hi everybody and welcome back to top
words my name is Alisha and today we're going to talk about 10 ways to help
improve your pronunciation this is gonna be a good one
I think so let's go sing along to a favorite song alright so the first tip
for improving your pronunciation is to sing along to a favorite song so if you
should add though this favourite song should be in your target language so if
you're studying English pick a favorite English song and sing along to that song
or try to sing to the song just from memory too so singing along to your
favorite song can help you with pronunciation can help you with the
rhythm sometimes of the language you're trying to learn so it can be really fun
and it can be a good way to practice your pronunciation in a sentence I like
singing along to my favorite songs read out loud the next tip for your
pronunciation is to read out loud so reading out loud you can choose
something that's interesting for you and you're in English if english is the
language you're studying so pick something maybe it's a news article or
maybe it's a book you're interested in maybe there's an author you're
interested in find something in your target language in English and try
reading it out loud so don't just read in your mind but read the words out loud
speak them so that you can get comfortable pronouncing those words and
you can try reading the same passage or the same sentence multiple times to make
it smoother so this can be a really good tip for and I think it also improves
your natural ability to pick up grammar too because if you're reading something
like in a book for example you can kind of pick up the natural rhythm of grammar
and you also slowly get a feeling for the correct ways that words should
connect together so this I think is a really good tip in a sentence I
sometimes read out loud to practice pronunciation
that's true repeat lines you hear in TV shows the next tip is to repeat lines
you hear or the words you hear in TV shows or movies things like that so this
means not only words don't only repeat single vocabulary words yes maybe you
find a vocabulary word that is really interesting or it sounds funny or
something like that but by repeating a full sentence or a full line in a TV
show or in a movie you're putting the words together so not just one word but
making a whole sentence so feeling kind of the flow of your language that you're
studying so this can be a better way to actually practice making sentences and
repeating sentences instead of just words so you can repeat after characters
and TV shows I sometimes do this when I'm like watching Japanese TV and then I
try and spit it back out it's hard to do sometimes when it's like the first time
you've heard a word or the first time you've heard a grammar point but you can
still understand that sentence it's interesting so try to say it and it's
kind of fun actually in a sentence try repeating lines from
TV shows to practice practice speaking in phrases not single vocabulary words
the next tip this is very similar to my TV show tip is to practice speaking in
phrases not in vocabulary words not just single vocabulary words even if you're
not repeating lines from TV shows when you practice speaking don't just speak
in noun so sometimes for example I'll hear people just use noun like they'll
use a noun and maybe a verb like I tomorrow Beach something like that and
yes we can probably guess based on that how like the the meaning the speaker's
meaning but you need to practice making a whole sentence so yes you know those
words I tomorrow in beach and the listener can probably guess what you
mean but you need to practice all those little words in the middle like like I'm
going to the beach tomorrow so make a full sentence practice making full
sentences don't only just single vocabulary words make the
whole line it's really good sometimes I think my students get
irritated like they'll like I forced them to practice full sentences like so
I'll say like mmm have you ever been to Germany and
they'll say yes I'm like okay for the purposes of practice can you make a full
sentence and they'll say I have been to Germany like that's an extreme example
but like I try to push that you know making the full sentence it's it's silly
sometimes but just trying to do that okay so in a sentence
speaking in entire phrases is helpful for practicing the rhythm of a new
language speak a lot with your teacher and ask them to be strict with you on
words okay so the next tip is to speak a lot with your teacher and ask them to be
strict with you so this is kind of two tips in 1 1 speak with your teacher so
if you have a teacher make sure you're speaking in their class if you if
wherever possible sometimes I'll have students join my class and maybe they
feel shy or whatever and they don't speak very much but please speak with
your teacher so that your teacher can correct you your teacher can give you at
least if they're a native speaker or maybe even if they aren't a native
speaker your teacher can give you corrections and if you don't speak your
teacher cannot help you in most cases so please speak with your teacher and if
you like you can tell them please be strict about my pronunciation so
sometimes people will say please help me with my pronunciation specifically and
then I can stop them every time they make a mistake and we practice that
sound especially 80h sounds like that like using using your mouth a little bit
differently can be really uncomfortable for some people but if you're a teacher
can point out those things like th sounds the this that these those those
th sounds ending ER sound practicing those with your teacher can
be a really good way to work on your pronunciation so in a sentence speak a
