40: The Ultimate Guide to Improving Your English Pronunciation (Step-by-Step)

I believe that most English learners aren't doing enough, nowhere near enough, to improve their pronunciation, and that if they did, then they would speak with more accuracy, fluency and

confidence. And that is why in this lesson, I'm going to outline what you can do in a very practical way on your own to improve your English pronunciation and the way that you speak English. So be sure to listen to this lesson or watch this lesson on YouTube until the end because I'm going to highlight and give you the exact step by step plan so that you can become a more confident speaker by working on this area of English. But before we get into all of

that, my name is Jack from to Fluency. Be sure to check out the description because I'll have some great resources for you, including my book, The Five Step Plan for English Fluency. All right, let's get started. Like I said at the beginning of this lesson, most learners don't focus enough attention and study time to work in on the way they speak English, working on their pronunciation. And this is true as well for most language courses, most

language schools. And I think this is the case because most people need to do this on their own and really focus on it. And it's hard for a teacher with 30 students or even 6 students to work individually with each student to make sure that they're saying the right vowel sounds, the right consonant sounds, using word stress and

intonation. But there are so many benefits when you work on your English pronunciation because what you're going to do if you improve this area, firstly, you'll speak more accurately because you'll be using the right vowel sounds, the right consonant sounds, and people will be able to understand you better. But you're also going to speak more fluently because you won't

need to focus on how to speak. Instead, you can just speak naturally and use the right sounds in a natural way without thinking about what you need to do with your mouth, what you need to do in order to make those sounds. So it's going to allow you to speak more accurately, but also more fluently. And this will lead to confidence and it will also lead to you speaking where you just flow. Everything just flows, which means it just happens naturally.

It's effortless. You don't need to put lots of effort into this. So today we're going to look at how you can do this the the step by step process in which that you can dramatically improve the way you speak. And then I'll also give you some very practical tips at the end so that you can take action and get started with all of this.

But first I want to talk about GG, the sport of golf, the one where you have your clubs and a ball, and you swing the golf clubs so that the ball goes in the hole. And the reason I'm talking about this is because it's going to help you think about the way to improve your pronunciation by using this analogy. OK, so let's say that you start playing golf. The first thing you need to do after buying your golf clubs is to learn how to swing a club.

Learn how to swing a club. So learn how to hit the ball properly with your Golf Club. And you need to think about and learn all about your hand position. Where do your hands go on the club? How do you stand? What's the correct stance? Do you lean forward? Are your legs narrow or are they wide? Then you need to think about what you need to do with your hands and your elbows and your shoulders and your hips when you bring the club above you.

And then you need to think about and learn what you need to do next to then hit the ball and follow through so that the ball goes straight. And most people here will watch YouTube videos so they can learn how to swing a Golf Club properly. Or they'll buy a book or they will take private lessons. And this part is important for

later. So you might learn from YouTube or by having a private teacher who's going to say, do this with your hands, stand like this, lean back, head straight back straight, OK, what you need to do next is this, etcetera. So once you learn how to swing a Golf Club, the next thing you do is you practice this skill. You're not playing a game of golf. Instead, you are practicing how

to swing the Golf Club properly. So you are practicing this skill, you have learned how to do it, and now it's time to try it. So you swing your Golf Club and you hit the ball. The next thing you get is feedback. Feedback. And you can do this in a few ways. You can give yourself feedback in terms of what happens to the ball. If you hit the ball well, then that's good feedback. If the ball trickles, which means go slowly along the ground, then you know you need

to make some changes. But you can also get feedback by having a teacher, a golf instructor, watching you and telling you what you need to do to change. So they might say, OK, next time keep your elbows straight or next time keep your head down or next time keep your back straight. And then the other way to get feedback is to record yourself swinging a Golf Club and then comparing your swing to the way you are learning, which might be

a YouTube video. And then you can look at what you need to do and what changes you need to make so that you get better at this skill. And this is a constant loop. It's a cycle. You learn what to do, you practice, you get feedback, and you make changes. So with the feedback, you're learning more and more. With the practice, you're trying it, you're trying the skill, and then with the feedback, you're making changes. And then there are two more steps here.

