Pronunciation Excercises

[luvlyn86@yahoo.com]

Do you have any tips or suggestions/ excercises for pronunciation? I have tried browsing the net and usually the materials are more fit for native speakers rather than for those who are not from an English speaking country...

[sushuma]

(I am not a teacher) The problem with the pronunciation of English is that there are many accents. If you are looking to study pronunciation, there are many examples out there to emulate (movies, TV, Youtube videos, etc.) My suggestion is to watch American newscasters and emulate their accents and pronunciation. The reason I say this is that, generally, newscasters are educated, they are required to have good pronunciation, and US newscasters for the most part do not have strong regional accents.

[RachelsEnglish]

I made a website that I hope will help speakers of another language learn an American accent. There are videos (samples and how-to's) that explain each sound in American English, and there is a blog that addresses a variety of issues, from specific words to the practice of sounds, with some blogs containing clips of pronunciation lessons I have given to non-native speakers. Feedback and questions on the site are welcomed!

Rachel

[rtyuirty]

there is an effective way, use speech synthesis softwares also called text-to-speech softwares. Most of the text-to-speech softwares can read text files in format of .txt and other file formats with natural voices using various voice engines. The text-to-speech voice engine on Vista is Microsoft Anna, and Microsoft Sam on the Windows XP. Vista users can hear a very clear voice of Anna in US English, XP users would think the voice of Microsoft Sam is poor, but they can get other company's US or UK English vocie engines which are more clear.

If your computer OS is English OS, you can install a speech synthesis freeware such as Panopreter, It is an easy-to-use tool which reads files and converts files into wave and mp3 audio files, so you can listen to them with a MP3 player. Somehow, the speech synthesis softwares are educational tools, following the standard reading in US or UK English vocie, Your pronunciation will be improved.