3 Tips to Improve Your Pronunciation in English

Hello everyone. In this video I'm going to give you 3

tips on how to improve your pronunciation in English. I get

a lot of messages from you guys asking me "How did you do it?"

"How is it possible that you can speak like this if you're not a

native speaker and if you've never lived in the US?" and I'm

here to tell you that you can do it too. You can make your

pronunciation 10 times better by just following these tips

that I'm about to give you. As always, determination is a must.

So always keep that in mind. So without further ado, let's get

into the tips. Tip number 1 is the so-called "shadowing

technique". Shadowing consists in choosing a clip, it can be audio

or video of someone speaking, anything from a movie to a

podcast, an interview. Listen to it carefully and then repeat

what you hear. But it's not just a simple repetition. With

the shadowing technique you're supposed to repeat what you

hear with as little delay as possible, as if you were the

shadow of the speaker, following them whatever they say. Let me

give you a practical example. You guys know I speak with an

American accent, right? Well, what if I wanted to learn how

to use a British accent? The British pronunciation. I would

choose a clip of Emma Watson for example. She's got a lovely

RP British accent. I would listen to it first and then I'm

ready. As soon as she finishes saying the first word, I come in

and shadow her voice. Like this. "...maybe wasn't so eager to

get back to the village." "It was very important

to me that Belle try to esc- meaningfully, you know,

try to escape and only at the point when Beast comes and

saves her and she in turn saves him from the wolves

and there's kind of this unspoken agreement of

I'm not a prisoner anymore now. I'm here

on my own terms and I'm going to stay with you until you get well."

Pardon my terrible British accent but you get the point. This is what

I would do. It's really important that you imitate

every detail. Not just the way words are pronounced but also

the intonation she uses for example. The inflections in her

voice. Those are very important aspects of learning an accent

and ultimately improving your pronunciation and making it

sound believable. As I said, you can use this technique with

lots of different types of content. You can choose a clip from

a movie, an interview of your favorite actor, a Ted Talk

which you can find on YouTube. What I would recommend, though,

is finding something that has subtitles available, so you can

read as you shadow the speaker and practice it better. Also,

preferably, try to choose a speaker with clear diction and

someone who speaks slowly, not too fast. At least at first.

Otherwise it will be too complicated to shadow and it

will not work. As always you must be consistent with this

exercise. Do it every day. Put in the work that's necessary

for you to actually notice an improvement.

A really good app that you can use on  the go to practice your pronunciation

and which has its own version  of the shadowing technique

is called ELSA Speak. Let me  show you how the app works

There are different types  of pronunciation exercises,  

all of which will give you an instant feedback

For example, let's do a conversation exercise.

You can listen to it first...and then repeat

"Absolutely. Can I ask...what's  this curious fruit?"

Excellent!

As you can see the feedback is instantaneous and

in this case, there were no mistakes, but  if there had been, it would have told me

and I have to say it's very very accurate.

If you want to try ELSA Speak I really  recommend purchasing the premium version

to unlock all its potential.  I have 2 special links for you

One to download ELSA and get a free 7-day trial

and another one to get a huge discount off  the membership if you decide to continue.

Give it a try and let me know if you like it

This brings us to tip number 2 which  is to record yourself. Many people

are unaware of how they sound,  of how they really sound to

other people. You know when you hear your voice in a recording

and you're like: "Oh my God! Is That me? Is that what I really

sound like?" This happens because when we speak the sound

is partially transmitted through your skull bones. And

this boosts the lower frequencies in our voice and

makes it sound somewhat different from what it actually

sounds like to other people. If we want to improve our

pronunciation, we need to become more aware of our voice and we

can achieve that by recording ourselves and then listening to

it. You could read parts of a book you really like, a news

article, the lyrics to your favorite song, or even mute the

sound of a movie and read the subtitles out loud while you

record yourself with your phone. Once you become more

aware of your voice, you will also notice your own mistakes.

Because sometimes we know how something is supposed to be

pronounced, we know the correct pronunciation, but then when we

say it, we fall back into our old habits and say it

incorrectly without even noticing it. By listening to

our recorded voice, we're going to become more aware of

the way we pronounce things and we'll inevitably begin to

improve those little imperfections. Tip number 3

is to learn IPA. If you don't know what I'm talking about,

IPA stands for International Phonetic Alphabet. It's a system

of symbols. Each one of these symbols stands for a sound, a

phoneme, that's what it's called in linguistics. So,

every word in any language can be universally transcribed

using IPA. If you go to online dictionaries like Cambridge

Dictionary, Oxford Dictionary, they will not only give you a

definition of the word but also its IPA transcription. For

example, let's think of the word "equation". Of course, on online

dictionaries you can listen to its pronunciation. "Equation"

But to really notice the subtle details in it, you can see that

this symbol, for example, stands for a J sound. So it's not

equaSHon it's equaZHon. "Equation". You can easily learn

IPA using online resources like ipachart.com where you can

click on a symbol and hear how it's pronounced. There's also

americanipachart.com. This too is an interactive website.

There are plenty of different examples to learn all the

different phonemes. So, for example, you can see that these

two symbols together stand for a CH sound like in "chicken". I'll

leave these websites linked in my description box, so you can

check them out. If you want I could also make some videos

about the phonetic alphabet. Let me know in the comments if

it's something that you would watch. Learning IPA for me was

a game changer, because I could really see all the little

mistakes that I used to make and understand why they were

mistakes. When it comes to IPA I really recommend learning it

because, although it's not necessary, it really does make a

difference in your pronunciation. Because when you

know IPA all you need to do is read the transcribed word and

you're done. You will pronounce it perfectly. It will be like

your secret weapon, the trick up your sleeve. Alright, you

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