One of my students asked me how do they know they are pronouncing a word correctly when they practise alone. That was an interesting question to me for many reasons so, here are a few of my thoughts to that question.
There are many things that don’t help your pronunciation of English sounds (phonemes), below are some of the issues.
A few problems with pronunciation
Don’t always go by the spelling – If you have ever studied English, you will know this by now. Now, read the following words: read, reed, read, red. Did you read (reed) the words? Have you read (red) the words?
Mishearing a word – “Somewhere, over the rainbow, Weigh a pie…” Way up high! “Weigh a pie” is definitely not the lyric in “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”.
Copying mispronunciation – I mention this because I often hear, 3 9 (san kyu, thank you), I even say it sometimes! It’s easy, it’s fun, but it’s not correct.
Not trying a “new” sound – there are sounds in English that do not exist in Japanese, it’s easy not to try to make the “new” sound and use a Japanese sound instead.
It sounds similar enough – “I sink dat isu gudo” ≠ “I think that is good.” There are so many different English accents which are all correct but don’t sound the same. Nevertheless, whichever way you are learning, be honest when you assess yourself; does it sound the same?
Questions to help
Being aware of these things will help your English pronunciation practise, ask yourself:
1. Am I reading the word correctly?
2. Did I mishear the word?
3. Did they pronounce that correctly?
4. Am I trying to make the foreign sound?
5. Does it really sound similar to my source?
The answer I gave to my student’s question, “How do I know I’m pronouncing it correctly when I practise alone?” included ways of overcoming the problems of those 5 questions. In my next few posts, I will share some techniques to help your pronunciation practise.
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