Lindsay McMahon
"The English Adventurer"

Do you get frustrated when you try to improve your pronunciation but can’t implement it in the real world?

Today our guest gives us five tips for overcoming this and working to improve these pronunciations out in the real world.

Hadar Shemesh is our guest today and she is a speech coach from the Influency Podcast.

She lives in Israel and helps people all around the world with learning English.

She is going to teach us some tips to improve your pronunciation that will be seamless and ensure that this becomes second nature to you.

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Pronunciation Is Important But Takes Time

There is often a feeling that people should rush new pronunciation, and this is going to backfire.

Hadar focuses on how our listeners can take their pronunciation learning out into the real world.

Many know that pronunciation is important, but they aren’t sure of how to integrate it into their real life speech.

Once they learn a certain sound on YouTube, they feel that they can master it and expect to use it effortlessly.

Then frustration sets in when it doesn’t naturally happen that easily.

Learning how to make a sound is the first step in the process.

Most of the work is about the implementation and repetition, and this part is often overlooked.

We put so much time into something and we feel that it should work, and it’s frustrating when it doesn’t.

Language is a special case, and this isn’t always as easy as you think it should be.

Five Steps To Improving Your Pronunciation

You want to work through a process that will help you to improve your pronunciation.

Here’s her framework to help you overcome any obstacles and put this all to work in your life.

1. Perception: Before you even attempt to learn a new sound, you have to be able to recognize it. If you don’t have a certain sound in your native language, then your brain will analyze it as a different sound. What you are hearing is not how you are categorizing it in your mind. You have to treat it differently with how you perceive it and use it. Vowel sounds that don’t exist in other languages can be difficult to learn for example. You have to hear the differences first, and you can’t hear what you don’t know—so you have to take a look at it and think of how you perceive it at first. It has to go through your mouth first, and then you are better able to understand it then.

2. Pronunciation: The actual production of the sound. What you do with your lips, your jaw, your cheeks—everything with your mouth that goes into making this sound. We can all make any sound, but it’s all about learning how to use your articulation organs properly. If you want to use a certain “r” sound, then you have to think about how you form that and sound it out. You form it and sound it out a bit before you produce the sound. Tongue placement is important for example. Different learners learn and improve differently, so you have to take that into consideration. Different methods learn for different people, and that’s okay and important to recognize!

3. Practice: Building confidence with this pronunciation. You want to be very intentional with the practice. You don’t want to use the same patterns that you use in your native language. You want to mix it up and try it in this new language first and foremost. If you keep forming the sounds and words in the same way as your native language, you create muscle memory for the mispronunciation. You have to practice intentionally in this new language to improve. You need some guidance and tools to make it work and improve upon it. You won’t get the results you are after if you don’t put intentional practice into it. Record yourself, practice in the mirror, and get outside your comfort zone a bit—that’s what will work! You have to nurture the skill to keep it fresh and current and improve upon things.

4. Implement what you have practiced: You have put in the practice and tackled challenging transitions, but you aren’t using it in conversation yet. Now this is where the next step comes in—where you have to start implementing what you have learned. You want to focus on one or two sounds and be sure that you are using them properly. You want to start using them in real conversations, and slowly build up this progress. You need to build up the steps first, practice and record, and then do it on your own too. You want to put this into a conversation that you can emulate and even record this to be sure that you can see how it’s going. You can look back and see if this is working and if you are improving.

5. Now you go out into the real world: If you have put in the work and practice, then you will find that it is far more seamless to put it to work in the real world. Use this new lesson intentionally and it will become much easier for you. This is the step where you are using these new sounds intentionally in conversation. You are integrating it into your real life conversations. You are making this work in a really effective way, and you have put in the work to make this all possible. This is where the work has paid off and where you are able to really see it all through. It becomes second nature when you have worked hard and now you can put this all to work in your real life conversations.

Making This All Work In Real Life

What are the sounds keeping you from sounding natural? How can you overcome these obstacles?

These steps will help you to overcome any pronunciation issues that you have been having.

Take the time to work through this process, and then you will find that it comes much easier to you.

Don’t try to rush it or be impatient with yourself, for this is the way to master it and that takes time.

You can learn more here and you can check out Hadar’s work on the Influency podcast wherever you access your podcasts.

Takeaway

Learning pronunciation is a really important aspect of speaking English properly.

It’s important when it comes to learning any new language, and you have to give yourself time and go through the necessary steps.

These five steps can help you to prepare and intentionally practice what you learn, as you work to improve your overall pronunciation.

Take your time, be patient with yourself, move through the steps, and know that this will all help you to improve.

If you can take the time to practice like this, then you can make this second nature and ensure that you are confident with your pronunciation overall.

Hadar’s Bio:

Hadar is a non-native speaker of English who helps fellow non-native speakers find clarity and fluency with joy. She runs a thriving community of English learners, and has coached thousands of students in her Programs. Hadar also helps English teachers teach pronunciation confidently while building a thriving business online. She connects with her audience weekly through her YouTube channel and her podcast – the InFluency podcast.

If you have any questions, please leave them below in the comments section.

We’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

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