7 Important Tips To Practice Pronunciation At Home For Free

Pronunciation Is the way in which a particular word, letter, or sound is said. One can learn a foreign language but one can't learn the way in which the letters or words of that language can be pronounced. It can be improved by practice. You can generally hear that your grammar is very good but your accent is in your native language. Yes, that is the problem of pronunciation.

In this article, some steps to improve the pronunciation of the English language will be discussed.

Steps to improve Pronunciation in English

1. Listen and listen

Majorly, pronunciation can be practiced by listening. The more you listen to the words or sounds of the foreign language, the more the chances that you will get the word said right. It will help you in your pronunciation getting right. Now the question arises, what to listen to?

• Watch English movies or listen to the audio. See how they speak and how their mouths work.
• Watch English news channels and try to copy their accent too.
• Listen to English songs as the English songs Will give much knowledge of accent and pitch.
• · Watch videos on YouTube based on some documentaries and try to copy their accent.

2. Record what you speak

Another tip to improve your English pronunciation is by recording what you speak.

• Randomly, speak some paragraphs or lines in the English language and record it on your PC or mobile.
• Then, hear what you speak And note down the words of which the pronunciation is not correct. You can have it judged by your teacher or by the person who knows the right pronunciation of that language.
• Note down difficult words and try to speak that once again until the pronunciation gets right.

3. Exercises for tongue

Yes, there are many exercises for the tongue and for facial muscles which can improve your pronunciation in a better and more effective way. Some of them are as

• Take your tongue inside your teeth but do not bite it down. Get the air blow out of your mouth and feel the way air touches your tongue on the upper side. It will help you improve your sounds of vowels.
• Rotate your tongue inside your mouth to improve the letter pronunciation. For example in case of L sound the tongue touches the upper part of your mouth inside. But, in case of R sound, the tongue do not touch the mouth. So to make these sounds stronger, you have to do this exercise. Feel that your tongue touches each and every part of your mouth.

4. Practice pronunciation dictionaries online

You must have used the offline dictionaries for translating words from one language to another. However, in this era of automation, various online dictionaries provide additional benefits to users. Yes, it too gives the benefit of listening to the pronunciation of a particular word.

Also read: English Grammar: How To Use Hyphens in English?

▶️ Google Translate

It’s a kind of software that allows you to Translate any word and provide the benefit of pronouncing that word or even sentences. It also has a visual guide that shows how your mouth should work when pronouncing.

▶️ Forvo

It is a user-made dictionary that has some in-built words or phrases pronounced. In this guide, native speakers save audio clips of themselves pronouncing the words or lines.

▶️ Merriam-Webster dictionary

It is an American accent-based dictionary and one of the best-ranked dictionaries online available for free. The dictionary offers detailed definitions of words or phrases along with its clear and good-quality audio pronunciation.

▶️ Oxford’s learner’s dictionaries

It can be called a beginner’s dictionary which provides an easy to understanding definitions along with a lot of example sentences of the words. It too offers pronunciation of the words or phrases or sentences.

5. Practice in front of the mirror

Another tip or strategy which can be followed for a better and similar pronunciation is to practice in front of the mirror. It is a tip which is suggested for improving fluency too.

• Start reciting any paragraph in the English language in front of a mirror and see how it comes out of your mouth.
• Compare it with the recitation of the person whose native language is English.
• Try to bridge that gap between your pronunciation and the foreigner’s pronunciation.

6. Break up words into sounds

A tip to improve your pronunciation is by learning the sounds. First of all, to learn the pronunciation of any word or phrase, You need to learn how to break that word into two different sounds of phenetic segmentations.

For example, the words ship and sheep are pronounced differently but the learner of the language does not know it. So to teach him or her the correct pronunciation of both the words, the teacher can break the words into sounds. For example:- ship has three different sounds which are sh+I+P and Similarly sheep has three different sounds replacing I with ee. So here if you learn about the phonetics chart you will get to know that I has a small sound of E and ee has a long sound of E. So in this way, it helps in your pronunciations improvement.

7. Get knowledge of phonemic chart

The international phonetic alphabet IPA is a visual representation of different sounds it can help you with pronunciation practice. All the dictionaries have a phonetic transcription of the words so that you can know how to pronounce the different words in the English language.

You can search it over this website, www.englishbix.com

There are basically 44 phonetic sounds, that is, 5 short vowel sounds, 5 long vowel sounds, two other vowel sounds, 18 consonant sounds, 7 diagraphs, and two vowel diphthongs.

Pronunciation is not a skill that can be learned however, with hard practice it can be improved a lot. There are various ways by which the accents of the English language can be learned. Also with the daily speaking, you will be well versed with the language and the dialect of your native language is removed. I hope that this article will give you knowledge of practicing pronunciation at home for free. Keep practicing daily.

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Best of luck!