How to greatly improve your English pronunciation in 10 steps

How to Greatly Improve Your English Pronunciation in 10 Steps

1. First, you need to decide what accent you want to have

• A Canadian accent is often considered the most neutral.

2. Listening skills practice

• Watch movies and TV in English and listen to English music to hear how native speakers sound when they say a word.  Imitate what you’re hearing – even if you’re not sure what they’re saying yet

3. Listen to yourself

• Try recording your speech with your smartphone or PC and making a note of specific areas you need to improve on

4. Speak slowly and clearly

•   Speaking too fast reinforces bad habits and makes the speaker sound nervous and indecisive. 

5. Listening to native speakers

• 5. When listening to native speakers, focus on how those speakers stress certain words and begin to copy this

6. Practice in the mirror.  

• This is by far the simplest way to tell what your mouth is doing while you talk.

7. Ask for feedback from a teacher or native speaker.

• A native speaker will let you know immediately what words you are pronouncing wrong and how to correct them.

8. Relax and be natural

• Sometimes you can actually try too hard to pronounce every syllable and sound perfectly

9. Practice English alone

• Pronunciation problems persist because we’re afraid to make mistakes.

10. Practice for at least 30 minutes every day

Phonetic chart for English Pronunciation

Pronouncing - ed at the ends of words. Past Tense, Past Participles and Adjectives.

• ED appears at the end of regular verbs in the past tense (e.g. wanted, helped, lived) sometimes in adjectives ending in ED (e.g. tired, embarrassed, relaxed) as well as in some Past Participles.
• However the pronunciation of ED sometimes causes problems for non-native speakers because it can be pronounced in three different ways: as / id /, as / t / or as / d /

Silent letters. Examples and spelling rules.

• Silent letters are letters that you can't hear when you say the word, but that are there when you write the word. 
• Silent letters can distinguish between  homophones , e.g. in/inn; be/bee; lent/leant. This is an aid to readers already familiar with both words.
• Silent letters may give an insight into the meaning or origin of a word, e.g. vineyard suggests vines more than the phonetic 'vinyard' would.
• Silent letters help to show long vowels e.g. rid/ride
• Silent letters help to show 'hard' consonants e.g. guest/gest
• They can help to connect different forms of the same word e.g. resign/resignation

English Words with ' ch ' Pronounced /k/, English Words with ' ch ' Pronounced ' sh ' /ʃ/.

When is a ‘t’ silent in English?

• 1.  -ften, -sten and -stle . Common word spellings that (almost) always produce a silent .
• 2.  Fricative + + consonant.  There are other spellings where the is not necessarily silent but can be silent in fast, connected speech. This can occur both within a word and between words. 
• Within a word:  la stl y, po stm an, coa stg uard, wri stb and
• Between words:  blurrie st ph otos, aircra ft p roblems, robu st th eory, weirde st c oincidence

• 3.  French loanwords . In some French loanwords, we  try  to keep something of the original pronunciation, and this includes keeping the original silent :  ballet, gourmet, rapport, ricochet, penchant .
•  
• 4.  3 consonan t sounds at the end of a word =  middle 't' is silent:  acts ,  ducts ,  students .