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Learning English pronunciation

Why should you study English pronunciation? Because pronunciation is the biggest thing that people notice about your English.

Test your English pronunciation: Can you pronounce basic English words correctly?

How to learn English pronunciation

  1. Learn to recognize all the sounds of English.
  2. Learn about phonetic transcription and word stress.
  3. Choose your pronunciation model: American or British.
  4. Get in the habit of checking the pronunciations of English words.

    • When you’re speaking and you’re not sure how to pronounce something, don’t guess the pronunciation – English pronunciation is tricky (see right), so you’ll probably get it wrong.
    • While you’re reading in English, keep asking yourself: “Do I know how this word is pronounced? What sounds does it contain?”. If you’re not sure, look it up in a dictionary. This should happen very frequently when you’re a pronun­ciation beginner.
  5. Listen and notice. Get some spoken input: TV shows, podcasts, movies, audiobooks, etc. When listening, pay attention to how sounds and words are pronounced. Think about what sounds you hear. When you listen to non-native speakers, notice their mistakes.
  6. Practice pronouncing English words and phrases from time to time. Practice can take many forms. You can practice in a systematic way (e.g. a 15-minute session with a dictionary or online pronunciation exercises), or you can just repeat a couple words while you’re doing something else (e.g. watching a movie or taking a shower). The important thing is to do it regularly — that way, you will make steady progress.

  7. Consider learning the pronunciations of the most common English words in a systematic way. You could get a list of most frequent words and look up their pronunciations. Or you could use my English pronunciation software that teaches you the pronunciations of the most frequently used English words.

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