My Easy Tips to Get Better English Pronunciation

         I got so many questions about how do I learn my English pronunciation. That is why I made this post and want to share with others.

         The biggest thing that people will notice about our English is our pronunciation. Pronunciation is related to what the first people hear when we are speaking English. It is like a first impression of our English ability. No matter how bad the grammar we use, or how limited the vocabulary we have, as long as we have a good pronunciation, we will sound very good in English. Vice versa, when we are speaking English using incredible grammar and amazing vocabularies but we don’t pronounce the words correctly, those incredible grammar and amazing vocabularies will not help us. People may get difficulties to understand what we say and also if our pronunciation is poor, they will think about us as people who speak bad English.

           I was born and raised in Indonesia, so English is not my mother tongue nor even my first language. I seriously started to learn English 5 years ago since my major in university was English education. I used to have bad pronunciation before, but because I learned about pronunciation with the element in it such as phonetic transcription, I have better pronunciation now. Of course, it was not magically happened in one night. There are many things I do for having this kind of pronunciation and speaking style. Even though it is impossible to speak like native speakers, but we still can show our English ability by having good pronunciation. So, now I will share some easy ways to do for getting better pronunciation. These are based on my personal experience, and those are helpful enough especially for me.

• Listen to English songs

As a graduated student from English education program, I was prepared as an English teacher. So, I should master English teaching methods and techniques. Many people discover English songs as one of media that can be used for teaching and learning English. You can teach about vocabulary, translation or even pronunciation. By listening to English song, we will know how English words should be pronounced. One thing I usually do is when I am listening to the song, I am also looking at its lyric on a piece of paper. So, at the same time you know what words the singer said and also know how the words should be pronounced. Yes, it is because sometimes it is little bit difficult to understand what the singer said, right? That is why we need a help of lyrics on a piece of paper. 

• Watching movie

I am sure that most of us know that movies are good tool to improve English speaking/listening skill. It is similar to songs, you can watch movie with subtitle. The best thing about movie is because actors and actresses are doing conversation, it will be more natural. You can learn about the pronunciation itself, word stress and so on. It is easier to practice in daily conversation. 

•  Reading aloud

If your hobby is reading, this is perfect for you! Try and practice to read anything in English such as newspaper, magazine, book, novel etc, LOUDLY! Do not be a silent reader all the time. You need a way to practice your pronunciation and this one is very good for you. If you are not sure about how to pronounce the word you read, look it up on dictionary. Always providing dictionary especially which has phonetic transcription will make it easier.

• Record and listen

This is one thing I like the most. If you are already done with step 3, absolutely you have to do this step. Record it when you are reading or speaking English. After that, play and listen to your recording. You will know the way you speak or your pronunciation sounds like, and if you are not satisfy with it, try again!

You can try the steps I given to you. If you are seriously to practice it over and over, don’t be surprised if you find your pronunciation is surprising you. This post is also available in audio version on my soundcloud channel here.

Kiss,

Balqis