5 Tips to Practice Pronunciation At Home Alone

That’s what Vira, a member of  the RealLife English community,

recently shared with me when I asked what was  something that prevented her from advancing

to the next level in their English skills. And I think that’s the same situation that a

lot of you find yourselves in. You probably  aren’t able to devote English as much time

as you’d like and, like Vira in the  comment, you feel that pronunciation

is holding you back or even killing your fluency! If you only had 10 minutes a day to practice your

pronunciation at home alone, what would you do? Life’s busy, I get it. But it’s still possible

for you to create your own learning and  practice that will help you

cultivate the skill, build the confidence,  and unlock your best voice in English.

In this lesson, I’ll share with you 5 tips that  will help you develop the mindset, perception,

and tools to dramatically improve  your pronunciation and listening skills.

Express yourself more confidently, and better  understand and connect across cultures in English.

Because here at RealLife English we guide you  beyond the classroom to understand anyone,

be understood and connect to the world.  Just like David who not only improved

his listening skills with our channel but  also passed an oral exam with our help.

So click that subscribe button and bell down below  now so that you can continue learning with us!

Let’s jump right in! Tip Number 1: Stop cringing  at your own voice. Cringe might be a new word for

you, but it describes the exact feeling many of  you have when you listen to a recording of your

own voice. And the reason I’m saying this is  because in order to find your best voice in

English, you first need to get comfortable with  your voice, and accept how you sound. And this is

going to be your best friend for you to practice  your pronunciation at home because you can use

your phone to record yourself, and then study,  notice and give yourself feedback. After I share

Tip Number 2, you will record yourself imitating  these six sentences that contain 90% of the subtle

features that make up connected speech and the  pronunciation that they don’t teach you at school.

Tip Number 2: Find your model  English speaker.It could be me,

it could be Ethan, an actor, or it could be  a fluent, more experienced English learner.

Keep in mind that whoever you choose, they  should be someone who has the pronunciation

style that you aspire to have because  you’ll imitate their pronunciation.

For now, we’re going to give you two different  samples of native pronunciation. I’ll say these

6 sentences myself and then Ethan will  pronounce them. You're free to choose

or maybe you want or even play around with  your pronunciation and imitate both of us...

...That’s okay, just keep in mind  that we have different accents.

This is exactly what you’re going to do.  We’ll play the audio of these utterances

and then we’ll give you a few seconds to mimic,

then we’ll play the same sample for you to  check. You need to record the whole thing.

If you're having fun make sure  you like this video and also

don't forget to share it with a  friend who could benefit from it too!

Tip Number 3: Become Aware of  your Vocal Articulation.

When you become familiar with your oral musculature,  you’re going to be much better equipped to teach

yourself how to make certain sounds. There are no sounds in the English

language that you can’t make. The challenge lies in figuring

out how to engage your oral musculature  so that you can do it exactly as the

model English speaker you’ve chosen. Here are some fundamental concepts

for you to start becoming more  aware of your vocal articulation.

When I say the “ah” sound in “cat” my  tongue is flat in my mouth, disengaged.

But if I say the “l” sound my tongue is raised  up towards the roof of my mouth and it blocks

the airstream, which then finds its way out  the mouth through the lateral of my mouth.

When you make a vowel sound, your  lips take one of the three shapes:

Rounded when I make an “ooo” when I say “moon” Spread when I make the “iiii” sound as in “mean”

Neutral when I make a schwa sound as in “the”

Back to consonants, these are made by engaging  one of your vocal articulators. Your tongue,

lips, your alveolar ridge, teeth, etc. You don’t need to pass an exam on human

anatomy, but it helps that you simply are  aware of what happens inside of your mouth

when you make sounds as this will help you  visualise, understand and then make new sounds.

Tip Number 4: Connect it to IPA. IPA stands for International Phonetic Alphabet

and it’s quite a handy tool to have especially  because of the fact that English pronunciation

is so tricky. IPA helps you make sense of the  sound-spelling discrepancy that exists in English.

There are 26 letters in the English alphabet,  but there are over 45 sounds. There’s an IPA

symbol for each of these different sounds. When you become familiar with them you reach

a deeper level of awareness and  resourcefulness to make sounds.

Take the IPA symbol [ʌ] for example. This sound  occurs in a variety of different spellings:

Now take the vowel sequence “ou.” It can sound as:

For an untrained and inexperienced English  learner this might sound very confusing, but

you’ll be amazed with the clarity that you’ll get  once you start to get familiar with IPA symbols.

Tip Number 5: Get feedback. Most learners can  self-teach many sounds when they get to a more

advanced level of pronunciation understanding,  which you do when you practice more, become more

aware of your vocal articulators, and become  more familiarized with IPA. Those are basically

the tips I’ve shared in this lesson so far. This is why recording yourself is so important.

Once you do, you can listen back and evaluate  your own pronunciation. Ask yourself, in what

way was my pronunciation different from that of  my model English speaker. Most times...I’d say

maybe 80/90 percent of the time, you can diagnose  the areas of your speech you need to work on more.

For the other 20 to 10 percent of the time  in which you simply can’t figure out what

the difficulty is, that’s when getting feedback  from a teacher that’s qualified to teach advanced

pronunciation can you give valuable feedback. That’s exactly what you can get if you sign

up for our the Fluent with Friends course. In  it you’ll find our very own deep pronunciation

training course, where we teach you the art  and science of how natives cut, connect,

and eat their words, and also provide you  with feedback about your own pronunciation.

The FwF course also comes with a bonus IPA course!  So to try that right now for free, just click up

here or the link down below and we’ll send  you 3 mini lessons straight to your email!

So, little by little, with  only 10 minutes a day, you can

start implementing this into an action plan. You’ll find a model English speaker, me, Ethan

or whoever, then you’ll start recording yourself. As you do this, reflect on your articulation of

the sounds, and on how you’re engaging  your articulators to make the sounds:

the tongue, lips, teeth, etc. Become more familiar with IPA.

There are endless amounts of resources  online which you can quickly find by

searching the term “IPA for English learners.” When you listen back to your recordings,

it’s critical that you give  yourself feedback. And if you can,

get feedback from a pronunciation teacher. Congratulations to you for making it

this far in this video. It shows you’re  committed to improving your pronunciation!

Ethan and I recently made a video on  the differences between American and

British vowel sounds. This lesson is going  to help you understand IPA more and also to become

more aware of how to produce these  essential sounds for your English speaking.

Another common vowel change is the open "ah" sound  in British English to an "eir" in American English.

This "ah" is the same in both variants in words like  "cat" and "map", but what the spelling is "a double r" it

is "eir" in American English. So I say "carry" and  Ethan says "carry".

In British English I pronounce the name of this character as

"Harry", which is not the same as "hairy" which means  a person with a lot of hair. However, American

English speakers say these two words the same.  Again, I say: