That’s what Vira, a member of the RealLife English community,
recently shared with me when I asked what was something that prevented her from advancing
to the next level in their English skills. And I think that’s the same situation that a
lot of you find yourselves in. You probably aren’t able to devote English as much time
as you’d like and, like Vira in the comment, you feel that pronunciation
is holding you back or even killing your fluency! If you only had 10 minutes a day to practice your
pronunciation at home alone, what would you do? Life’s busy, I get it. But it’s still possible
for you to create your own learning and practice that will help you
cultivate the skill, build the confidence, and unlock your best voice in English.
In this lesson, I’ll share with you 5 tips that will help you develop the mindset, perception,
and tools to dramatically improve your pronunciation and listening skills.
Express yourself more confidently, and better understand and connect across cultures in English.
Because here at RealLife English we guide you beyond the classroom to understand anyone,
be understood and connect to the world. Just like David who not only improved
his listening skills with our channel but also passed an oral exam with our help.
So click that subscribe button and bell down below now so that you can continue learning with us!
Let’s jump right in! Tip Number 1: Stop cringing at your own voice. Cringe might be a new word for
you, but it describes the exact feeling many of you have when you listen to a recording of your
own voice. And the reason I’m saying this is because in order to find your best voice in
English, you first need to get comfortable with your voice, and accept how you sound. And this is
going to be your best friend for you to practice your pronunciation at home because you can use
your phone to record yourself, and then study, notice and give yourself feedback. After I share
Tip Number 2, you will record yourself imitating these six sentences that contain 90% of the subtle
features that make up connected speech and the pronunciation that they don’t teach you at school.
Tip Number 2: Find your model English speaker.It could be me,
it could be Ethan, an actor, or it could be a fluent, more experienced English learner.
Keep in mind that whoever you choose, they should be someone who has the pronunciation
style that you aspire to have because you’ll imitate their pronunciation.
For now, we’re going to give you two different samples of native pronunciation. I’ll say these
6 sentences myself and then Ethan will pronounce them. You're free to choose
or maybe you want or even play around with your pronunciation and imitate both of us...
...That’s okay, just keep in mind that we have different accents.
This is exactly what you’re going to do. We’ll play the audio of these utterances
and then we’ll give you a few seconds to mimic,
then we’ll play the same sample for you to check. You need to record the whole thing.
If you're having fun make sure you like this video and also
don't forget to share it with a friend who could benefit from it too!
Tip Number 3: Become Aware of your Vocal Articulation.
When you become familiar with your oral musculature, you’re going to be much better equipped to teach
yourself how to make certain sounds. There are no sounds in the English
language that you can’t make. The challenge lies in figuring
out how to engage your oral musculature so that you can do it exactly as the
model English speaker you’ve chosen. Here are some fundamental concepts
for you to start becoming more aware of your vocal articulation.
When I say the “ah” sound in “cat” my tongue is flat in my mouth, disengaged.
But if I say the “l” sound my tongue is raised up towards the roof of my mouth and it blocks
the airstream, which then finds its way out the mouth through the lateral of my mouth.
When you make a vowel sound, your lips take one of the three shapes:
Rounded when I make an “ooo” when I say “moon” Spread when I make the “iiii” sound as in “mean”
Neutral when I make a schwa sound as in “the”
Back to consonants, these are made by engaging one of your vocal articulators. Your tongue,
lips, your alveolar ridge, teeth, etc. You don’t need to pass an exam on human
anatomy, but it helps that you simply are aware of what happens inside of your mouth
when you make sounds as this will help you visualise, understand and then make new sounds.
Tip Number 4: Connect it to IPA. IPA stands for International Phonetic Alphabet
and it’s quite a handy tool to have especially because of the fact that English pronunciation
is so tricky. IPA helps you make sense of the sound-spelling discrepancy that exists in English.
There are 26 letters in the English alphabet, but there are over 45 sounds. There’s an IPA
symbol for each of these different sounds. When you become familiar with them you reach
a deeper level of awareness and resourcefulness to make sounds.
Take the IPA symbol [ʌ] for example. This sound occurs in a variety of different spellings:
Now take the vowel sequence “ou.” It can sound as:
For an untrained and inexperienced English learner this might sound very confusing, but
you’ll be amazed with the clarity that you’ll get once you start to get familiar with IPA symbols.
Tip Number 5: Get feedback. Most learners can self-teach many sounds when they get to a more
advanced level of pronunciation understanding, which you do when you practice more, become more
aware of your vocal articulators, and become more familiarized with IPA. Those are basically
the tips I’ve shared in this lesson so far. This is why recording yourself is so important.
Once you do, you can listen back and evaluate your own pronunciation. Ask yourself, in what
way was my pronunciation different from that of my model English speaker. Most times...I’d say
maybe 80/90 percent of the time, you can diagnose the areas of your speech you need to work on more.
For the other 20 to 10 percent of the time in which you simply can’t figure out what
the difficulty is, that’s when getting feedback from a teacher that’s qualified to teach advanced
pronunciation can you give valuable feedback. That’s exactly what you can get if you sign
up for our the Fluent with Friends course. In it you’ll find our very own deep pronunciation
training course, where we teach you the art and science of how natives cut, connect,
and eat their words, and also provide you with feedback about your own pronunciation.
The FwF course also comes with a bonus IPA course! So to try that right now for free, just click up
here or the link down below and we’ll send you 3 mini lessons straight to your email!
So, little by little, with only 10 minutes a day, you can
start implementing this into an action plan. You’ll find a model English speaker, me, Ethan
or whoever, then you’ll start recording yourself. As you do this, reflect on your articulation of
the sounds, and on how you’re engaging your articulators to make the sounds:
the tongue, lips, teeth, etc. Become more familiar with IPA.
There are endless amounts of resources online which you can quickly find by
searching the term “IPA for English learners.” When you listen back to your recordings,
it’s critical that you give yourself feedback. And if you can,
get feedback from a pronunciation teacher. Congratulations to you for making it
this far in this video. It shows you’re committed to improving your pronunciation!
Ethan and I recently made a video on the differences between American and
British vowel sounds. This lesson is going to help you understand IPA more and also to become
more aware of how to produce these essential sounds for your English speaking.
Another common vowel change is the open "ah" sound in British English to an "eir" in American English.
This "ah" is the same in both variants in words like "cat" and "map", but what the spelling is "a double r" it
is "eir" in American English. So I say "carry" and Ethan says "carry".
In British English I pronounce the name of this character as
"Harry", which is not the same as "hairy" which means a person with a lot of hair. However, American
English speakers say these two words the same. Again, I say: