Do you study pronunciation on your own, but you're not sure what would be the most
effective way to practice pronunciation?
What would be the best use of your time?
And how much time should you even spend on learning pronunciation?
Should you do it once a week, every day, five times a day?
Today, I'm going to share with you my favorite practice strategy that I've
been using with my students inside my programs, and that I have done myself
when working on my own pronunciation.
Hi, if you're new to my channel, my name is Hadar, I'm a non native
speaker of English, and I am here to help you speak English with
clarity, confidence, and freedom.
You can find out more about me at hadarshemesh.com, where I share a ton of
resources and lessons for you to learn on your own, and practice effectively.
Now, if you're new to learning pronunciation, just recently I
released a video on how to get started with learning pronunciation.
So, if you're still not sure what strategy you should have for learning pronunciation
and what you should focus on, make sure to watch that video right after this one.
So, the first thing you need to understand when it comes to learning
pronunciation is that it's all about building new speaking habits.
Sounds are speaking habits.
A habit is something that you do automatically, spontaneously,
without thinking about it.
This is how you want it to feel like when you are learning a new sound.
For example, the R sound, [ur].
If you tend to pronounce it as [rrr], then to switch to [ur], it's
not enough to just know how to make it, you have to make it your own.
And to do that, you have to practice it and turn it into a habit.
And you know how you create a new habit, right?
Repetition, repetition, repetition.
So the ideal pronunciation strategy is to carve out for yourself a few
minutes a day where you consistently practice the sound that you're
trying to simulate into your speech.
So at the beginning of the week, what I would do is plan out my practice time.
This is really important because if it's not in your calendar, you are
less likely to actually make it happen.
Things always happen during the day.
There are more important things than your English practice, I get it.
But every person has 10 minutes a day, that's all you need.
So I recommend my students to do it first thing in the morning, before the day
starts, before everyone comes to you with their requests and demands, and before
you open your inbox or social media.
Then you want to decide what it is that you're going to
practice every one of those days.
And ideally, if you can, spend time with organizing the
resources for you to practice.
And at the end of the video, I'm going to share with you how you
can find free resources online to practice pronunciation effectively.
But you want to plan it out and you want to already organize it.
You can put it in the calendar, links to those resources.
You can have a Google doc with a plan, what you're going to do on
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and links to the videos you're going
to learn with, or the practice sheets you're going to learn with.
And once that's organized, then there is a lot less friction when it comes
to showing up for your practice.
You know, you just open that doc and you have it all
organized and prepared for you.
And you're more likely to do it then.
Now, once you plan it out, which again is a significant part of this
work, you have to understand that it's not just about repeating the
sound again and again and again.
You want to create some kind of escalation in how you use the sound.
So here's how I use it when I create practice sheets and PDFs for my students.
First, I identify the sound that we're practicing, the R for example,
and then I create lists of words.
The lists also start with very simple words that are, let's say,
one syllable: red, run, ready.
And then maybe a few words where the R is in the middle: around, area, already.
And then maybe some words where the R is at the end: care, fear, more.
So, you start with lists of words where the sound is either in
the beginning, middle, and end.
And also you want to create for yourself or find lists of words where
you have words that are one syllable, but also sometimes words with five
syllables that have the R sound in them.
Then I like to practice those words in phrases.
You can do it on your own by making up phrases.
Now, by the way, I have created a ton of free PDFs and practice lists with audio
practice that you can download for free.
I'm going to link all of them in the description below.
So if you want to practice the R and the O and the flap T, I have
those resources for you that you can include in your daily practice.
So, once you practice the words, you want to practice phrases.
So for example, if you say the word 'run' – I'm going to run
away, 'ready' – I'm ready to go.
Because the word always has to come in context.
And of course, when you say the phrase, you want to make sure that
you connect the words together within the phrase and that you actually
pronounce the sound that you're focused on the same way that you pronounced
it when you said it in isolation.
So you say the word, and then the word in a phrase.
And this is a really good fluency practice as well.
So even if you don't have those phrases written out for you, then it's a
really good practice to say the words that you practice in isolation in
context, and you make up that phrase.
