Hi,
Today I’m gonna tell you three tips
that helped me improve my English pronunciation.
I haven’t been to any English-speaking country so far,
and since that many people asked me about
how I improved my English speaking in a Chinese-speaking country,
they said they want to learn Chinese as the way I learn English,
so I thought that I could share my learning experience with you.
Hello everyone.
Welcome back to my channel.
I’m Grace.
Before I show you these tips,
I want to let you know
what my pronunciation was like from 1 and 2 years ago,
so I will play my recording from then and a recent one.
After listening to these three stages of my English speaking,
you can feel the differences.
Omg, I felt a little bit embarrassed
when listening to my pronunciation back then,
but I want you to know the progress I’ve made
within these two years.
If you want to have the improvement like this,
you can try to follow the tips I give you today.
ok, let’s go!
During these two years,
this method really helps me a lot,
and I think this is also a good way for you
to get used to pronouncing Chinese tones
and help you sound more like a native speaker.
This method is created by 史嘉琳（Karen Steffen Chung）,
a professor at National Taiwan University.
She explained that:
one very useful tool to cultivate a new internal model
for a new language is the “echo method".
It can help us develop a natural sense of pronunciation,
or internal voice.
If we pronounce or say something wrong,
this internal voice will give us the right pronunciation
and help us self-correct immediately.
let me tell you how it works:
This method has three steps: listen, echo and repeat.
That is,
first just listen carefully,
second, let the sounds play again in your head,
and the final step is you try your best to imitate the sound
and say it out loud.
So if you want to use this echo method
to practice your pronunciation,
the first thing you have to do is to find some materials.
For example, you can find some TV drama with subtitles
or any material that has audio files and transcripts.
After you have the materials,
you just need to focus on a short paragraph every day.
After You fully understand this paragraph,
you can start playing the audio file
and using this method.
personally, at the beginning,
I’d play just several words every time,
going through these three steps
and concentrating on how to correctly pronounce these words.
and then after finishing this,
I’d start playing a whole sentence
and focus on the intonation and the inflection of this sentence.
At the end, I’d play the whole paragraph and repeat it.
And not only did I use this method,
but also I recorded my own voice of saying these sentences.
I think “recording” your sentences has three advantages,
first, it gives you a little sense of achievement.
And also, this can help you track how long you have been practicing,
like for a month or a year.
The third advantage is that
you can replay your recording
and compare with the audio file
to find out what you can improve.
So you know that I didn’t really have an English environment
but the good news is
there are so many resources online,
you just need to take a little time to find them.
And you also need to try to use these resources on a daily basis
and let these things become your daily habit.
For example,
when I’m washing the dishes or when I am commuting,
I listen to Podcast a lot.
It’s like a habit for me.
Also, It's important to find the material
that is suitable for you,
which means it should be at a difficulty you can handle,
and also you should be interested in the content
so you will keep listening to it.
Listening more is definitely gonna help you improve,
I think, many aspects of language proficiency.
But in terms of improving your speaking,
you can pay attention to the intonation
and the inflection of the native speaker.
When I was in college,
I took some linguistic classes.
This changed my perspective of learning a new language.
It made me learn English more efficiently.
I knew better the rules of languages,
and what could be different between different languages.
In terms of pronunciation,
Knowing rules such as “vowel reduction” helped me understand that
in English, many vowels in unstressed syllables
are pronounced as / ə /.
This is the same as in Chinese,
we also have some rules when we speak,
for example, to make sounds more recognizable,
When we say "一”, "不" with other words,
the tone will be different.
Like, we won’t say “bù要”
we say “bú要”,
we won’t say “yī個”,
we say "yí個“
The rule is that when these two words attach to
a word that with the first, the second or the third tone,
they are pronounced with the fourth tone.
but if “一”, “不” attach to a word that with the fourth tone,
they are pronounced with the second tone
to make listeners understand more easily.
Also like different languages have different sounds,
so we have to get used to these new mouth shapes and tongue positions.
Having these linguistic knowledge really helped me
consciously improve my pronunciation.
Because now we are adults
we can understand rules and abstract concepts,
we can accelerate our progress by using them,
instead of totally relying on the natural approach.
Of course, you can use the natural approach,
but if you want to learn a language more efficiently,
you can consider having some linguistic knowledge
for learning it more consciously.
But you might think
“what if I don’t have a chance to take linguistic classes?"
"What can I do?”
Actually this is one of the reasons why I started this channel,
I hope that I can summarize some linguistic knowledge
and share with you guys to help you learn Chinese faster.
So if you want to learn Chinese more efficiently,
just subscribe to my channel
and you’ll get more and more information here.
OK, that’s it for today,
These three tips really helped me make huge progress.
I hope they will help you in the same way.
And if you have any good methods
for training your pronunciation or enhancing your Chinese speaking,
you’re welcome to share it in the comment section,
I’d like to know and maybe it’ll help others as well.
I’ll see you next time,
Bye!