Many students at Aim ask us “how can I improve my pronunciation quickly?”. As always, there’s no substitute for practice, practice, and more practice. This article will explore a few strategies that will ensure that your practice time is as productive as possible.
1. Imitate!
Listen to spoken English as often as possible. Watch the mouth movements of people when they are speaking, and try to imitate them. Training the muscles in your mouth is the key to good pronunciation. There are lots of places where you can listen to people speaking English:
- Watch television (BBC, CNN, Australia Network, Star World etc). Watch the mouth movements of the speakers and try to copy what they are saying. Also pay attention to rhythm and intonation.
- Watch movies. If you have a choice, switch off the subtitles altogether, so you can focus on the actors’ mouth movements, rather than reading the text
- Download audio books, listen to them in your car, or read along with them at home. Listen to how words are pronounced and try to imitate.
- Use some of the fantastic free resources on the Internet, such as BBC Learning English. Here’s a link to some pronunciation videos, tips, quizzes and more: Click Here
2 Take it slow!
If you slow your speech down, you’ll have more time to make sure you get pronunciation and intonation right, so don’t rush. Remember, it’s all about speaking clearly, not quickly. If you speak too quickly, you might skip some words, or get the pronunciation and intonation wrong. Native speakers might have difficulty understanding what you are saying.
Once you’re confident that you’re getting the pronunciation right, then gradually start to speed up your speech.
3. Learn the phonetic alphabet, & use the dictionary
Every sound in the English language has a symbol. All of these symbols make up the ‘phonetic alphabet’. Once you have learned these symbols, learning pronunciation alone becomes much easier, as you’ll now be able to ‘read’ pronunciation, rather than relying on watching or listening to other people speak.All dictionary definitions (printed and online) include phonetic script, allowing you to quickly know how the word sounds.
Learning the phonetic alphabet is not easy, and may take a while, but the benefits to the development of students’ pronunciation are huge. Well worth the time invested.
To get you started, watch this brilliant introduction to the phonetic alphabet on the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/sounds/
4. Get to know your own pronunciation problems.
Keep a notebook with you at all times, and make a note of words you find difficult to pronounce. These might be words you hear, or words you say that people didn’t understand. When you have a list of all your problem words, ask someone who speaks the language well to say them. Then, imitate them. Even better, ask them to record the words on their handphone, so you can listen to them later. Many online dictionaries also now have a “listen” button next to word definitions, which allows you to hear someone saying the word.
One common pronunciation challenge for Indonesians is the ‘S’ and ‘ED’ endings of words. These sounds are very important, as they show that something is plural, or show when something happened (the tense). Make sure you practice these sounds, in particular.
5. Learn the ‘music’ of English.
Every language has its own ‘music’ – the rhythm, intonation and sentence stress patterns of the language. Advanced students of English learn to reproduce the music of English, and stay away from the ‘music’ of their native language when speaking English. So don’t just learn how to pronounce individual words. Listen to the music of the language and try to imitate what you hear.
It’s worth noting that there are hundreds of different English accents all around the world, each with slightly different intonation and sentence stress patterns. You aren’t expected to be able to imitate them all, but having an awareness of where a speaker is from can really help you piece together the ‘pronunciation puzzle’.
6. Read aloud in English for 20 minutes every day, and record yourself
This is all about developing stronger mouth muscles, and also recognising the mistakes you’re making. It takes weeks, maybe months, of daily practice to train your mouth to produce some of the more difficult sounds in English. Make sure the text you are reading is interesting!
Recording your reading can be very beneficial. Yes, we all hate to hear the sound of our own voice, but you’ll be surprised by how easy it is to spot the mistakes in your own pronunciation when you listen to a recording. Have that notebook at the ready to write down any mistakes you hear.
7. Be patient, and try to enjoy the process
Like many other aspects of learning English, you can’t expect amazing improvements in your pronunciation overnight. It’s a gradual process, there are no ‘short-cuts’, and it will need commitment, motivation and time from you.
This doesn’t mean that the process can’t be fun, though. Here at Aim, lessons on pronunciation are some of the most enjoyable and popular among teachers and students alike. There are now also thousands of fantastic interactive web pages to help with your pronunciation; much more fun than using dusty old books. At Aim, we know that people learn English much faster if they’re having fun.
Remember, you don’t need to try to ‘talk like a native speaker’. It’s perfectly fine to have an accent. The important thing is that you are speaking clearly, and that you are not preventing other people from understanding what you’re saying. Best of luck!