It's all about pronunciation #1!

This new blog post is about pronunciation. Well, I guess everyone who speaks foreign languages always aims on speaking them fluently and with an accent that sounds like the one of a native speaker. But we all know too, this isn’t very easy. Every “nation” has their own accents when speaking in a foreign language, i.e. when Italians or French speak English. Also Germans have a very, let’s say “unique”accent when speaking English. This always is very funny if you listen to them, but no one actually wants to sound like this too. So to lose this accent, I am currently working on my pronunciation. 

Since I started learning foreign languages, I love to read a text out loud whenever I can. This means, if I am studying I usually speak aloud. I not only enjoy this, it also helps me to improve my pronunciation. But this is not enough anymore. We definitely have to get  to another level when it comes to practicing pronunciation. Even though I hate listening to my own voice (even in German! – I just think I sound terrible - do I really have such a deep voice?!?!  – but I guess most of us do not like listening to their own voice) I started recording myself. There is a pretty good website on the internet (vocaroo.com) where you can record yourself and save it as a MP3 file. Also the quality of the sound is good!

I started with one of the exercises provided by our English teacher. On this website, they suggest reading a story (without looking at it before) and retelling the story afterwards. Well, it has come to my attention that my pronunciation is better when I am reading something than when I am talking freely. But this is actually not something that surprises me. It’s just easier to pronounce a word when you actually see it.
I also started to read aloud when reading a book (but I have to admit it is harder for me to follow the content of the book when reading aloud, as I then focus on pronouncing the word rather than really understanding what I am reading). Still, I think reading aloud any English texts that come across you will help to improve your pronunciation. 

When I am watching an English movie or simply an interview in English, I use to listen to the pronunciation of the actors. As I love how the English language sounds, I often find myself to go into raptures about a certain person speaking English if they have a special accent or dialect or something. I also like to figure out which accent they are speaking as I am interested in that too. 

There is still a lot of work to do regarding my pronunciation – but I will stay tuned!