As an adult English learner, How can I improve my pronunciation? This is
a question that someone asked me on Instagram, and it's a really good question.
Let's discuss. Welcome to another Happy English podcast, coming to you from
New York City, and here's your English teacher, Michael. All right,
thank you, Jann, and thanks everyone. It's Michael here from Happy English
and I help people speak English better. And this is Happy English Podcast,
Episode six seventy one, Improving Pronunciation as an adult learner. I recently asked
my followers on social media what questions they had about learning English. I got
a lot of good responses, and I thought it would be a great opportunity
for me to share some advice here on the podcast. Today, we're going
to talk about improving pronunciation as an adult English learner. Improving your pronunciation is
a worthwhile goal and something that's going to definitely enhance your overall communications skills and
especially your confidence using English. Here are a few things that you can do
to improve your English pronunciation. The first one is listen. Listen, listen.
There are a lot of places to find English speakers, and you should
try to engage with the variety of English audio materials like podcasts, audiobooks,
or ted talks. And by engage, I mean listen attentively, pay close
attention to the pronunciation of the speaker, and when you find a speaker that
has a speaking style that you like, use that audio for shadowing practice.
Shadowing means repeating what you hear right after you hear it. Here's an example,
using a clip from a Steve Jobs speech. As Apple grew, we
hired someone who I thought was very talented. As Apple grew, we hired
someone who I thought was very talented. As Apple grew, we hired someone
who I thought was very talented. So you can see here I'm repeating what
he says and I'm trying to use the same intonation. As Apple grew.
Pause, we hired someone who I thought was very talented. So he stresses
I thought and very talented. Take a listen. As Apple grew, we
hired someone who I thought was very talented. As Apple grew, we hired
someone who I thought was very talented. Now that might not be exactly the
same pace and intonation as him, but it's pretty close. And that is
what I mean by shadowing. Next, as you listen to people speak,
focus on their style of speaking. If I were in a diner and the
server asked me what I want to drink, I would probably say, let
me get a cup of coffee. Let me get a cup of coffee.
Let me get a cup of coffee. There's a lot of linking and liaison
going on in that sentence. Let me comes out like lemmy, lemmy get
comes out like gheta, gheta, let me get a becomes let me get
a. Let me get a cup of coffee comes out like cup of coffee,
cup of coffee. Let me get a cup of coffee. Let me
get a cup of coffee. Now, I have to tell you that not
everyone would pronounce let me get a cup of coffee as let me get a
cup of coffee. That's my accent. I'm an American from New York,
and that's how New Yorkers speak. That's just one American English dialect, and
there is something like thirty different accents in American English. And I'm not asking
you to choose one over the other. I'm just suggesting that if you want
to sound more native, pay attention to the speaking style of the person you
are listening to and then imitate them. You may even want to pick some
famous characters from movies or TV programs and use them as a model for shadowing.
Tom Hanks, as Forrest Gump, has a Southern accent. It's the
same as Zoe Perry, who plays Mary Cooper, the mom in the TV
show Young Sheldon. You can hear a good Boston accent by Christian Bale in
the twenty ten movie The Fighter, and anytime you listen to the comedian and
actor Sebastian Maniscalco, you'll find an authentic Chicago accent. In short, for
my money, listening attentively to native speakers and using shadowing are the best things
that you can do to improve your pronunciation as an adult learner of English,
and like everything else in life, practice makes progress. You'll get the best
results from consistently practicing on a daily basis. Send me a message and let
me know what you are struggling with, and who knows your question could become
a podcast like this one. If you'd like to get more practice speaking English,
why don't you join my podcast Learners study group. There you can make
new friends, join me for live group coaching every week. Plus get the
pdf transcript and audio download for every Happy English podcast in the past and in
the future, and each episode has exercises where you can practice this English point
with speaking and writing checked by me. To learn more, just visit my
Happy English dot com and choose podcast lesson six seventy one. Remember, learning
another language is not easy, but it's not impossible, and I'm here to
help you on your journey. This podcast is brought to you by Happy English.
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