How to Improve Your English Pronunciation

Do you have good English pronunciation? If you do, you are so lucky. Actually, when I came to N.Y. first to learn English, I didn’t think about how important English pronunciation was. Why? I thought my pronunciation was not too bad, so I felt not to need to learn it. In addition, some friends who took a reducing accent class told me “taking English pronunciation class is to waste your money.” They didn’t like it. Most reasons they disliked it were that the class was boring and not useful to improve their pronunciation as much as they expected. Also, there were many students in the classroom, so the teacher who taught the class was difficult to correct every student’s accent.

However, I realized that my pronunciation was too bad one day. One of my friends from Spain didn’t understand my words when I said something. She several times asked me what I said. She suggested that I should take a reducing accent class. Therefore, I figured out that I should take it. However, there were a lot of classmates in the class, so it seemed to be not easy to reduce my accent. Therefore, I considered tutoring about English pronunciation.

Along the way, I found a very famous book of English pronunciation – “American Accent Training by Ann Cook.” The book is very good and will be helpful to improve your pronunciation, so I recommend that you study it. Actually, after I studied the book, my pronunciation improved a lot and I figured out why the book was popular.

Sometimes, we don’t realize how bad our accent is. When I took ESL classes, every student was from other countries; I mean there were no native students in the class. As a result, when we talked together, we understood very well even though we didn’t finish our sentences at all; it was very interesting. There was only one native person, our teacher, in the class. Therefore, when I talked with native speakers outside, they didn’t understand my words because of my accent. Maybe if you studied or are studying English abroad, such as the U.S., United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, you will understand what I say. Because of this, studying precise English pronunciation is very important. For example, if your English pronunciation is very bad, no one understands your words even though you say perfect sentences. However, most international students who learn English are likely to disregard importance of English pronunciation. It is a bad idea.

If you reduce your accent, you should learn English pronunciation with this book. I hope it will help you to have good English pronunciation.