6. How to improve your pronunciation?

1 - Listen! 

Listening to examples of authentic speech is the most obvious way to improve your own pronunciation. There are many ways to do this - watch a film in its original version, listen to podcasts about a topic that interests you in English (you could try the British Council English podcasts app here ), and even listen to music can help. Try to notice the intonation that people use.  You can add to this by 'shadowing'. Shadowing means listening to a short sentence or phrase and then repeating it afterwards, trying to imitate the sounds, intonation and Word stress and noticing how your mouth and tongue move when you speak.

2.  Record yourself. Once you have practised shadowing, you could record yourself speaking - either repeating a short phrase that you have listened to or doing a longer speaking task from a coursebook, like describing a picture. Listen back and make a note of any sounds that you have problems with - practice these words/sounds slowly and then record yourself again. Can you notice an improvement?

3. Get to know the phonemic chart

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a visual representation of different sounds. It might look strange and it might feel like you are learning a whole new language, but it can really help you with pronunciation. All dictionaries have a phonetic transcription of words so that you know how to pronounce them. This is really helpful with English because as we have already seen, English spelling doesn't always correspond with its pronunciation. Think about the letters 'ough' in the words 'though', 'through', 'tough', 'ought'. It would be impossible to guess how to say those words without some help.

4. Use a dictionary. As well as printed dictionaries which will give you a phonetic transcription of a word, there are lots of online dictionaries where you can click and listen to the word being spoken. A particularly good one is 'howjsay' - even the name of this website is a useful guide as to how to pronounce the common question 'How do you say...?' in a natural way.  It's a great resource for checking how new words sound.

5. Do some exercise!

Different languages have different sounds, and our mouths adapt to those sounds.  Some sounds are physically challenging for us to make, as they don't exist in our native language.  Just like when you are learning a new sport or dance move, you must train your mouth to know how to form new sounds - the more you practice, the easier it gets. For example, lots of Spanish speakers have problems with the difference between the /b/ and /v/ sound.  We make the /b/ sound by joining our lips together and then letting go. The /v/ sound is similar, but your top teeth should touch your bottom lip before you let go.  The more you practice this, the easier it gets - tries saying, "I'd like a very big beverage, please''! The Sounds of English section on the BBC's Learning English site has a good selection of video tutorials that explain how to make different sounds and activities to practice them.

6. Get to know your minimal pairs

 Minimal pairs are words with almost the exact same pronunciation but with one different sound - for example, ship and sheep. The difference between the /I/ in 'ship' and the /i:/ in 'sheep' is the length of the vowel. This can be difficult to hear for many language learners and comes up in lots of different words.  The first step is to be able to tell the difference between the sounds when you hear them. You can listen to some common minimal pairs here - can you hear the difference? Can you make the different sounds yourself?

Finally, don't feel bad if you still make mistakes with pronunciation - English is famously tricky.

Apps for practising English pronunciation

5. Say It: English Pronunciation

(Android, iPhone, iPad)

Developed by Oxford University Press, Say It: English Pronunciation was designed to help you improve the clarity of your pronunciation by learning how to pronounce words they already know. Say It gives you a point of reference, using a standard British English or North American accent, which you can copy—helping you improve the clarity of your pronunciation and, in turn, your confidence and fluency in speaking English. You can play your pronunciation audio slowly to notice variations between their recording and the model.

Cost: Free with in-app purchases

Devices: iPhone and iPad

6. English pronunciation

(Android, iPhone, iPad)

This English pronunciation app (Pronunciation Chart) will give you plenty of important topics on how to speak English properly, such as short vowels, long vowels, consonants, mouth and tongue positions when pronouncing words. You can listen to the pronunciation of a particular word with many examples about it. You can click on words to hear how they're pronounced, practice the pronunciation, and read a definition of the word. There are videos about pronunciation with phonetics letters that help you to pronounce a word exactly.

Cost: Free

Devices: Android, iPhone and iPad