Here are some tips to help you improve your English pronunciation.
First of all, don't worry about not having a native-English accent. It's important to be able to speak clearly, so that people can understand you. However, it's almost impossible to sound exactly like a native English speaker if you are learning English as an adult in a non-English speaking country.
However, there are many things that you can do to improve your pronunciation and your speaking skills.
1. Listen to spoken English as often as possible.
Listen to how speakers pronounce various words and phrases and "model" your pronunciation on what you hear.
2. Learn the phonetic alphabet.
Use the phonetic alphabet page (at the beginning of most good dictionaries) as a guide to pronouncing new words.
3. Don't forget to learn the word stress of a new word.
Every English word has its own stress, or intonation. For example, the word "believe" has two syllables (be and lieve), but only the second syllable is stressed. We say be'lieve and not 'be lieve. Your dictionary will show the syllable stress by an apostrophe (') before the syllable to be stressed.
Word stress is important. In fact, it is more likely that someone misunderstands you because of wrong word stress than because of the wrong pronunciation of a sound.
4. Work out which sounds cause you most problems in English.
Depending on what your first language is, you may have problems with certain sounds. For example, French speakers have difficulties with "th"; speakers of Mandarin have difficulties with "r" or "l", and Arabic speakers have difficulties with "p" and "b".
5. Practise the sounds you find difficult.
A useful exercise is a "minimal pair" exercise. For example, if you have difficulty distinguishing between "p" and "b", try practising pairs of words which are the same except for the sound "p" and "b":
For example, "pair" and "bear"; "pond" and "bond"; "pie" and "buy" etc.
6. Be aware of intonation and sentence stress.
Not all words in a sentence have equal stress, and generally only the "information" words (nouns and verbs) are stressed.
'Where's the 'pen I 'gave you?
'Where's the 'red 'pen I 'gave you?
Where's the 'red and 'blue 'pen I 'gave you 'yesterday?
The unstressed words (such as "the", "I", "you" and "and") don't carry as much "weight" as the stressed words. They become much smaller in length, and are almost abbreviated. For example, "and" becomes "un".
Changing stress
Sentence stress isn't "fixed" like word stress. In fact, you can stress words that are normally unstressed in order to highlight different meanings.
For example:
I 'love you. (Love, rather than just like.)
'I love you. (With the stress on I to highlight that it's me rather than another person who loves you.)
I love 'you. (And nobody else.)
Intonation
There are a couple of easy to remember rules about intonation. Usually our voices go up at the end of the sentence to show a question, and down at the end to show a statement.
Intonation is also important in "tag questions":
You know him, don't you? (With rising intonation on "don't you?" to show it's a question)
You know him, don't you. (With falling intonation on "don't you" to show it's a statement you expect the other person to agree with.)
7. Learn to recognise spelling patterns.
For example, "tion" on the end of a word is pronounced "shun", while "sion" can be pronounced "zhun". There are often many ways to pronounce a particular spelling pattern, but it certainly helps to know what the variations are. For example, the pattern "ough" can be pronounced "uff" as in "enough" and "tough", or "or" as in "ought" and "bought" or "oh" as in "although" and "dough".
8. Don't rush.
If you speak too fast, the danger is that you could skip over some words, fail to pronounce them completely, or mix them up. If you speak too slowly, you might end up sounding unnatural. But it's better to speak slowly and clearly than too quickly.
28 comments on “Improving your English pronunciation”
thanks so much,i have found this website very helpfull.i am not a native english speaker, and i came from a non english speaking country.hope i can benefit more from your website.keep up the good work.
god bless
melny
this is good and is very helpful to improve english speaking and learning
this is really good to me!
these make me know the word of stress is too important,or other people will misunderstand me!
thank you very much!
hope here are some more detail ways and help us improve our pronunciation!
look forword to new content!
thankyou!its a big help for us whose not a native english.. continue the good works!
It help me to improve pronounciation
Yes, I have to admit that make sentence slowly and clearly is much more important than quickly.
But really it's hard for me to change the pronunciation of "stereo". is there any helpful software can help me out?
i have to thank you and all website builder this site is one of the most wonderful sites to learn english , i'm not english native i'm arabian so i would like to improve my pronunciacion very much like natives . so we ask you doing help for people like us and , thank you
thanks for your suggestions…. i will definately try to impart these suggestions while speaking.. i am from india.. nd now its realy important to speak in english.. here
Thanks for your suggestions.This site help me to improve english
pronounciation.Thankyou very much…..
