In this video, you're going to learn how to improve your English pronunciation. And at
the end of this video, I'll give you a link to a webpage that contains free pronunciation
exercises.
First of all, why is it so hard for you and I to improve our English pronunciation?
Well, one of the reasons is that we can't make some sounds in English because those
sounds are not present in our native languages. So when we speak English, we replace those
difficult sounds with some other sounds that we can make. That's why we mispronounce words
all the time.
So the first step to improving your pronunciation is to learn to pronounce all of the main sounds
in English correctly.
So how do you do that?
Well, one way to do that is to find some pronunciation exercises for each sound in English and just
practice. After you've practiced making all the sounds, you will have the perfect pronunciation.
Now, I really wish it were that simple. But it's not. There is a problem. And the problem
is the sounds in English are very similar to each others.
Now why is that a problem?
Well...unlike babies, adults don't have the ability to easily distinguish between all
the different sounds in a foreign language. So when you hear two different sounds in English,
if those sounds are similar, you brain might perceive those sounds as the same.
That's why learning to make each sound separately may not work.
In the past, I couldn't hear the difference between these sounds. So to me, the words
"cheap" and "sheep" sounded the same. If I did an exercise teaching how to pronounce
these words, I would mispronounce all of them. And I would believe that I was pronouncing
those words correctly even though that wasn't true.
And that's the biggest challenge when it comes to improving your pronunciation. If you can't
hear the difference between two sounds, how can you learn to produce each sound correctly?
So what should you do?
Fortunately, there's a method for overcoming this problem. This method is based on a number
of research studies. These studies suggest that if you have trouble differentiating between
two sounds or two words, the best way to train your brain to recognize the difference is
to listen to the words at the same time. I mean not exactly at the same time but you
listen to one word immediately after the other. If you hear those words at the same time,
you are more likely to notice the difference. And after you've noticed the difference, you
can then practice pronouncing those words.
There are many free pronunciation exercises that apply this idea. These exercises contrast
one sound with another.
And here is what such an exercise might look like. This exercise contrasts the "AA" sound
with the "EH" sound.
This kind of exercise has three key benefits: Firstly, it makes you aware that the words
in each pair are pronounced differently.
Secondly, in an exercise like this, the presenter tends to exaggerate when pronouncing words,
making it even easier to hear the differences.
And lastly, since similar words are presented together for comparison, it reduces the tendency
for a non-native speaker to pronounce two different words the same way.
Now you might be wondering, does this really work? And the answer is yes. I used this method
myself to improve my pronunciation. Before I began applying this method, I mispronounced
a lot of words. And here are some examples. Look at these word pairs. The words in each
pair are pronounced differently. But I used to pronounce them the same way. So sometimes
I would say something confusing. But thanks to this method, I was able to fix most of
the mistakes and now my pronunciation is much better.
Alright, now it's time for you to improve your pronunciation. I've created a resource
page that includes exercises for all the confusing sounds in English. Just click here to go to
that page.
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