5 Practical Tips to Improve Your English Pronunciation

One of the common abilities that most students around the world consider and work to improve is having accurate pronunciation of English words. But why is it difficult to pronounce some particular sounds or sentences in English correctly? And what can we do to improve our pronunciation? I’ll answer these questions in this article.

Speaking accurately in another language is a desire for almost all people who study and practice to improve the new language. One of the crucial and important skills in order to be able to speak correctly in a new language, is to enhance the pronunciation of sounds and words in that language. But it is one of the most difficult obstacles for language learners to pronounce certain words or sounds in a new language, regardless of whether that language is English, Spanish, French, Chinese, Korean, Turkish, Persian, or Arabic. If it is your second or third language, you have probably had this experience and found pronunciation difficult. Even at high levels, we can see this issue between people. Although they are proficient and masters at talking and expressing their opinion, perfectly pronouncing certain sounds is still challenging, for example, the “th,” “R,” or “L” sounds.

I want to note that the difficulty of pronouncing specific words or sounds will vary based on your home tongue, referring back to my year of teaching English to numerous international pupils. The explanation is obvious: our tongue, jaw, lips, and vocal cords are all used to pronounce sounds and words. If your mother tongue is Korean, for instance, you may have difficulty pronouncing particular phrases differently than someone who speaks Spanish or French as their first language.

All of these components are muscles, and when they have been used to speak a language for a long time, they become accustomed to certain movements. As a result, we don’t have any trouble pronouncing words in our native tongue, but when we begin to learn another language, our muscles are unfamiliar with the different movements required by the sounds there, making it difficult to position them in a certain way to produce a sound or pronounce a word. As you can see, it is quite easy to grasp, so we can resolve this issue by working out our vocal cords, tongue, and lips. The solution is extremely straightforward and easy to comprehend. To remedy the situation, we need to exercise our tongue, lips, and vocal cords as frequently as possible so that these muscles can become accustomed to the new movement needed to produce a new sound.

Here are some tips to improve your pronunciation:

Listening

The most obvious technique to enhance your own pronunciation is to listen to instances of real speech. Even better is to listen once, stop the audio or video, and repeat afterward as much as you need.

Watch related videos

There are a ton of recorded lessons from experienced instructors and tutors; watch them, practice with them, and build your skills.

Record it

You should now repeat and record yourself after constantly listening to and watching videos. Record how you pronounce the sound or word.

Phonics

It’s important to understand and be proficient in phonics.

Muscles exercise

Use the tongue twister text and practice it daily to stretch your tongue muscles.

Here is some practical text to practice tongue twister:

“Th” sound

The thirty-three thieves thought that they thrilled the throne throughout Thursday.

“L” and “R” sounds

A really leery Larry rolls readily to the road.

“F” sound

The fickle finger of fate flips fat frogs flat.

“P” sound

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

“Y” sound

You know New York, you need New York, you know you need unique New York.