These Pronunciation Mistakes REDUCE your English Level!

Well hey there I'm Emma from mmmEnglish!

In today's video, I want to talk about some really

common pronunciation mistakes

but these particular mistakes actually reduce

the level of your English or how people perceive your

your English.

Now you may have really great grammar but if you're

mispronouncing words, it can make it seem like

your grammar is not very good.

And we want to avoid that right? Because you've worked

really hard to get your grammar to where it is today.

So don't let your pronunciation let you down. Come on!

The interesting thing about the pronunciation errors

in this video is that you're unlikely to have a problem

with all of them.

These errors are really strongly influenced by someone's

native language, our strongest

and our most dominant language.

And your native language is a problem for you

when you speak English in two main ways.

Firstly, it acts as a filter when you're listening to English.

Your brain doesn't necessarily identify or pick up on

all of the sounds that you hear in English because

they're foreign sounds or they're different combinations

of sounds that are not common in your own

native language so your brain might skip over them

or assume that they're something else instead.

Secondly, your tongue and your mouth

are very comfortable making sounds from your own

native language, right? You've been doing it

all your life.

But if there are new sounds, the muscles

feel uncomfortable and it takes a lot of training for them

to relax and to get into the right position

so that they can make the correct English sound,

really easily.

To fix these particular problems is going to take

a bit of effort on your part or quite a lot, right?

Deliberately practising.

Now this is not very sexy English practice, this is like

standing in front of a mirror with a list of words

that you know you can't pronounce very well.

So you need to spend the time working on these

specific problems, working on those muscles.

It won't magically fix itself.

You've got to put in the work.

Anyway, I'm starting to sound a bit like your mum

or someone nagging at you so let's just move on

and get started with the lesson.

The first pronunciation error is a really common one

for all of my Asian students because

many Asian languages don't often have words ending

in consonant sounds.

In fact there are quite a few other languages

where actually there's only a couple of final consonant

sounds that are used but in English, we have

heaps of words that end in consonant sounds.

And grammatically these final sounds

are really important.

Think about the final S for example, which we use

for all plural nouns and for verbs when we're using

we're talking about the third-person singular.

So that's he, she and it.

So every time we use one of these English pronouns,

it changes the verb and we add that S.

You take...

He takes...

I cry...

She cries...

They bite...

He bites...

So the pronunciation of that final S is so important

if you want to sound like you're using English

accurately when you speak.

She laugh every time the dog take a biscuit.

It's wrong! Without pronouncing the final S on those

verbs, it sounds like you're making a grammar mistake.

She laughs every time the dog takes a biscuit.

Practise it with me.

She laughs every time the dog takes a biscuit.

I need four apple and seven potato.

If you're not pronouncing the final S on these nouns,

then it's grammatically incorrect.

It doesn't matter if in your head it's grammatically

correct or the way that you would write it

would be different,

the way that you're pronouncing it, seems like

you're not using the correct grammar.

I need four apples and seven potatoes.

There are twenty-four months in two years.

Can you hear that final S on both of those nouns?

There are twenty-four months in two years.

Nice!

Now 'months' is a particularly difficult word

to pronounce here.

There are three consonant sounds together.

That's really hard and one of them is the -th sound.

But when you're trying to pronounce this word

in a sentence with other words around it

you're much better off skipping the -th sound

and just saying 'months'

because people will still understand what you're saying

and it's grammatically correct.

In fact, that's a really good little tip because

native speakers do this quite a bit

when they're speaking quickly.

We're going travelling for six months!

Months.

Regular past tense verbs in English cause

different pronunciation challenges

for different English learners

but the one that I'm talking about today is quite similar

to the last one. It's related to the pronunciation of

final consonants.

So I want you to

listen to the difference between these words.

Walk.

Walked.

Watch.

Watched.

Close.

Closed.

Now the final consonant sound here is the only thing

that tells someone that you're using the past tense.

If you don't pronounce it, then you're using the verb

in the present tense.

I talk with him yesterday.

I talked with him yesterday.

I talked.

I talked with him yesterday.

You have to practise this

so that you're speaking accurately.

After we finished eating, we walked through the park

and gazed at the stars.

So listen.

Finished.

Walked.

Gazed.

If you want some more pronunciation practice with

past tense regular verbs and how to pronounce them

correctly, then check out this lesson up here.

I've made a whole lesson about past tense verbs

and the correct pronunciation.

Hey guys! A super quick reminder to subscribe

to my channel if you haven't done that already.

