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009 - How do I improve my English pronunciation?

Hello there, Kevin here with the first QA Saturday episode for you. Q & A, question and answer. What I am going to do in these episodes is answer questions from people just like you who send me emails and voice messages asking specific questions about English or the books that I review or the TED talks.

Hopefully, you will also find some episodes on Saturdays that are based on questions you might ask, alright? If you do have a question just go to feelgoodenglish.com, you can send me an email there or you can also record your voice, which is really cool and send me a message that way. I can even play that message on the episode if you want me to, I will ask you first

And also you can just send an email to Kevin@feelgoodenglish.com, with your questions and I will get back to you first and make sure that you want me to talk about it on QA Saturdays.

So today’s question comes from Olga; Olga it originally from the Ukraine, she now lives in the US, she has been here for two years and her email is this: She says “Even though I’m living in an English speaking country, working in the office and even at home I am not satisfied with my English at all. I have tons of books web sites and ideas on what to do in order to improve it.

“I kind of figured out for myself how to work with the grammar and expand my vocabulary. Writing is a work in progress, you can tell. But my accent is just killing me. I tried to record my voice while I was speaking the phone at work. It was really bad.

“I would really appreciate it if you could share with me your ideas on how to work with an accent.”

So thank you Olga for sending in your question. And her basic question is how to work with an accent? How to improve an accent to sound more natural to sound more like a native speaker?

And I am going to answer that question today, I have a tip of that can quickly improve your accent and make you sound more natural, be it American or British or whoever you want to sound like. It is fast.

At Feel Good English I like to things to work quickly I don’t like to study and analyze things. So here is one of those tips that you can take action on and see instant results.

But first of all, why do people want to improve an accent? Is it important?

Should they? Well I think so and I think once you reach a certain point in your language progress, you want to improve the accent because you will feel more confident, especially in business situations and in personal situations, you will feel more confident if your accent sounds better, if you send more natural.

This happened with me with my Portuguese. In the beginning I didn’t care too much about accent I just wanted to be able to communicate, so I did.

But eventually I realized if I wanted to be able to communicate better and not hear everybody always saying “What? What was that?” Saying like “What?” to me five times I had to improve my accent; communication would be clearer if I had a better accent.

So at some stage in my Portuguese learning I was like okay, now, and this is a few years to it, I was ready to focus a little bit more on accent, but if you know how I learn and teach, I don’t like to study phonetics or the mechanics of the language and get really serious about it, I just don’t have the patience for that, so I was looking for quicker, faster ways to do this.

So what did I do?

Well I started just imitating the way Brazilians would speak Portuguese, I started imitating their body language, how they moved, how they reacted.

And this would come either on purpose, I would do it by trying to improve it, or maybe just being funny at a party or something. You had a few beers and wanted to imitate to people and that is just a fun thing to do. And then when you do that you are like, “Oh wow, I actually sounded pretty good there.” So I kind of had an insight of…this works, imitating the speakers you are trying to sound like, works. Let me give you an example.

So those of you who do speak Portuguese out there, Brazilians, will understand what I am saying and if you don’t speak Portugese, maybe you will at least understand the sounds. If I was speaking Portuguese just without trying to sound Brazilian [He speaks Portuguese at this point 04:53 – 05:04]

So that was without trying to sound Brazlian.

[He speaks some Portuguese at this point 05:07 – 05:19] . So you can see kind of exaggerated, maybe even some Brazilians would say that is too exaggerated. But you can quickly improve the sound of the language you are trying to speak by putting your whole body and face into what you are speaking. So how are you going to do this? What are the steps?

Well the first thing you are going to do is when you are speaking you have to notice how you move your face, how you move your mouth, how you move your body and this is based on the people that you are trying to imitate.

So I am sure you see Americans in movies in series and on YouTube and you can kind of see how they act, how did talk, how they move their mouth and you’re going to imitate these people, you are going to pay attention to these motions, you’re going to pay attention to your body and your mouth and your face and you’re going to literally act like them.

If you want you can imitate somebody from the south of the US and a talk with a Texas accent. I am from Texas and this will help you move your body and your mouth like somebody from Texas.

Or maybe you want to talk like somebody from London, you have a British accent and you talk like this and you keep your mouth a little bit closed, like this.

So you might be thinking “Kevin, what is the point? This is crazy, why am I going to act like somebody? I am going to look like a fool.” But what you’re going to do is you’re going to find a balance. In the beginning you might be exaggerating, you might not know what to do, but the purpose is to notice body movements and facial movements that you do when you are imitating an American or whoever you are trying to sound like.

Over time you will find the balance between exaggerating these movements and moving the body maybe a little too much and then balancing that out with what feels natural to you. So it does take some time.

What you are going to do is you’re going to record yourself doing this and you can do this at home by yourself where it is easy and see what you sound like. You will be very impressed with how you sound and how your accent improves instantly.

Also, what you can start doing is practicing with native speakers. If you are shy, if this seems a little embarrassing, go online find some teachers online, you don’t have to use video, you can just use voice and they won’t even see you.

So then you are practicing this with people online and they can see you and if you think you look stupid, they won’t even see you; you will just be talking into a microphone. So that is a great way do it.

Now it will be embarrassing at first like I said, but just try it and know that there will be a balance in the future and you will find that balance between looking too crazy and speaking like a native. It’s really cool how quickly this works.

Maybe for some people this won’t work, not everybody learns the same way. So then there is also ways to study phonetics, you study the sounds of the words and the syllables and learn how to use the language you are learning, in this case English. That’s not for me but for some people it is.

But for people trying this out, you will feel uncomfortable because it is new, you will be out of your comfort zone, plus you are moving your body and your mouth and you are speaking in a different way.

But if you do feel uncomfortable, that probably means you are doing it correctly because if you are used to speaking a certain way your whole life and then you change the way that your voice works, of course your body is going to feel uncomfortable and you’re going to think that you are speaking like a crazy person. But that is a good sign, it is a sign that you are doing something differently. So keep going that way.

Alright, quick tip today. So take action now, start recording your voice, listen to it, see what it sounds like when you aree imitating native speakers almost like an actor, like you are in a movie, like you are Brad Pitt in a movie or you are John Wayne from a Texas cowboy movie.

You can also go on my site feelgoodenglish.com, send me a voice message, I want to hear your crazy voices, I want to hear you speaking like Texas cowboy. Send me the message, I will evaluate it and tell you how you sound.

And also go online, practice with online teachers. If you are embarrassed, turn off the video, they won’t even see you, you can just put a little profile picture of a kitten and they will have no idea who you are. Alright?

So I hope this helps. Any questions send me them at feelgoodenglish.com. I am there to help you. Don’t be shy.

And I will see you in the next episode of the Feel Good English Podcast.