lot with your teacher they can correct you and help you improve try recording
yourself speaking play it back the next tip for practicing
your pronunciation is to try recording yourself speaking and listen to it play
it back and listen to it so this it might sound a little bit strange but
when we're speaking maybe we don't hear certain things that certain maybe our
little idiosyncrasies or our the little special things that we do when we speak
maybe we don't hear them as we speak but when we listen to ourselves later we
notice them so for example when I watch this video when I watch any of these
videos I notice little things that I didn't notice at now when I'm filming
the video so the same can apply to your pronunciation when you listen to
yourself speak you might hear something that you don't notice when you're
speaking so this can be a good way to to kind of remove yourself to go outside
your body a little bit and listen to yourself from the listeners perspective
so this might be a tip to try in a sentence sometimes you hear yourself
more clearly on a recording do shadowing exercises all right the next tip for
pronunciation is to do shadowing exercises so a shadowing exercise there
are text books and and I think resources on the web so on the website I'm
actually I think you could use the website any English listening or
anything in your target language when you listen to that as the speaker is
speaking you quickly repeat back what the speaker is saying so as you're
listening to it you repeat it almost immediately so you're trying to to match
their pronunciation as closely as accurately as possible this is called a
shadowing exercise so I've seen some cases where people are textbooks will
recommend doing you know 15 minutes of shadowing each day or something like
that or maybe you can do a shadowing exercise listening to a podcast or
listening to the news or something you might find on the website here so that's
a really good way to work on your pronunciation and to get familiar with
you using those sounds kind of more
naturally the way a native speaker would so this can be a good tip to improve
your pronunciation in a sentence try shadowing a native speaker to
improve your pronunciation chat with native speakers so yeah the next tip is
to chat with native speakers so chatting with native speakers of course is a
great way to make friends be to pick up new vocabulary see to get
familiar with grammar and slang but also it can help your pronunciation not all
native speakers speak with exactly the same pronunciation so you might hear
slight differences depending on the country depending on the region in a
country and native speaker comes from so there are many different kinds of
pronunciations or many different there are many different pronunciations but
when you chat with native speakers you can kind of understand the different
pronunciations that are out there and maybe it can help you be more consistent
in your presentation in your pronunciation too so this could be a
good way to improve your pronunciation but of course it's important in general
for learning a language I think in a sentence chatting with native speakers
is an important part of learning a language do pronunciation drills the
next tip is to do pronunciation drills so if you know that there is a sound if
you know that there's something that you always struggle with try drilling it so
do a drill to drill something means to repeat a lot so you might hear this word
used for like like sports and fitness like you drill a skill you which means
to practice something a lot and intensively so if you know that there's
like the th sound is really difficult for you maybe take ten minutes and do a
pronunciation drill on those sounds for you know every day for a month or
something so if you know that there's a specific sound that's difficult for you
consider trying just some very specific pronunciation drills so that can mean
just making that sound repeatedly or maybe reading a text out loud that
a lot of that kind of pronunciation I think you can find a few different ways
to drill to practice intensively those parts of pronunciation that are
difficult for you so in a sentence try doing pronunciation drills for the
sounds you have trouble making find words that are particularly interesting
to you so I think maybe this is the last tip is to find words that are
particularly interesting to you so maybe there's a word that sounds really funny
or maybe you found a really long word in English or a really interesting word a
word that has an interesting history whatever if you can find words that are
interesting to you then maybe you can put some extra emphasis on pronouncing
them correctly so if you're actually enjoying the words that you're learning
then I think it'll become more important for you to express that accurately in
your speech and so focusing on those words maybe and in pronouncing those
words correctly perhaps that can help you apply that same pronunciation in
this interesting word maybe the pronunciation of that word or
some of the parts of that word you can find that in other words in other places
throughout your target language so if you enjoy a particular word and focus on
expressing that word pronouncing that word accurately it can help you maybe
apply that pronunciation in other parts of the language so give it a try
in a sentence take extra care to pronounce words of particular interest
correctly that's the end so those are ten tips to help you improve your
pronunciation if there's anything else that you do to work on your
pronunciation or if you have any questions please leave us a comment and
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watching this episode of top words and we will see you again soon bye
you