Thank you guys for the support on the last post how to use passive voice. I received a lot of positive e-mails for this post.
Many members told that they have problem on english while speaking. So I thought of posting today related to pronunciation.
First of all, don't worry about not having a native-English accent. It's important to be able to speak clearly, so that people can understand you. However, it's almost impossible to sound exactly like a native English speaker if you are learning English as an adult in a non-English speaking country.
However, there are many things that you can do to improve your pronunciation and your speaking skills.
1. Listen to spoken English as often as possible.
Listen to how speakers pronounce various words and phrases and "model" your pronunciation on what you hear.
2. Learn the phonetic alphabet.
Use the phonetic alphabet page (at the beginning of most good dictionaries) as a guide to pronouncing new words.
3. Don't forget to learn the word stress of a new word.
Every English word has its own stress, or intonation. For example, the word "believe" has two syllables (be and lieve), but only the second syllable is stressed. We say be'lieve and not 'be lieve. Your dictionary will show the syllable stress by an apostrophe (') before the syllable to be stressed.
Word stress is important. In fact, it is more likely that someone misunderstands you because of wrong word stress than because of the wrong pronunciation of a sound.
4. Work out which sounds cause you most problems in English.
Depending on what your first language is, you may have problems with certain sounds. For example, French speakers have difficulties with "th"; speakers of Mandarin have difficulties with "r" or "l", and Arabic speakers have difficulties with "p" and "b".
5. Practise the sounds you find difficult.
A useful exercise is a "minimal pair" exercise. For example, if you have difficulty distinguishing between "p" and "b", try practising pairs of words which are the same except for the sound "p" and "b":
For example, "pair" and "bear"; "pond" and "bond"; "pie" and "buy" etc.
6. Be aware of intonation and sentence stress.
Not all words in a sentence have equal stress, and generally only the "information" words (nouns and verbs) are stressed.
'Where's the 'pen I 'gave you?
'Where's the 'red 'pen I 'gave you?
Where's the 'red and 'blue 'pen I 'gave you 'yesterday?
The unstressed words (such as "the", "I", "you" and "and") don't carry as much "weight" as the stressed words. They become much smaller in length, and are almost abbreviated. For example, "and" becomes "un".
Changing stress
Sentence stress isn't "fixed" like word stress. In fact, you can stress words that are normally unstressed in order to highlight different meanings.
For example:
I 'love you. (Love, rather than just like.)
'I love you. (With the stress on I to highlight that it's me rather than another person who loves you.)
I love 'you. (And nobody else.)
Intonation
There are a couple of easy to remember rules about intonation. Usually our voices go up at the end of the sentence to show a question, and down at the end to show a statement.
Intonation is also important in "tag questions":
You know him, don't you? (With rising intonation on "don't you?" to show it's a question)
You know him, don't you. (With falling intonation on "don't you" to show it's a statement you expect the other person to agree with.)
7. Learn to recognise spelling patterns.
For example, "tion" on the end of a word is pronounced "shun", while "sion" can be pronounced "zhun". There are often many ways to pronounce a particular spelling pattern, but it certainly helps to know what the variations are. For example, the pattern "ough" can be pronounced "uff" as in "enough" and "tough", or "or" as in "ought" and "bought" or "oh" as in "although" and "dough".
8. Don't rush.
If you speak too fast, the danger is that you could skip over some words, fail to pronounce them completely, or mix them up. If you speak too slowly, you might end up sounding unnatural. But it's better to speak slowly and clearly than too quickly.
Comments are welcome.
By chandra on Jun 11, 2008
it very excellent
By chandra on Jun 11, 2008
it is very excellent
By sunil kumar on Jun 11, 2008
nice to learn
By kumarswamy on Jun 11, 2008
i fell it was tremendous and realy good
By Lal Sahab on Jun 11, 2008
I learned today new thing in pronunciation. It’s realy very helpful . thanks a lot
By Rajshri Singh on Jun 11, 2008
The text were nice to read, but along with it video of it would have more helpful.
Thanks,
By Neha on Jun 11, 2008
it will provide right direction…….
thxns
By alex on Jun 11, 2008
itz nice n useful
By VANI on Jun 11, 2008
thanxs a lot! its really good!