If you have subscribed make sure you let me know

in the comments and which of these pronunciation

errors you feel like you've been making.

There are a few numbers that you need to be really

careful of when you're speaking in English

because it can make you sound like you're making

mistakes when you're not.

Or even worse with numbers, it creates

a lot of confusion.

Can you think of the numbers

that I'm actually talking about?

Listen up!

Thirteen.

Thirty.

Fourteen.

Forty.

Again that's the consonant sound at the end.

It's so important.

Fifteen.

Fifty.

Sixteen.

Sixty.

Seventeen.

Seventy.

So you can see how this can get really tricky

if you're mispronouncing these sounds.

It's really just that one consonant sound on the end

that tells us which number we're actually using.

In fact, you'll even sometimes hear native speakers

asking for clarification on this because if that word isn't

pronounced clearly, it's really difficult to be sure.

Now I've got a whole nother video where you can

practise pronouncing numbers correctly with me

up there

but right now I want to focus on the difference between

fifteen and fifty.

So again, it's that consonant sound. It's so important.

Fifteen.

Fifty.

Can you feel the difference in your mouth

when you're practising?

With fifteen, the tip of your tongue should be

touching the ridge behind your top teeth.

Fifteen.

With fifty, the tip of your tongue is down. It's down low.

Now if you need to practise this pronunciation

then really pay attention to the tip of your tongue.

Where is it when you finish saying each of those words?

Fifteen.

Fifty.

Fifteen.

Fifty.

Okay here's something a little different,

adding an extra sound after a final consonant.

Now my Italian students,

you know where you're at. This one is definitely for you.

Pronouncing the final consonant

is not a problem for you, it's just that you tend to

add an extra vowel sound on the end of the word.

You know when it ends in a consonant sound.

And again, this is something that occurs in your native

language but it doesn't happen in English.

So how can this little tiny extra sound

make you sound incorrect or less accurate

when you're using English?

So listen to what can happen when you add

a vowel sound after a final consonant.

Wait.

Waiter.

Stop.

Stopper.

Speak.

Speaker.

So you're adding this extra syllable which can change

many verbs into a noun.

The way that you're pronouncing these verbs

is really similar to the way that Australians

and British English speakers pronounce these nouns.

So practise it with me.

Please wait until they speak before you take photos.

Please wait until they speak before you take photos.

So if you need to practise this and you want to

reduce the influence of your native language

on your English pronunciation,

then try writing some simple sentences with lots of

words that end in a consonant sound

and then record yourself as you say them out loud.

Listen to the recording again and hear how you're

mispronouncing these sounds, that's one of the

best ways to practise.

Our final point here is about words that

end in /i/

Let's look at words like community, opportunity,

responsibility,

ability, reality.

Now these are challenging to say because of the

number of syllables in them.

But also in English, we have different stress patterns

and different syllables are stressed in different ways.

What you need to remember is that

we definitely want to hear that vowel sound on the end.

It's not a stress syllable

so it's a really soft sound but it must be there.

Not

Now these errors don't really make you grammatically

incorrect but it does disrupt the flow of your sentence.

When you aspirate instead of

just making the correct vowel sound at the end,

it changes the rhythm and the pattern in your sentence.

Like I said, the last syllable in all of these words is

unstressed but it is clearly there.

It's just pronounced as a soft T.

So if this is a problem for you then let's practise.

This is your opportunity to take responsibility.

In reality,

the community doesn't have the ability to leave.

In reality,

the community doesn't have the ability to leave.

So there you have it, five pronunciation errors

that English students make that not only sound wrong

but they actually make your English level sound

lower than it really is.

Now there are lots of ways to practise and improve

your pronunciation.

You can make recordings of yourself.

You can use a mirror to make sure that your mouth

and your tongue are in the right places

as you're practising your pronunciation.

If you can, get some feedback from a native speaker.

You could get a tutor, you could join classes with

Lingoda where there's native English teachers in

all of those classes.

If you have a speaking partner to practise your

conversation skills with,

make sure you tell them what pronunciation errors

you're really trying to correct

and ask them to tell you if they hear them.

If you've got one or three or five different people

reminding you of your pronunciation errors,

you'll be able to correct them and improve them

much more quickly.

You can also practise with mmmEnglish Imitation

Lessons like this one right here. You'll practise

the correct pronunciation with me and again,

making a recording of yourself imitating me

and listening back to it will really help you to identify

the sounds that you're mispronouncing.

Anyway I'll see you in the next lesson.

Thanks for joining me!