How to Improve Pronunciation: The Pronunciation Process

Introducing How to Improve Pronunciation

Knowing how to improve pronunciation is really helpful in language learning.  Lots of language learners struggle with the process of pronunciation, which can slow down their learning.  Teachers also need to know the pronunciation process to know how to improve pronunciation in their students.  We often just think it’s “listen-say”, as we’ve all had many experiences with a teacher who stares us in the face saying the same word over and over while we try our best to copy them but keep failing.  This is a good first attempt, but what do you do if you just can’t make the sound?  You have to slow down and follow the pronunciation process to improve your pronunciation!

Let’s first note something important: only listening to the accent you want to have is not how to improve pronunciation.  Listening is key, it is necessary, but it can’t get you all the way.  Improving pronunciation is a step-by-step process that you have to follow for each individual sound you need to make, and it can’t be done magically all at once.  Babies learn sounds one by one and put them together to make words.  No one learns all of the sounds at the same time.  The best way is to separate the language you are learning into its individual sounds and focus on one at a time.

Another note: individual letter sounds like “a” and “b” are not all there is to pronunciation. There is also intonation, volume, and stress. When we talk about sounds, we are including these different parts of pronunciation!

1. Recognize

The first and most important step in the process is to recognize the sound.  In new languages, there are sounds that we don’t use, and it’s difficult for us to even hear them sometimes because they don’t click in our brains.  If you ever felt like: “They are making a noise there but I can’t tell what it is!”, then you need to take the first step.  The first step is to recognize the sound.

How do we do this?  A good place to start is a pronunciation dictionary or an sound guide.  An sound guide will give you the sounds of each part of the writing system.  For British English, you can use this one.  For American English, you can use this one.  A pronunciation dictionary is good because it puts the sounds in words (which often changes them!), but the downside is that it’s harder to find the sound you are trying to learn.

If the sound is the way a word is stressed in a sentence or intonation, you’ll have to work with videos, audios, or a face-to-face teacher, because these sounds are not commonly taught online.

Once you find the sound you’re trying to figure out, you should listen to it again and again.  Listen to it in many different words.  You have now identified the sound you are trying to learn, you can see how it’s written, and you know some words that contain that sound.  Step 1 complete!

2. Differentiate

If you have been learning a language for a while, you’ll probably not need to do Step 1 very often because you’ve already been exposed to the language for a long time.  You’ll probably be at Step 2 for most of your pronunciation needs.  What is Step 2?  Differentiate. And to be honest, you could argue that these two steps are combined, but I’ve separated them so it’s easier to pick and work on an individual sound.

Here is where you develop an ear to hear the difference between the sound you are trying to make and similar sounds, possibly sounds from your language or similar sounds in English.  An example of this is “s” or “f” and “th”.  Many languages don’t have the unvoiced “th” that English has, but they do have “f” or “s”.  So whenever they hear “th” it sounds like “s” or “f” to them, and when they talk they just use the sound they are used to.  To differentiate, they have to learn to hear the difference between “th” and the other sounds. 

This works by doing lots of listening activities where they have to choose which of the sounds they heard.  Like this activity I made to help differentiate “th” and “s” (there are more on the way, so be patient!).  After lots of practice, you train your ear to hear the difference, and you can’t confidently differentiate the sounds.  Now it’s time to go to Step 3.

Learning word stress? You’ll have to do exercises that identify the location of the word stress, like choosing 1st, 2nd, and 3rd syllable after hearing a word. Like this one. If it’s intonation, the activity could identify emotion, overall meaning or sentence stress.

3. Formulate

This is the hardest step for most sounds.  You need to find out how to move the different parts of your mouth together to make the sound.  It helps to watch natives make the sound and see illustrations of what your mouth should be like on the inside to form the sound.  Here, you have to experiment with everything you can until you make the sound.

If you can already differentiate, you can do Step 3 on your own because you will know when you make the right sound.  It can be embarrassing to try to make the sound when you aren’t sure how, so it’s good to do it at home in front of the mirror.  You can watch how you form your mouth to mimic the videos and illustrations you have and try as many different sounds as possible. 

This might take weeks (I struggled for months actually trying to make the rolled “r” sound of Afrikaans!), but keep trying.  Sometimes our muscles aren’t strong enough to make the sounds well, and trying more and more will exercise them.  The key is that you can differentiate (Step 2) so that when you are making the right sound, you know it.  Otherwise you can only practice with a native.  Experienced teachers should give you lots of activities to differentiate the sounds to help you with that.

Once you (finally) get the right sound, you’ve successfully completed Step 3!  You formulated the sound!  But that doesn’t mean you have good pronunciation yet, as you know.  Know it’s time to produce.

4. Practice

Making a sound once and doing it in words are two different things.  What I mean by practice is to use the sound in words.  Open up your pronunciation dictionary again, listen to words, and repeat the whole word.  Practice making the sound in as many different words as possible.  This is necessary because it can be harder or easier to make the sound depending on which sound comes before it and what sound comes after it. 

Get used to producing it in many different words.  This will train your mouth and get you comfortable making the sound whenever you try.  But you aren’t always trying to say things right, because you are also trying to use the right grammar and think of the right words and saying it right can be lost in the moment, which brings us to the next and last step of how to improve pronunciation.

5. Fossilize

Usually, this term is used in a negative light in the world of ESL, because it is used to discuss fossilized errors.  But here, we want to fossilize the correct way.  To fossilize something it to set it in stone.  To make it so that it doesn’t change.  It stays.  We need to fossilize the correct way of saying things. We need to make it a natural habit.

This takes time, and it happens while we are talking.  You need to catch yourself reverting back to the old way of saying things (using the wrong sound) and fix it, every time until saying it the right way becomes natural. 

How to Fossilize

It’s hard to catch ourselves, especially while we are trying to communicate something important or exciting, so there are a few tactics to use. 

First, tell everyone to listen for the mistake for you.  Tell them, “I’m trying to say X instead of Y to improve my pronunciation.  Can you tell me when I say it wrong?”  They don’t have to be natives, even non-natives can help, and it will even help them improve by becoming more aware of the problem. 

Another tactic is to record yourself and listen.  You can’t do this all the time, but you can do it sometimes.  Record yourself talking about your day, and then listen back.  You can keep it short so you don’t have to spend too much time, maybe 3-5 minutes.  Do this regularly to hear your mistakes. (BTW, this is a way to practice speaking on your own, too!)

The last tactic is like Step 4, but in sentences.  Drill longer sentences with the sound to practice using it in context.  Memorizing tongue twisters is a great way to do this!  Start by reading them slowly, then normal speed, then recite them from memory.  Using the sound in as many sentences as possible will help fossilize it.

Final Thoughts on How to Improve Pronunciation

Remember, every sound in the English language must be learned on its own to improve pronunciation.  It’s a slow, methodical process, like a slowly growing tree or a house being build brick by brick.  There is no other way how to improve pronunciation besides working hard on the individual sounds. 

For each sound, you are in a different step in the pronunciation process, and some sounds you’ll learn so easily that it doesn’t matter if you focus on these 5 steps, but some sounds are super tricky, and they need us to slow down and take it step by step with lots of patience and grace for ourselves but determination and perseverance to succeed.  That’s how to improve pronunciation, even when it’s really hard.

Practice Activities