LeTutor Language School

Fine Tuning Your Pronunciation in a Foreign Language

One of the most difficult things for any foreign language student to master is the accent and pronunciation of the foreign language they are learning. I learned French and speak it fluently. Although I speak fluently and have good pronunciation and accent I am still far off from sounding native. So while thinking about what has contributed to my success I made a list of things you can do to improve or reduce your accent.

Level: Intermediate to Advanced

1. Be a Copy Cat: So everyone knows that game you played to annoy your siblings where you repeated everything they said, well now before it was really annoying but now it’s a really effective learning tool. Purchase, beg, borrow, or steal some foreign language tapes, cd’s, or movies and start copying the native speakers accents, pronunciation, and rythm. * Two words of advice. If you are a guy don’t mimic the female voices and vice versa, this will only develop bad speaking habits. Secondly, choose a voice that you think is pleasing, if possible and if not choose anyone, then mimic that one voice. I isolate a short segment, about 10 seconds, and play that snippet over and over until I’m burnt out or feel very comfortable with it.

2. Sound Groups: Identify the sounds that different letter combinations make. This will allow you to immediately know how to pronounce any new word you learn.

For Example: The word COU CH ER in french has three main sound groupings, OU, CH, and ER. If I know that OU always makes the sound like in Boo, CH makes Shhh, and ER makes the sound Hay the I will know that COUCHER sounds like Cooshay.

Once you learn the way different letters sound with each other then you can apply those sounds to any knew word that you learn in that language and will save you a lot of time. *You can apply this to almost all latin, germanic, and slavic languages.

3. Exagerate: Often times when reducing our accent or improving our pronunciation in a new language it is difficult because the sounds are entirely new to us. So while learning these new sounds exagerate them. So if you are learning Spanish really roll your Rs or for french speak heavily in the back of your throat and threw your nose. Although in the beginning you will sound like a larger than life spaniard or frenchmen you will lay a foundation for a solid accent. After you are able to easily make those sounds you can then rope in your accent and give it a softer touch.

If you consistently apply these accent reduction and pronunciation improving exercises you will see measurable improvement in your speaking ability. Work hard and best of luck.