Saturday, October 12, 2013

How To Better Pronunciation In English

By Catalina Nielsen


Achieving perfect pronunciation is a dream to most of English students. With thousands and thousands of sounds and often haphazard spelling system, English is one of the hardest languages to spell. However, without making an effort to improve, your accent is likely to overshadow your perfect grammar. You may give such a good grammatically speech only to realize that you audience left with nothing because your pronunciation was pathetic. Below are some guidelines for better pronunciation in English.

The easiest way to improve your articulation is to practice repetitively. Now that you are aware of your errors, you can always practice their corrected articulations. The best way to do this is to be alone in a room and pronounce words out loudly. You can compare your pronunciation with that of native speakers and see if you need to improve.

If you learn a new word, you should always ensure that you get its correct pronunciation. This is to avoid getting the wrong pronunciation in mind. It will take you a lot of time to correct a wrong articulation if you are used to a wrong one. You could also imagine sounds in your mind prior to speaking them out. Try to visualize how to position your tongue and mouth. This will help you pronounce the word correctly.

Most people agree that it is easy to realize a mistake in another persons speech than on their own speech. This means that you may make mistakes with your enunciation but may never realize them. For you to realize your own mistakes, you can always record your speech and listen to it later on. This way, it is like listening to a third party speaking and picking up any accent errors will be easier.

You should also identify a role model who is fluent in the language and try to work with him/her closely. Role models are people who are good in the language you are trying to learn either because they are naturally good at it or because they have worked hard to reach where they are. A role model does not have to be your teacher or a public speaker. It can even be your spouse, friend or colleague so long as they are good in articulation.

You will also need to be surrounded by good speakers of the language. You cannot expect to have a good accent in a language if those who surround you speak a different language. You should therefore choose your friends very carefully in order to avoid bad influence in terms of enunciation.

You also need not only to be a good speaker but also a good listener. Pay attention when eloquent speakers are on the podium giving their speech. This will help you know articulation of some of the words you have been having difficulty with.

These are the major tips for better pronunciation in English. You should also not feel embarrassed to make mistakes. People usually learn from these mistakes so it is not bad to be corrected.




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