First of all, I'd like to thank the builder of this website, and all the people working their best to make it the best- it is the best. Second of all, I have tried all the things said above, I even memorize the songs I listen to, the movies I watch; not to forget that I chat with native English speakers…. I'm not saying it all came up to nothing, I'm just not sutisfied with my accent. Because of the variation in accents, pronunciation and vocabulary differences in English I ended up gaining a mixed British-American accent. That's my only problem. I can pronounce each word correctly, but in different accents not just one. What should I do to be able to speak a perfect English ?I'm desperate for help.
Thank you !
Hi Redouane
Many native English speakers also have mixed accents, often due to them moving country at a young age.
One thing you could do is try and work out where exactly your accent is mixed. Do you consistently pronounce one sound in, for example, an American accent when you pronounce everything else in a British accent? If you find it difficult to analyse the way you speak, perhaps you can ask a native English speaker to tell you where you sound "American" (or "British") and try from there to modify your pronunciation of the odd sound.
Yes this is a very helpfull site to me, Im English esudent in my Country Honduras…you´d know that Im not a native english speaker but I´ve been trying to learn more as I can. This tips can be usefull to any one is learning english cause it showing what you can do and come a better speaker…Very nice, thanks.
that's great,
I'm very happy to get thih tips or tricks coz long time I didn't find what the best way to pronounce words. but, I'm not confident about my voice coz sounds coming from my voice is very far from the native speaker voice, and that's really different coz I'm not a foreigner. I'm an indonesian man, I just learn the way from this web site, and hopefully it makes me a few perperct about pronunciation.
So, from this moment I need your help to teach me about English coz I love English very much.
this website very useful to improve speking english prounciation
thank you very much
First of all I would like to say that I am very happy to find a website that is very useful for us, especially for me who isn't a n English- speaking person. I am from the country which use English as a foreign language, so it is not used in our daily life. So this website is very useful and helpful for me to increase my knowledge about English, moreover I am a teacher of English.
Since I am a teacher of English, I really need your help to share me materials about English. Thank you
This website is very helpful for English leaners. I got lot from this. I appreciate it very much. Thanks for helping us to improve our English knowledge as we are non- natives.
bye
Niluka
This is an absolutely wonderful website for improving English!
Thanks very much!
It is really good. These tips will help you to improve your pronunciation. I think everyone should go through it and i am surey you will see the results.
best of luck english at home.com
Dear Web Builders,
Thank you so much. This page is very good and very helpful to me to improve my English speaking and learning. I am not an English native. I come from Cambodia which is my mother tongue Khmer language completely different from English so I really face big problem with my pronunciation. Every time I speak English I always afraid that no one can understand me.
This page give me 8 important tips, listen to how spoken English, learn the phonetic alphabet, learn word stress, practice the sounds I find difficult…these make me know that pronunciation is too important for English communication.
Kitten
sinin.wordpress.com
Good,
It helped me a lot to improve my english pronounciation, it will help full for all those are looking for good english learining websites
Great!! this is the thing i can say bout this website..thanks to the builder..well i am a korean guy..hardly try to speak english..as u guys know english is not our 1st language..so it was a burden for me as a CEO as i have to see different people from different country..perfect english is needed in dealing with those people..i've been trying many times to find a suitable website for purpose of learning english..n i finally found out this was the one that can teach u a perfect english… now i am more confident in pronouncing the words..its helped me a lots indeed…Thanks again!
I thought this is an wonderful way of improving pronounciation. By this website we come to know some unknown words..
Really this is an wonderful website to the persons who is thinking, its difficult to learn good english with good pronounciation..
I want to say thank you for tips .
These are good for me
I see many people join in your group and had a comment.
And i really want to know who they are.Are they your students,or someone else?
Readers of the web pages are free to comment!
Thank you for your contribution to help learning English.
This article is clear, concise, direct, easy to understand, good to read, excellent lesson,…thank you so much.
Polin, Tampa
Maguana, Santiago Rodriguez
It's perfectly superb. I have no more words to speak in its praise.
I need to finish my Phonology of English assignment, so I must find the ways ti improve the pronounciation among second language learner and I found this web. It's good and suitable to everyone.
i just want to say thank very much!
thanks very much~~At first,I didn't care about the stress and always wanted to speak quickly,and from now on,I will pay attention about it~~