TIPS FOR IMPROVING PRONUNCIATIOn
- Be patient. You won't improve your pronunciation overnight, but you can improve with repeated practice.
- Focus on sounds that are difficult for you. You can get feedback from a teacher or use a diagnostic tool like posetest.com/ to learn which sounds you need to practice.
- Focus on one sound at a time. Don't try to correct all sounds at once.
- Practice repeating the examples several times over several days, and pay attention to exactly what the muscles of your mouth are doing. (You can use a model such as the ones on https://soundsofspeech.uiowa.edu/ to see what your mouth should do)
- If you have trouble pronouncing a word or sentence, break it into parts. Start with the sound you're practicing, then add a sound before it, then a sound after it. Continue adding parts until you can say the whole word or sentence.
- For each sound, think of other words you've heard with that sound. Listen for that sound as you talk to other English speakers.
- Try recording yourself and listening to your pronunciation. You can also share the recording with a teacher or friend.
- Remember: Progress is gradual. For example, you may improve pronouncing a sound at the end of words before you improve pronouncing it at the beginning of a word. Be patient and continue practicing!
USEFUL RESOURCES
These websites can help you learn more about pronunciation and the structure of English. Several of these resources helped in the development of this website.
- Color Vowel Chart: americanenglish.state.gov/resources/color-vowel-chart
- English Accent Coach: www.englishaccentcoach.com/validate.aspx
- Eva Easton's pronunciation website: www.evaeaston.com/pronunciation/
- Learner's Dictionary Perfect Pronunciation: www.learnersdictionary.com/pronex/pronex.htm
- Rachel's English: rachelsenglish.com/
- POSE test (pronunciation diagnostic): posetest.com/
- Pronuncian: pronuncian.com/
- Sounds of Speech: soundsofspeech.uiowa.edu/index.html#english
- Word Stress Rules: http://www.wordstress.info/
- YouGlish: https://youglish.com/

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