While learning any new language, accurate pronunciation is a significant part of it, especially when you’re learning English. The underestimation of the importance of pronunciation leads to the message being misinterpreted by the receiver. It has been observed that most of the time, students studying English as a second language do not pay suitable attention to English pronunciation.
Pronunciation is important to proper communication for listening and conversational skills. Pronunciation and a clear understanding of the speech, two are the skills that complement each other. Thus, pronunciation training is a very important part.
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Understand The Difference Between Pronunciation and Mispronunciation
Pronunciation is the use of the mouth, tongue and lip muscles to generate ‘apt’ sounds. It generally includes word stress, sentence stress, intonation and amalgamation. Nevertheless, the ‘accuracy’ of the sounds changes between British English, American English, Australian English and so on.
On the other hand, mispronunciation importantly delays the ability to communicate well. If your pronunciation constrains individuals from understanding your thoughts, communication is conceded. This will result in your audience undervaluing your language aptitude. When someone’s speech is inexplicable, it may also lead to discouragement with hesitation to speak due to a lack of self-confidence. This can correspondingly lead to some very confusing miscommunications as well!
Important Fundamentals of Pronunciation
Here are the important essentials for correct pronunciation —
Intonation
It is necessary to understand when to raise or lower your voice. If you didn’t know when to raise or lower your voice at certain parts of each sentence, you will sound just like a robot. Inappropriate intonation can transform the meaning of a sentence, thus, it’s particularly significant for conveying feelings or adding tone to sentences. If you want to sound natural and keep your listeners engrossed, it’s imperative to master English intonation.
Word Stress
Word stress basically refers to the syllable in a word that’s highlighted the most. There are some languages that use accents to show stress like Spanish. However, in the English language, stress is very essential while speaking because a word can completely change the connotation depending on where you put the stress.
Reasons For Accurate Pronunciation
Interested in learning why you need to focus on pronunciation? Here are the answers –
- Bad or wrong pronunciation creates a negative impression. People will notice if your pronunciation is good or bad.
- Many misunderstandings may occur when you do not pronounce words appropriately. This can put tension on relationships that you are thinking about making.
- Additionally, people will ask you to repeat over and over again if you do not pronounce words well.
- By using accurate sounds when you express yourself, others can understand what you’re trying to say instantly.
- Not to forget, improving your pronunciation can support you learn English more effortlessly.
- Needless to mention, proper pronunciation helps in improving your social skills as knowing good pronunciation makes you more confident.
- Correct use of English pronunciation inclines to highlight by adding value to someone speaking English.
Therefore, experts always recommend mastering pronunciation right from the beginning.
Watch this video to know the importance of perfect pronunciation.
Errors To Avoid For Perfect Pronunciation
- Pronouncing Heteronyms (words that are spelt just the same but mean different things) the same way.
- It is important to study every possible sound made by English vowels.
- Very frequently, certain letters aren’t pronounced in English words, it is essential to know those.
- Speaking too fast, the focus should be on getting the sounds right.
- Getting long and short vowel sounds incorrect.
How To Improve Pronunciation?
There are no shortcuts, following are some of the helpful tips that will help you in nurturing your pronunciation –
Slow Down
There is a misconception that speaking effortlessly means people need to speak fast. Speaking too fast makes the speaker sound nervous and uncertain. Rather, speaking gradually will give you time to breathe correctly and contemplate what you want to say. By doing this, you’ll feel more relaxed and be able to focus on making your English sound better.
Listen To Yourself
It’s necessary to listen to your pronunciation by yourself at first. It’s often tough to hear pronunciation mistakes in your own speech as you are concentrating on communicating essentially rather than the sound you are making. Try recording your speech and make a note of definite areas you need to work on.
Listen To Others
Try to learn to listen to others, the more you listen, the more effective you will be. Presently, there are numerous opportunities for listening native like English speech. You may listen to songs, watch films, TV series, videos on YouTube and other sites, audiobooks, voice chats, etc. So, make the most of this exclusive opportunity which has become accessible in the last few years for almost everyone.
Practice Well
Practice makes perfect, needless to say. Even if your English level is high, you can lose your phonetic skills if you have too little practice. Try reading aloud or in a whisper, and repeat the words which you find hard to pronounce, narrate poems or sing songs, observe rhythm and intonation, communicate in English with your friends whose English is good or better than yours too. These small steps have an immense influence on improving your English.
With these above-mentioned simple recommendations, your English pronunciation will be better. Many people lack a vital knowledge of pronunciation despite having an excellent knowledge of grammar, etc. Certification for teaching English abroad or online trains you in improving your English pronunciation in a great way.
Hopefully, you understood the necessity of studying pronunciation in learning English as a second language.
