Pronouncing ending consonants

[Squirrel_3110]

Hello, teacher!
I am a new member in the forum. I have a bit of problems about English pronunciation. When I pronounce many words together, it seems that I can't change smoothly from one word to another. One of the reason is the ending consonants of each word. My teacher said that to pronounce English properly, IT IS IMPORTANT AND NECESSARY TO PRONOUNCE ALL THE ENDING CONSONANTS OF EACH WORD. This makes me confused because if so, I can hardly make my speech flow smoothly. Can you give me advice for this? Thank you very much.

[naomimalan]

Originally Posted by Squirrel_3110

Hello, teacher!
I am a new member in the forum. I have a bit of problems about English pronunciation. When I pronounce many words together, it seems that I can't change smoothly from one word to another. One of the reason is the ending consonants of each word. My teacher said that to pronounce English properly, IT IS IMPORTANT AND NECESSARY TO PRONOUNCE ALL THE ENDING CONSONANTS OF EACH WORD. This makes me confused because if so, I can hardly make my speech flow smoothly. Can you give me advice for this? Thank you very much.

I know this is a problem for Asian students but your teacher is absolutely right of course. If you don't pronounce your final consonants, I'm afraid people won't understand what you're saying.

Don't you usually pronounce the final consonants in your language? If you don't, then your first language is interfering with your second language.

Actually I don't think your interpretation is correct when you say you can't make your speech flow smoothly if you pronounce the final consonants. On the contrary, you can only make your speech flow smoothly if you do pronounce the final consonants, at least if the next word begins with a vowel sound..

What can be done to remedy your problem? Other teachers may offer different solutions and it would be interesting to have their advice because I usually seem to have at least one Asian student in each of my classes who has the same problem.

My own advice would be for you to take a short text and highlight or underline all the final consonants. Then carefully and slowly record the text on a tape recorder, making sure you pronounce clearly all the highlighted or underlined consonants.

Later, listen to your recording, pausing regularly, comparing it carefully with the text. If you have forgotten to pronounce a consonant, do the recording again until you get it 100% right.

Your highlighted text should look like this (taken from the notice printed above):

You are welcome to answer questions posted in the Ask a Teacher forum as long as your suggestions, help, and advice reflect a good understanding of the English language. If you are not a teacher, you will need to state that clearly at the top of your post. Please note, all posts are moderated by our in-house language experts, so make sure your suggestions, help, and advice house the kind of information an international language teacher would offer. If not, and your posts do not contribute to the topic in a positive way, they will be subject to deletion.

Practice makes perfect. Once you have done this sort of activity a few times, you should be able to overcome your problem.

Good luck.

[Squirrel_3110]

Thank you very much!I feel released now. However, I think that pronouncing all the ending consonants make my speech a bit slower because Asias people's breath control is not as good as the Western people. You can speak in a long breath without many stops in the middle while Asian students find that difficult. Is it a nature? Can you give me some more pieces of advice?

[naomimalan]

Originally Posted by Squirrel_3110

Thank you very much!I feel released now. However, I think that pronouncing all the ending consonants make my speech a bit slower because Asias people's breath control is not as good as the Western people. You can speak in a long breath without many stops in the middle while Asian students find that difficult. Is it a nature? Can you give me some more pieces of advice?

I think it's better to speak a bit more slowly and make yourself understood than to speak faster and not to be understood.

However, yes, I do think it's possible that in some languages people don't take in as much breath as native speakers of English (who need to take in more breath to pronounce the "h" than, say the French, who don't need to pronounce this letter.)

If you want to improve your breathing, you could take a look at these two sites:

http://cas.umkc.edu/casww/brethexr.htm
Diaphragmatic breathing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Good luck.