How to Improve Your English Pronunciation: 10 Practical Tips 

Are you getting confident in reading and writing in English but still need some confidence when it comes to speaking? We get it, pronunciation is one of the hardest parts of language learning for most people. English is no exception!

We’ve compiled a list of 10 strategies and exercises that can help with pronunciation, including tongue twisters, shadowing native speakers, and study techniques, to help you become a more confident English speaker.

1) Record yourself

The first step in working on your pronunciation in English is to figure out your starting point! We recommend recording yourself saying things like your name and some everyday phrases in English with your phone. When listening back to yourself, be honest about what you hear.

You can even compare it to a native speaker! Ideally, you have an American friend, and you can both record the same thing. But if not, choose a sound clip of an American saying something from the news, a show, or a podcast, and then record yourself saying the same thing in your own voice! Don’t try to mimic yet (that comes later!), this is to discover your personal baseline. Don’t be shy, and try your best! You can also use lingoni‘s pronunciation tool to record yourself after listening to the perfect pronunciation of a native speaker.

2) Identify your weakest points

In listening to your recording, make honest notes about what doesn’t sound right. Every person will have different strengths and weaknesses, but keep an ear out for the following common mistakes.

Mixing up consonants

American English has quite a few consonant sounds that aren’t used in other languages. Maybe you have trouble with the rhotic “R” sound and its similarities to “L.” Try saying the word “rarely” to see if you have this problem. Or maybe the voiced vs voiceless “TH” sounds found in “Think” and “This” are a bit tricky. “V” and “W” or “B” and “P” are other often mixed-up sounds.

Join Emily from lingoni ENGLISH as she guides you through some of the most challenging sounds in English—like the tricky “th,” “r,” silent letters, and the differences between “v” and “w.”

Unable to make certain vowel sounds

Just like with consonants, American English vowels can be tricky as well. Listen for the difference between long and short vowels, such as “sheep” vs. “ship.” Or maybe you have trouble with diphthongs (two vowel sounds next to each other) or the unstressed, unvoiced, throw-away vowel we use in the word “the” (pronounced “th-uh,” not “th-ee”)

Don’t miss Vince’s video on short and long vowel sounds:

Rhythm & Intonation

Do you sound a bit like a robot? Does each word come out clipped and separate from each other? In the US, we talk very fast and link our words together! If you say each word in a sentence with the same stress and disconnected from each other, you may think you are using better diction, but actually, it can make it harder to understand!

If you have yet to discover the channel Accent’s Way English with Hadar, it’s high time! Hadar is an expert at teaching American English pronunciation, rhythm, and intonation! Check out this playlist to get started!

3) Use TV, podcasts, and friends to copy native speakers

This one is easy and fun! Once you have figured out your strengths and weaknesses, the next time you watch a US TV show, the news, or listen to a podcast, keep an ear out for those things you need to work on! Pause and repeat after them, doing your best to copy their sounds and rhythms. Make notes on phrases and words that come up frequently.

If you have any American friends, you can also ask them directly for help! Have them record those tricky words and phrases for you to practice against! You can even use it to copy their word choices, speech patterns, intonation, and pronunciation.

4) Learn IPA – or your own phonetic notes

It may sound daunting to learn a whole new alphabet, but I promise, this one will be incredibly helpful for lots of reasons! The IPA, or International Phonetic Alphabet, is a notation based on all the sounds the human mouth can make, regardless of language. You can write any word in any language using the IPA! So you can see why this would be helpful.

Emma will help you learn all English sounds & pronounce words perfectly with the IPA in this video:

Here is a great free resource for all the sounds you’ll need for American English: https://www.vocabulary.com/resources/ipa-pronunciation/

There are many more sounds and notations, but you won’t need to know any more than these for American English. If you’d like to learn more, here is the official IPA website: https://www.internationalphoneticalphabet.org/ 

5) Read aloud or narrate your daily life

It may sound cheesy, but it works great! Actors need to speak in dialects often and do this every time they are working on a new accent! Reading in English out loud, or even narrating what you are currently doing, is a great way to practice on the fly and to get your brain and mouth working quickly and naturally. This trick is also helpful for getting used to thinking directly in English instead of taking the extra step to translate in your head. 

