How to learn English pronunciation?

Straggling to learn English pronunciation in order to be able to understand other speakers, and be understood as you speak?

Sure. It’s not because you are “any worse” to language learning.

It’s simply because English is difficult to master, as a non-native speaker.

Here is why:

English has its own intonation and “music” which differs from that of your mother tongue.
To learn English and achieve fluency, as non-native speaker, you need to understand the concept of phonetic and phonology and know the International Phonetic Alphabet which requires a lot of work.

This is what makes harder to master English pronunciation, as second language learner.

But, luckily, you don’t need to panic.

There is a solution:

In this post you’ll know exactly:

Practices that help learn English pronunciation faster and Easily;

What listening resources truly help master English pronunciation;
How repetition can be a powerful learning technique; and
How behaving like a crazy helps be familiar with English sounds.

Best practices that help learn English pronunciation faster and easily?

#1: Make use of available listening tools:

How to become more fluent in English depends on the kind of practices you get and the listening resources you choose to exercise the pronunciation skills.

Here are 6 good Listening resources:

Audiobooks, learning apps, Radio, TV shows, BBC Learn English, Podcasts and others, are extremely important tools to enhance your listening skills as a second language learner.

2 things to rationalize before practicing listening:

Make sure that the topic you are going to listen to is familiar to you;
The language of the content will be accessible to you to understand.

If you miss this, everything you do about the listening will be useless.

Take this as a warning.

#2: Be conscious as you practice:

To learn effectively the pronunciation of a new language item, you need first to practice every single sound of that item.

How can you do this?

Here is how:

Slow down your usual pace of speaking;
Give yourself extra time to think about the sound of the word you are trying to learn; and
Drill the sounds one by one after you’ve internalized them.

If you do it right, you’ll see that this is one of the best way to learn English pronunciation.

#3: Record yourself

Sounds awkward?

You are completely right. Some people feel aversion toward hearing their voice or watching themselves speak on a mirror.

But they shouldn’t feel like that.

And here is the reason why.

When you hear or watch yourself speak, 2 important things happen:

You can analyze your speech and find spots where you might be speaking too fast or too slow and the adjust you pace;
It serves as a self-reflection because it can allow you observe your body language, specially your facial expression. This, will help you build confidence in the real life conversation with a partner.

So, don’t miss this technique.

Prepare a few sentences to record yourself saying them, then listen to the recording.

It’s simple. Just use your mobile phone or other device.

#4: Tongue Twitters

As stated in www.engVid.com, tongue twitters are extremely import ways to practice and improve pronunciation.

According to engVid.com,

Tongue Twitters can improve accent by using alliteration which is the repetition of one sound”.

Here are 3 of the most popular English tongue twitters taken from the website above.

Practice them like songs to learn English pronunciation.

Try to say them as quickly as you can:

” I have got a date a quarter to eight; I’ll see you at the gate, so don’t be late”.

“You Know New York, you need New York, you know you need unique New York”

“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?”

Find interesting?

Check this: https://www.engvid.com/english-resource/50-tongue-twisters-improve-pronunciation/

These practices are the abc learning English pronunciation. If you take them you’ll achieve your goals.

A young leady is listening to music to learn English pronunciation

A young lady listening to music

What other Listening Resources Help Learn English Pronunciation?

Resources, tricks and techniques to help you improve your pronunciation skills :

In edition to the tools suggested earlier, you can learn English pronunciation through Netflix learn English; BBC Learn English and Podcasts:

3 Awesome Language Learning Resources to Take your English Pronunciation to the next Level:

“Netflix learn English” is a potential English listening resource. Here you find everything you need, to improve your English pronunciation. How to get Fluent QUICKLY and EASILY in English **4 Easy Tips**.

You can practice listening from BBC Learning English through You Tube channels: https://www.youtube.com/user/bbclearningenglish,
Podcasts: with podcast like “Radiolab” you can learn English pronunciation. Here you find a wide range topics for you to listen to. https://radiolab.org/podcast/shell-game

Like all resources described above, you can boost your listening skills with apps for learning English pronunciation.

And one of these is Duolingo.

With Duolingo you can practice listening, speaking, reading and writing skills and learn English pronunciation.

How to get the App to Learn English Pronunciation?

In today’s fast-paced digital world, learning pronunciation English online is very easy.

All you need to do, to use this free mobile app, is go to the “play store” of your device to download and then install it.

With this best free app you can learn English pronunciation and other skills as you play.

Here is how it looks like after you install it:

Source: Google.com

What do you expect to learn from Duolingo?

– All the skills:

You can practice writing, speaking, reading, listening including sentence structure.

You do all this while entertaining yourself.

Duolingo is one of the best apps for learning English pronunciation and other skills.

2 people are standing one in front of the other. They are chatting to learn English pronunciation. — 2 people are standing one in front of the other. They are chatting practicing English pronunciation.

How can I learn English Pronunciation by Drilling language items

Apart from the best apps to learn English pronunciation that exist on the internet, you can practice pronunciation by drilling.

Drilling or repetition is a great learning technique that successful language learners use to master pronunciation.

How does this work?

The strategy is to practice how to pronounce the words you come across while reading or listening to English, and the aim is to encourage your articulation system produce English sounds.

What actual action should you take?

Drill the sound of the word you are targeting.

Before going father, it’s important to let you know that this technique can be effective for some learners, but not for others.

Let’s settle this, first:

Why is it that the approach doesn’t work for all second language learner?

The answer?

Lack of consciousness to what is being repeated.

Let me put it this way:

Repetition, as a learning strategy, comprises two forms, namely:

Active repetition, and
Non-active repetition.

What is the difference between them?

First thing first.

English learners that attempt to practice pronunciation through non-active repetition method, generally end up not achieving what they intend to learn.

The reason why this happens is because they aren’t actively thinking about what they are practicing.

In the active repetition, learners are consciously thinking about the phonological aspects of what they are saying (how specific sound is pronounced. This leads to achieving fluency).

As a result, they learn effectively the language item’s sound they are practicing.

The same doesn’t happen with non-active repetition.

With this kind of technique even if the learner drills the item gazillion times, they can’t succeed simply because they are not deeply thinking about the sounds of the language item they’re attempting to practice.

To learn pronunciation of English words you need to be a good thinker.

Visit this to learn more about the importance of drilling: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/professional-development/teachers/knowing-subject/articles/drilling- 1

A young man with the mouth open. .He is exercising sounds to learn English pronunciation. — A young man exercising English Pronunciation.

How Acting like a “Crazy” Can Help me Learn Pronunciation English?

Everyone knows that to learn a language you need to do a lot of practice.

What most people ignore however, is how speaking by yourself in front of a mirror, like a mad, can help you achieve fluency in English language.

#1: Learn English Pronunciation: How does this work?

Good question:

Pick a topic:

A situation, a routine, an event or something else

Describe things that happened the day before, now and are going to happen; to practice past, present and future tense, which is good.

Do this in front of a mirror, to see the real movement of your mouth as you utter English words.

During the exercise try to be as much realistic as you can.

Carry out a conversation; chat with ‘a friend’ of yours, tell him what you think, what happened, why happened.
Ask yourself questions about why things are the way they are.
Do anything with the words you are practicing the pronunciation. Play with them, sing.

#2: Why should you do this kind of exercise?

It allows you be familiar with the English sounds;
It encourages you practice sentence structures, as you are free to say whatever you feel like saying in your utterance.

In short, the aim of this exercise is to practice pronunciation.

Practicing is the key factor to learn a language.

Every best website to learn English pronunciation highlights this. Here is one of them:

https://keithspeakingacademy.com/practice-speaking-english-alone-free/