The 4 BEST Ways to Improve Your Pronunciation with SONGS

One of the best ways to improve  your pronunciation in English  

is to include music in your study routine. Here’s  what we are going to cover in today’s video: 

Why music is great to improve pronunciation 

Tips to effectively improve  your English with music 

A fun music quiz to test your  listening and pronunciation

But before we start, here at RealLife English,  every week we make lessons that help you go  

from being a LOST and INSECURE English LEARNER  to being a NATURAL, CONFIDENT English SPEAKER.

Why is music great to improve pronunciation? With music, you get to imitate/emulate your  

favorite singers. We call this mimicry. Mimicry is  a powerful technique that many successful learners  

have used to improve their pronunciation. And  it is quite simple: All you have to do is listen  

closely to a song and repeat the words and  phrases as close as possible to what you hear.

Let’s see Thiago, one of our team members  demonstrating with the song “Stand by Me”.

Pretty cool, isn’t it? If you feel a  bit silly doing this, don’t worry, it’s  

part of the process! Just have fun with it! Another reason why music is great to improve  

pronunciation is the emotional connection it  promotes. Music is able to access parts of  

the brain that words can’t. Music also has the  power to make us feel a wide range of emotions.  

Depending on the song we’re listening to,  music can make us feel happy, excited,  

thoughtful and even a bit sad. Because of that,  music makes it easier for you to learn new  

sounds and even vocabulary. We tend to remember  things more easily when there’s emotion involved.

Also, songs usually have a chorus, which is the  verse that is repeated multiple times throughout  

the song. This repetitive nature that music  has is great for working out your articulators.

Here’s a simple 3-step process  to practice English with music: 

Don’t worry about getting  the lyrics right at first. 

Instead, focus on the melody, stress and  rhythm first. You can hum, or go na-na.  

Pay attention to how the voice  goes up and down as you’re singing.

Analyze how certain words  and phrases are pronounced.

You probably know by now that we talk about  connected speech quite often on this channel.  

Learning connected speech patterns will enhance  your listening skills considerably. Listening  

to music is an amazing way to pick up connected  speech patterns. Plus, when you sing in English,  

you will naturally use connected speech,  which also benefits your pronunciation. 

Just for you to have an idea, I have some  musician friends who don’t really speak  

English, but when they sing in English, their  pronunciation is perfect! Interesting, isn’t it? 

When trying to improve your  pronunciation with music,  

just focus on the sounds, nothing more. Then,  you can come back to it another time just to  

focus on actually understanding the  lyrics and learning new vocabulary.

Imitate and sing along. Once you’ve spent some time on steps 1 and  

2, now it’s time for you to actually sing the  song. Don’t worry if you’re not a very good  

singer. The goal here is not to sound good,  but to practice your English pronunciation,  

remember? You can even work on memorizing  the lyrics to your favorite songs in English! 

Besides, you can apply what you  learn with music in your actual  

speaking when having conversations with people. And you can do that with our RealLife English app!

This is the only place where anytime,  anywhere you can just press a button and  

start practicing your English with other  English speakers from around the world.  

You can have fascinating conversations  about your life, your passions, culture,  

or even about your favorite kind of music!  This will take you from feeling like a lost  

and insecure English learner to being a  confident and natural English speaker.

And that’s not all. You can listen to our  podcast with a full interactive transcript  

and vocabulary definitions.

So download it now for free by clicking  up here or down in the description below.  

Or you can just look for RealLife  English in your favorite app store.

Listening & Pronunciation Practice In the last part of the video, we’ll do a fun  

quiz with music. First, you will listen to short  segments of famous songs in English. Then, you  

will be asked questions related to pronunciation,  connected speech and listening comprehension.

And to help us with that, we’ve invited  another one of our team members,  

also Thiago, to sing some songs  for you. Ready? Let’s begin!

Question 1 - Aerosmith (Dream On)

Listen and fill in the blanks:

Notice how Thiago sings the last phrase  

“How to win”. He sings “How duh win”. This  is a common reduction in spoken English.

Next, let’s listen to the hard  rock classic “Highway To Hell” by  

AC/DC. Try to understand the  meaning of the selected phrases.

You can also learn a lot of great  vocabulary and expressions with music.  

The phrase “Leave me be” means “don’t bother  me”, or “leave me alone”. To “take everything  

in your stride” is an idiom that means to  calmly deal with a problem or difficulty.

In this song, Thiago is singing with two  connected speech patterns. Can you identify them?

The connected parts here are “feel it” and “the  heat is on”. In the first one, notice that the  

letter “L” is joined with the vowel “i” in “it”,  so we hear “fee-lih”. In the second phrase, “the  

heat is on”, the final T in “heat” is pronounced  with a flap T sound, which then connects to the  

vowel “i” in “is”, so we hear “hee-diz”. Then,  the S in “is” has a Z sound, which then connects  

to the vowel “o” in “on”, “i-zon”. Putting  it all together, we hear “the hee-di-zon”.

How would you pronounce this phrase?:

Notice that the “T + Y” combination in  “Don’t you” has a chuh sound, “Don-chu”.  

Also, notice that the final T in “forget”  is pronounced with a flap T sound, duh,  

which then connects to the vowel “a” in  “about”, “duh-bout”. Then, the final T in  

“about” is pronounced as a stop consonant,  “uh-bouh”. Pouting it all together, we have

We’re just focusing on pronunciation here,  but you can also learn some grammar with  

music. For example, even though the word  “everybody” means more than one person,  

we treat it as a singular word. That’s why we say  “everybody wants” instead of “everybody want”.

This was just a sample of how much you can  improve your pronunciation and listening skills  

with music. But now we want to hear from you: Share the name of your favorite song  

down in the comments and, who knows, we might  even make a listen with your favorite song. 

In this video you learned:

Why music is great to improve pronunciation 

Tips to effectively improve  your English with music

Plus, we had tons of fun with a listening  

and pronunciation practice quiz in the  end. I hope you enjoyed today’s lesson.

If you want to keep learning about how  you can improve your pronunciation,  

why not watch this lesson next?