Pronunciation II

Hey guys! :)

In my last post I talked about the POSE test, a tool to help non-native English speakers diagnose problems in speech and perception. The results showed that I still need to work on a few things.  Consequently, I searched for useful websites to help me improve my pronunciation. If you also struggle with minimal pairs and rhythm read on carefully, because here's what I found:

•  Minimal pairs (=pairs of words or phrases which differ in only one phonological element and have distinct meanings): Firstly, I strongly recommend you to have a look at this website. There you'll find lists to practise repeating minimal pairs such as bed/bad, man/men, ship/sheep, etc. The website is clearly structured and easy to use. All you need to do is hover your mouse over the word you wish to hear and repeat it as long as you get it right. Besides working on the pronunciation of minimal pairs, you can also refresh you memory of the International Phonetic Alphabet symbols. Personally, I had difficulty making a distinction between e and æ, as found in the minimal pairs bet/bat, pedal/paddle and shall/shall, and between s and z, as found in the minimal pairs ass/as, hiss/his, face/phase and race/rays. Secondly, I suggest you use tongue twisters to practise special sounds. I found this website where you can practise numerous rather short tongue twisters. Just a heads up - don't get frustrated if you can't do them very well at first, just keep practising and have fun! I guarantee you that you'll have fun! ;) Thirdly, practise the sounds of English by using the phonemic chart. I recommend this website to you, because it provides an interactive phonemic chart. That is to say, you won't only hear examples of the English phoneme set, but also a sample word.

• Rhythm: In order to sound more like a native speaker it is crucial to work on one's rhythm. As English is a stress-timed language (=syllables may last different amounts of time, but there is perceived to be a fairly constant amount of time (on average) between consecutive stressed syllables), it is important to maintain the flow of the language. If you want to work on your rhythm I suggest you practise reading poems or basically any English texts out aloud to get a sense of how English rhythm works. For exmaple, check out this website for improving stress as well as rhythm. There you'll find a poem read out aloud by an English native speaker. You can listen to the audio file and then repeat the text concentrating on the rhythm. You can also do imitation exercises for any accent you wish to train. If you are interested in imitation exercises for American English accent training, as I am, you might want to check out this website. The goal is to simply mimic sounds. Sounds pretty easy, but try it out yourself and you'll see that it's not always as easy as it seems.

Finally, some general advice for those who are trying to improve their pronunciation. I think it is essential to have a very specific target for improvement for each week. Wanting to improve one's pronunciation is the first step, but it takes a little more to actually change something. Just saying "my aim is to improve my pronunciation" is too general and unfocussed. You should thus try to work specifically on one aspect of your pronunciation each week. Then you'll see that soon enough people won't misunderstand you anymore, they won't ask you to repeat what you just said. Instead, they'll be delighted by your language skills and they might even consider you to be a native speaker.