The next step is to get repetition when you can do the things correctly. So let's say that you are correctly holding the club and you're using your hands in the right way. Getting repetition gives you muscle memory and it makes it effortless. And I'm sure you've heard other people say repetition is the key to everything. By repeating something, you learn how to do it effortlessly and you gain that muscle memory. But playing golf would be boring if you didn't play golf.

So you have a game of golf. You go round a golf course. This is fun. This is why people practice golf. But it's also a way to do 2 more things, which is to perform under pressure, to perform under pressure, to be able to hit the right swing or use the right swing when you're playing a game. And also learn more about where you need to improve. So maybe you need to improve your putting, you need to improve your drives, or maybe you're short game.

But the game of golf is where you are enjoying yourself. You're having fun, but you're also learning how to perform under pressure and learning what you need to do to improve some

more. Now this podcast isn't about golf, but this analogy really helps because learning English pronunciation and being able to speak English is exactly the same as what I have just described, where you learn how to do something, you practice it, you get feedback, you get repetition, and then you use it in a more natural way. You perform under pressure. Let's take two sounds in English

as an example. These two sounds are minimal pairs, the V sound and the F sound. They're two similar sounds, but there's a big difference here. And to be able to make these sounds correctly, you need to know what to do with your mouth in order to to get this right. You need to know what to do with your throat and your teeth and your lips and your tongue in order to get the sounds correct. So let's just practice this a little bit.

The V sound is where your top teeth touch your bottom lip behind inside your mouth and you make the V sound very, very, and there's a key part to this, your throat vibrates. It's a voiced sound, one where your throat vibrates. So very practice after me very, very good. Now the F sound is similar because your mouth does the same thing, but your throat does not vibrate. It's an unvoiced sound. So fun fun. Let's say 2 words that are similar.

Now to practice with V&F. Very fairy, Very fairy. Very fairy. Very fairy, Very fairy. Now if you can notice the difference between those two sounds, that is great. But the key here, now is to think, OK, how can I master this? How can I really learn these two sounds in a way where I can just say them effortlessly? Well, again, learn what to do. Learn about your teeth and your lips and the vibration like I just explained. Then practice, practice these

sounds. But the key part as well here is that you need feedback. So after practising, you need feedback to know if you're doing it correctly or not. And this is where I believe most learners should really put a lot of attention on. And it's this to record yourself, record yourself saying these two words and record yourself when you practice pronunciation and speaking in general. Now you can have somebody

evaluate you. So you can have somebody evaluate your your English and the way you speak. Now talk about more how I can help you with that soon. But recording yourself is so powerful because when you record yourself, you can listen to the way you speak in a much more meaningful way. When you're just speaking and you're not recording yourself, it's very difficult to notice any mistakes you make or any changes you need to make. But when you record yourself, it's more observant.

It's more obvious to notice what you need to do to change. So learn how to say these sounds, as this example. Practice yourself saying them, and then record yourself and make changes. Think about the changes you need to make in order to say these sounds correctly. And then once you can do that, get repetition. So repeat the sounds over and over again in a smart way. So you're not just repeating it 1000 times today, but you're repeating it a few times today, a few times tomorrow, once or

twice in four days, ETC. That's the type of repetition that is really efficient. OK, so so far what we're doing is we're thinking about the best way to master the sounds of English and master English pronunciation. Step one is knowing what to do with your mouth to make the sounds. Step Step 2 is practicing. Step 3 is recording yourself. Step 4 is making changes. And then this is a loop, a cycle. OK, maybe I need to do this with my teeth.

Let's learn what to do again. You practice again, you record yourself. You think that's better, but it's not perfect. So you make some more changes until you are happy with the way you say it. And then Step 5 is to get that repetition so that you build the muscle memory. You can build muscle memory in your mouth just like people build muscle memory playing golf or playing soccer or working out anything really where it just becomes effortless. And that's the stage we want to

reach. Now, practically, if you want to

say, OK, over the next three months, I really want to focus on this area. And I recommend you do, I recommend exploring this area at least, but then focusing time each week, maybe each day to, to pronunciation. Then I think this is a really good idea. Firstly, learn the sounds of English. Learn the different sounds of English, the consonant sounds, vowel sounds, etc. The schwa as well. And use the method that I've talked about in order to do this. Now, this might take some time.