6) Sing along!

Songs from American singers and bands are all over! Chances are, you sing along with one every day. Why not use that time to practice? You can use a song you already know, or if you need somewhere to start, we recommend a song with simple vocabulary and lots of repetition. Thankfully, this includes a lot of popular music! Listen to someone like Taylor Swift or Bruno Mars for something fun and catchy, or a group like Aerosmith if you’re more of a classic rock fan.

If you’re a Swifty, you can listen to 15 minutes’ worth of her songs and read along with the lyrics by watching the video below.

You can even go back to your childhood and watch or listen to a classic animated movie musical in English! Chances are you already know what they are saying if you watched them in your native language as a child, so relearning it in English should be easy and will bring a nice sense of nostalgia.

7) Tongue twisters

Tongue twisters are a classic way to practice some of the more difficult sounds in English in a fun way. It is also a great way to practice the English rhythm and linking of words that really make you sound like a native! Here are some of my faves:

• How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Great for working on the “W” sound as well as the unstressed “uuh” in the words “wood” vs the stressed but short “uh” sound in “chuck”

• Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear. Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair. Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy, was he?

This is good for all the above, plus the ”F”s can also be tricky for some people

• I saw a kitten eating chicken in the kitchen.

If you have difficulty differentiating short “i” from long “ee” sounds, this one is for you! Make sure the short vowels in “kitten,” “chicken,” and “kitchen” sound different from the long vowels in “eating.”

• I thought I thought of thinking of thanking you.

Practice that soft “TH” sound in a fun (if frustrating) way!

• Willie’s really weary.

W’s, R’s, and L’s, plus long “ee” and short “i”? All in one tongue twister? Great challenge for any English learner!

• I slit the sheet, the sheet I slit, and on the slitted sheet I sit.

This is a favorite among teens in the US because, if you’re not careful, you will accidentally say a bad word! So make sure those short “i”s and long “ee”s are in the right spots!

Practice some tongue twisters with Ryan!

8) Break it down

If your basic English vocabulary is pretty strong and you want to work with advanced language, you’ll find the words get longer and more difficult. Whether it’s finding the proper emphasis or learning to pronounce longer words (3+ syllables), anyone can benefit from starting from the basics and breaking down each sound individually. Practice these easy little syllables until each one feels comfortable.

But what about putting them together into a single word again? Where do you put the stress? Here are a few handy little tricks: 2+ syllable nouns have stress on the first syllable, and 2+ syllable verbs have it on the second. Words with recognizable suffixes, such as -tion, -acy, -al, or -ty, place the stress on the syllable right before the suffix.

And when in doubt, ask an American friend or check a dictionary! Here is a great website with a more comprehensive list of emphasis tips: https://www.boldvoice.com/blog/rules-for-stressed-syllables-in-english 

9) Advanced; mouth and tongue placement/physiology

This is another advanced technique, but it can be really helpful for the science-minded! Understanding HOW you are making the sounds can help you really pinpoint (literally) where to place your articulators correctly! Check out these websites for an in-depth explanation of how you make sounds with your lips, tongue, teeth, and roof of your mouth (aka your articulators), as well as charts and even videos on where to place them all for American-specific English pronunciation. https://tfcs.baruch.cuny.edu/consonants-vowels/ 

10) lingoni

Subscribe to a program like lingoni that only uses native English speakers as teachers! This way, you will always have a native speaker to compare yourself to and base your pronunciation on, as well as lessons, practice videos, and a lovely community of fellow learners. 

And there you go! You’ve got 10 new tips to try out for your English pronunciation. Once you’ve tried them all, make sure to let us know which ones work best for you!