Then, you want to practice minimal pairs.
By the way, a minimal pair is two words that sound exactly
the same, except for one sound.
And that change in sound changes the meaning.
For example, right - white, or red - led.
Okay?
I only changed one sound at the beginning and that changed the meaning of the word.
And if you struggle with the R, because when you pronounce it, it sounds
like a W sound - 'wed', then you do wanna practice those minimal pairs
to make sure that they don't sound the same: wed - red, white - right.
So, after you practice words, phrases with those words, and
minimal pairs, then you want to go into more challenging sentences.
Now, again, when I create these sentences for my students, I start with easy
sentences, shorter sentences, just with a lot of Rs, let's say if we practice the R.
But then the sentences could get more complicated until we reach
a level of a tongue twister: 'Betty bought a bit of butter'.
And tongue twisters are really good, not because we use these phrases in real
life, but because it teaches you how to control your tongue when speaking,
how to organize your sounds, how to organize those sounds in your brain.
And when you are in control while practicing, you're more likely
to be in control while speaking.
So that is how I recommend for you to practice each sound individually.
Now, the last thing is, how do you know if you're practicing it correctly?
Here's the thing.
You can and should practice pronunciation, even though you may not have someone
telling you if you got it right.
What I would recommend for you to do is to record yourself and to listen to it.
Trust yourself, your brain knows how to hear the difference between how it
should sound and how it actually sounds.
Now, you might not know exactly what you need to do to change, but really
there is so much that you can do on your own that you don't need a teacher for.
And this is one of those things.
So, recording yourself and listening back to it.
If you have a reference, right, maybe you can find someone on YouTube, or
you can look up this word on YouGlish.
YouGlish is an incredible platform that offers you videos
of people using that word.
Again, I'm going to link to this in the description.
And if you're listening to this as a podcast, cause this is also
on my InFluency Podcast, then it's going to be in the show notes.
So, you can use those references, you can compare it to the original, and then
start asking yourself, What is different, and what can I do to change that?
Now, if you're asking yourself, how do I come up with lists of words and
phrases and sentences to practice with?
So first, like I said, I already created a lot throughout the years, so I'm going to
link all of them in the description below.
There's also a great website for speech pathologists called Home Speech Home
that have resources on their website with lots of words, based on the
sound or the position of the sound in the word, and also minimal pairs.
I love this website, and I think it's a great resource for English learners.
Now, I also recently made a video about ChatGPT.
ChatGPT is an AI language model, and it's like a language assistant that you can
request texts for you to practice with.
So you could write a prompt 'Share with me many examples of minimal pairs like
sheep and ship', or 'Create a sentence with a minimal pair sheep and ship'.
And you actually create those practice exercises for yourself using ChatGPT, and
it's absolutely free, which is amazing.
So as you can see, there's a lot that you can do on your own with
only 10 minutes a day, but with clear strategy and with planning.
And I hope that my video gave you a little bit more clarity around how to
practice during those 10 minutes a day, but also how to plan your week knowing
exactly what you're going to do, and eliminating friction by scheduling it
first and planning ahead and preparing all the resources ahead of time.
Now, if you feel like learning on your own is a little bit overwhelming and
you feel that, you know, you need more guidance, then I invite you to sign up
for my wait list for my program New Sound.
New Sound is my most extensive program that eliminates overwhelm,
confusion around what you need to do when learning pronunciation.
I create those daily exercises for you, I provide you with all the resources and of
course, all the lessons and the guidance.
And I also help you understand what to focus on and how to
identify your priorities.
We open doors for this program twice a year.
So, if doors are closed as you're watching this video, I highly recommend
for you to get on the list to learn more about this program if you don't want to
do it on your own, and you would like my guidance, coaching, and support.
All right, that's it.
I hope you enjoyed it.
Now, if you have been practicing pronunciation for a while, how
does your practice look like?
Let us know in the comments below.
Thank you so much for watching.
I hope this was helpful.
If you enjoyed this, make sure that you subscribe to the channel.
And that's it.
Have a beautiful, beautiful rest of the day, and I will see you
next week in the next video.
Bye.