You're going to get frustrated sometimes it might be a little bit boring, but like I've talked about in the past, try and make it as fun as possible and be motivated to know that by doing this, it's really going to help the way that you speak English. Now, it also means working on things like stress and intonation, stress and intonation, and I'm going to give a good example of this in a second.

And then finally, it's working on things like retractions and linking and working on these areas is not just going to improve the way that you speak with accuracy and fluency, but it's going to help your comprehension too. Because if you can say these words and use retractions and use linking things like I could have done it, I could have done it, which is a retraction of I could have done it.

We're also linking. I could have done it, I could have done it. Then you'll better understand other people, English speakers when they're using this too. And people use retractions and linking all the time. It is so common O in order to understand people. This will be really useful for you.

O find a course or anything really just research this area, these areas of the sounds of English stress and intonation retractions and Lincoln and go through the different areas, practice, get feedback, etcetera. Now I do want to say that I have a program for this. I'll leave a link in the description that goes through all these areas, and then you can also send in your recordings to me and I will evaluate these recordings for you and tell you what I think you need to do to improve.

So I've worked with hundreds of students on this area and I know the the common mistakes that people make and why they can't execute a certain sound or they can't use retractions in a natural way. And then like I say, make this part of your study plan. So really commit to this because it's just going to make you become more confident, more fluent, and more accurate when you speak English.

And then going back to the golf analogy, we talked about having a game of golf where you perform under pressure and you learn what you need to do to improve. This equivalent here is having conversations in English, or talking to a teacher, or having a language exchange partner where you put everything together. You have to be able to use the correct sounds while speaking, which is a much more complex task than just repeating phrases. Let's say repeating the sounds of English.

That's going to help you just improve in general. It's fun to have conversations. This is why people want to learn English. And then also it's going to give you a good indication of where you are and what you need to do to improve. Now I do want to practice a

phrase here because I'm going to look at retractions and linking, but also stress and intonation. OK, so the phrases I could have done it like I mentioned before now could have becomes coulda, I coulda, I coulda, I coulda and then done it done it done it becomes well there it is. It links together and we also use the the glottal stop Done it, done it done it and then all together I could have done it. I could have done it.

Now I also want to just highlight some word stress here because listen to this now I could have done it. I could have done it. Now this is the stress with the emphasis on I. That's the most important part of the sentence because I'm stressing it like that. I could have done it. I could have done it and then hit listen to the intonation here. I could have done it, I could have done it. It goes a little bit high at the end too. So there are different things that you can do with stress and

intonation. With intonation, there's the fall in intonation, the rise in intonation, and then the rise and fall intonation. But all these things are inside my program. That's a fluency program. Or you can look them up individually or take a different

course on pronunciation. The key though, is to think about if this is an area you would benefit from if you spent some time with it. And then going through that cycle where you learn how to make the sounds or how to use intonation or how to use the schwa, then you practice it. You get feedback, you make changes, you keep learning, you keep practicing, you keep making changes. And then you get the long term repetition so that it just builds into muscle memory so that you can speak English

fluently and accurately. OK, so there's quite a lot here. I hope you did find this useful. If you did, then please share this lesson with a friend. It really does help me if you just click that share button, send it over to a friend or post it in a Facebook group or send it to somebody on WhatsApp or to a group on WhatsApp. It's really does help me and it's a way for you to say thank you for this lesson. And then if you haven't subscribed yet, then do that

now. It'll just take you a few moments just to click that subscribe button so that you get all my lessons into your feed and into your inbox. All right, So thank you so much for being with me in this lesson. While you're here, why not take more lessons with me? If you're on YouTube, they'll be on your screen now. If you're listening on the podcast, then just go to the podcast feed and listen to more lessons there. Alright, thanks again. Bye, bye for now.