Pronunciation diary 2.0

This is the second part of my pronunciation diary. Luckily the oral exam is over and I survived itJ. I would like to explain you my strategies for improving and practising my pronunciation skills.

Firstly, I took a closer look at Hendrik’s feedback from the pronunciation exercises we recorded in class and listened to the audio file again. I noticed that I often swallowed the last letter of a word – especially the “d” and “t” and that I mispronounced the words “that”, “this”, “there” – I said something like “det”, “dis”, “der”...
I found this BBC video (http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/sounds/con_voiced_6.shtml) which really helped me to improve the sound ð – the sound you need for words like “that”, “there”...
The “BBC woman”, I do not know her name J, explains how to produce this specific sound and gives some examples. Surprisingly, I could hear a difference to my recording after I practised the sound a few times.

Another video I found on the website was about the differences between the voiced consonant “v” and the voiceless “f”. I was not aware that theses sounds are also tricky for me. Before I watched the BBC video I pronounced “v” and “f” the same in the middle of a word. For example the two words “believe” and “belief” sounded completely the same when I pronounced them because I did not think about it. “V” and “f” are still tricky for me and I need to work on them.

I also tried to look up the pronunciation of words I read in books. Normally, if I read a word and do not know how to pronounce it I just think “yeah, whatever” and continue reading. The last few weeks I typed most of the words into an online dictionary and listened to the pronunciation.

The moral of the story is that the exam is over, but the pronunciation practise is not J.

Pronunciation Diary 1

Hey guys!

Our task this week was to look at various websites in order to improve our pronunciation skills. I really liked this task because I am very interested in how people from different countries pronounce words differently. I know that it is really important for me to work on my pronunciation skills because my English accent is not as good as it should be because often it sounds too German to me. For this reason I started to listen more carefully to my tandem partner (who is from Australia) and to pay attention how she pronounces certain words. I always try to repeat the words I would have pronounced differently (=wrong  in 95% of all cases).

The pronunciation websites were really helpful. I started with Rachel’s English page for American English. She divided her videos into the categories “sounds” and “pronunciation”. I watched some videos of the “sound” category and was pretty amazed. Did you know that there are three different “uh” sounds in English? I never thought of this before but Rachel explains the sounds very well and gives examples as well as “instructions” on how to pronounce them correctly. She took pictures of every word she pronounced so that it is easier for language learners to copy them. I also looked at some of her “words of the week” videos where she takes a close look on one single word. The best videos on her website are those where she does not only focus on pronunciation but also on culture. One of her videos is about Rachel’s Halloween party where you can see some of her guests talking to each other and can listen to native conversation.

Than I watched some videos by “VideoJug” on YouTube where Gareth Jameson explains how to do different accents such as Irish, Cockney, Australian, American or British. The best video was the one called “How to lose your native accent”. As I wrote above  I am very interested in losing my German accent while speaking English. Gareth recommends listening to native speakers and trying to emulate them. He states that losing your native accent is hard work because you have to work on every single sound. He also explains that rhythm is very important.  In American English there is no difference in pronunciation between the “t” and “d” sound. Although Gareth’s Australian accent is really cute my tandem partner’s one is “better” (sounds more natural).

To sum up, my aim this semester is to work on my pronunciation skills and to try to get rid of my accent.