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Quick Tips

Many deserving people lose out on job opportunities because of their strong accent!

Can I ‘neutralize’ my accent?
Yes, you can. All you need to do is train yourself to speak English as comfortably and perfectly as you speak your mother tongue.

How do you train yourself?
By including certain practices in your daily lifestyle. These will get you closer to sounding like a native English speaker and equip you with a global accent — and you will speak not American or British English, but correct English.

1. Observe the mouth movements of those who speak English well, and try to imitate them.
When you are watching television, observe the mouth movements of the speakers. Repeat what they are saying, while imitating the intonation and rhythm of their speech.

2. Until you learn the correct intonation and rhythm of English, slow your speech down.
If you speak too quickly, and with the wrong intonation and rhythm, native speakers will have a hard time understanding you. Don’t worry about your listener getting impatient with your slow speech — it is more important that everything you say be understood.

3. Listen to the ‘music’ of English.
Do not use the ‘music’ of your native language when you speak English. Each language has its own way of ’singing’.

4. Use the dictionary.
Try and familiarize yourself with the phonetic symbols of your dictionary. Look up the correct pronunciation of words that are hard for you to say.

5. Make a list of all the words that you find difficult to pronounce and ask your Tutor to pronounce them for you.
Record these words, listen to them and practice saying them. Listen and read at the same time.

6. Buy books on tape.
Record yourself reading some sections of the book. Compare the sound of your English with that of the person reading the book on the tape. Try to get the audio of the book in North American English

7. Pronounce the ending of each word.
Pay special attention to ‘S’ ‘R’ ‘L’ ‘ED’ endings. This will help you strengthen the mouth muscles that you use when you speak English.

8. Read aloud in English for 15 minutes every day.
Research has shown it takes about three months of daily practice to develop strong mouth muscles for speaking a new language.

9. Record your own voice and listen for pronunciation mistakes.
Many people hate to hear the sound of their voice and avoid listening to themselves speak. However, this is a very important exercise because doing it will help you become conscious of the mistakes you are making.

10. Be patient.
You can change the way you speak but it won’t happen overnight. People often expect instant results and give up too soon. You can change the way you sound if you are willing to put some effort into it.

Extra tips:

~ Focus on removing the mother tongue influence that creep into your English conversations.

~ Watch the English news on local television channels and listen to the speakers on local English radio stations.

~ Listen to and sing English songs.

How To Improve Your Pronunciation:

Pronouncing every word correctly leads to poor pronunciation! Good pronunciation comes from stressing the right words - this is because English is a time-stressed language.

Here's How:

Learn the following rules concerning pronunciation.

English is considered a stressed language while many other languages are considered syllabic.

In other languages, such as French or Italian, each syllable receives equal importance (there is stress, but each syllable has its own length).

English pronunciation focuses on specific stressed words while quickly gliding over the other, non-stressed, words.

Stressed words are considered content words: Nouns e.g. kitchen, Peter - (most) principle verbs e.g. visit, construct - Adjectives e.g. beautiful, interesting - Adverbs e.g. often, carefully

Non-stressed words are considered function words: Determiners e.g. the, a - Auxiliary verbs e.g. am, were - Prepositions e.g. before, of - Conjunctions e.g. but, and - Pronouns e.g. they, she

Read the following sentence aloud: The beautiful Mountain appeared transfixed in the distance.

Read the following sentence aloud: He can come on Sundays as long as he doesn't have to do any homework in the evening.

Notice that the first sentence actually takes about the same time to speak well!

Even though the second sentence is approximately 30% longer than the first, the sentences take the same time to speak. This is because there are 5 stressed words in each sentence.

Write down a few sentences, or take a few example sentences from a book or exercise.

First underline the stressed words, then read aloud focusing on stressing the underlined words and gliding over the non-stressed words.

Be surprised at how quickly your pronunciation improves! By focusing on stressed words, non-stressed words and syllables take on their more muted nature.

When listening to native speakers, focus on how those speakers stress certain words and begin to copy this.

Tips:

Remember that non-stressed words and syllables are often "swallowed" in English.

Always focus on pronouncing stressed words well, non-stressed words can be glided over.

Don't focus on pronouncing each word. Focus on the stressed words in each sentence.