to talk about or a way in order to learn it…it’s GOOOOOOOOOOOOD.

  • Matheus Rosa says:

    I love the shadowing way. I love watching movies and reading book and when we see a good script, the lines keep in our minds.

  • Matheus Rosa says:

    I love the shadowing way. I love watching movies and reading book and when we see a good script, the lines keep in our minds.

  • Alia says:

    Hi.. Nowadays I have problem with English speaking, writing, correct pronunciations etc..Actually, earlier it was good but from last two and half years.. I am associated with Gujarati traditional company.. where no communication is done in English.. Please help me as now I am moving to another company in 15 days where only English language is used.. Please help me

    • Real Life English says:

      Hey Alia, Thanks for reading the article and for commenting. Really nice to hear from you. That’s awesome that you’re moving to another company where only English is spoken. It sounds like an excellent opportunity to learn. We have a lot of great material about all of your needs on our top articles page– http://reallifeglobal.com/english-articles/

      Best of luck and let us know if there’s anything else we can do!

      –Justin

      • Alia says:

        Justin.. Thank you so much.. your articles seems much valuable to me.. but again I need your help.. would be please suggest me.. which I should start first..as all articles looks excellent.. I got confused..please

  • Alia says:

    Hi.. Nowadays I have problem with English speaking, writing, correct pronunciations etc..Actually, earlier it was good but from last two and half years.. I am associated with Gujarati traditional company.. where no communication is done in English.. Please help me as now I am moving to another company in 15 days where only English language is used.. Please help me

    • RealLife says:

      Hey Alia, Thanks for reading the article and for commenting. Really nice to hear from you. That’s awesome that you’re moving to another company where only English is spoken. It sounds like an excellent opportunity to learn. We have a lot of great material about all of your needs on our top articles page– http://reallifeglobal.com/english-articles/

      Best of luck and let us know if there’s anything else we can do!

      –Justin

      • Alia says:

        Justin.. Thank you so much.. your articles seems much valuable to me.. but again I need your help.. would be please suggest me.. which I should start first..as all articles looks excellent.. I got confused..please

  • Johnb660 says:

    I really appreciate this post. I’ve been looking all over for this! Thank goodness I found it on Bing. You’ve made my day! Thanks again! dekkadecbfgg

  • Evan says:

    Thank you! Once again, I’m making sure that the practice makes perfect.
    One day I recorded my speech, and I was shocked at how strong my accent was and at the very wrong pronunciation of some words. For some reason, I rarely see anyone advising me to practice my pronunciation with tongue twisters. But these hard to pronounce sentences help me improve my pronunciation and start speaking more actively. I practice pronunciation of all sounds: https://www.publicaddressannouncer.org/tongue-twisters/, it really helps me a lot.
    I also like the British accent, so I listen to British podcasts (on the BBC for example) and watch British TV series, trying to imitate their speech. But of course, my accent is far from perfect for now.

  • gaurav singh says:

    Superb english really helpful for me Thanks for giving this valuable information.

  • Amanda Huang says:

    I am a student who have faced the problem of English learning and I think the tips in the article is really helpful. Hopefully, I will improve my oral speaking skills in these ways!