By prakash on Jun 12, 2008
carry n the good work
By gowrish on Jun 12, 2008
Thanks for sharing
By Pravin on Jun 12, 2008
Really, great article.Please maintain the continuity with this excellent type of article.
By * Chand on Jun 12, 2008
its really nice DOC.
By Devendra on Jun 12, 2008
How to improve written and oral communaction.
By Atul Dwivedi on Jun 12, 2008
Thank for this chapter. This is good as like previous chapter. my request is plz give some idia for making spelling of any word……..
By Sujata Rajanalli on Jun 12, 2008
Thanks a lot, I have learnt so many things. Still i want to improve.
By Simran on Jun 12, 2008
very useful and important article. Thanx
By Neha on Jun 12, 2008
its really gud nd helpful
even if u kno these things stills u get to lern smthing new
By Srinivasa Reddy on Jun 12, 2008
its very useful to learn how to speak & develope our communication skills
thank u very much sir keep sending see u
By manasa t m on Jun 12, 2008
its very useful thank u very much…
By kasthuri on Jun 12, 2008
thank you
By Sumalatha on Jun 12, 2008
Good way of sharing the Knowledge Go Ahead Thank u
By Sumalatha on Jun 12, 2008
Good IDEA
By Sumalatha on Jun 12, 2008
Good IDEA & best way of sharing the Knowledge go Ahead
TNQ
By SANTOSH GUPTA on Jun 12, 2008
Hi plz. gives ,how i speak english?
By sandhya on Jun 12, 2008
it’s very useful for me thank u very much
By Ashish on Jun 12, 2008
According to me, techpreparation is the right way to learn english….
By Khan on Jun 12, 2008
Its Terrific! this is the best way to improve your communications skills…thanx,gr8…!
By shivakumar on Jun 12, 2008
Thanks lot…
By manasa on Jun 12, 2008
it is very nice and a good oppurtunity for the freshers who r going to attend the interviews .thanks a lot
By john njoroge on Jun 12, 2008
Thanks for your assistance please.Keep improving on my English.
By chitra on Jun 12, 2008
thank you verymuch for ur valuable suggestions.could u give some ideas abt technical and HR interviews.
By vinod on Jun 12, 2008
its superb
By pranesh on Jun 12, 2008
thank you u r really very super……..
but i am having shy to speak english on stage
how can i speak english without shy on stage?
thanks
By ramesh on Jun 12, 2008
thank u for ur supporting us.
By eziuche on Jun 12, 2008
i m happy , i ve learnt something today.
keep up the good job
By sagar on Jun 12, 2008
thanks a lot but i want more tips about to speak fluent
By henna on Jun 13, 2008
these are very useful and i need more on this issue
thanks………
By Pramod Sharma on Jun 13, 2008
Today i got decent knowledge on how to speak english
by the article you had written . That will really help me to further improve my english speaking skills and i will follow your instuctions
By GOPAL SINDHE on Jun 13, 2008
thank you very much
By Fredrick Nishel on Jun 13, 2008
Good Job! this would help many who are struggling to get the hang of this wonderful language.
God Bless
By kaushal kumar jha on Jun 13, 2008
thanking u for such help………..
can u send some information about how to speak by some talking stories………..
By Anuj Duggal on Jun 13, 2008
good talk of the claer english done.
main stress on the selective words can really change the meaning of what we want to say clearly.
By arun kumar on Jun 13, 2008
i have problem to spoken english, how to improve it………
By shiva on Jun 13, 2008
really am very much satisfied
By ravi on Jun 13, 2008
please sent me more messeges
By ravi on Jun 13, 2008
how to speck English poperly
By ravi on Jun 13, 2008
how to write without mistecks
By Sbo on Jun 13, 2008
It very useful and helpfull
By Devashish on Jun 13, 2008
This will help in improving everyone. These are the basics which everyone forget
By banupriya on Jun 13, 2008
it was informative
By vamshi on Jun 13, 2008
techpreparation helping lot to students
By vamshi on Jun 13, 2008
how to know words that r used in enlish.daily thhousands of enlish words r used how to remeber them
By shahad on Jun 13, 2008
i want to improve speaking
By v.indravathi on Jun 14, 2008
This is useful to all i want to improve speaking Pls maintain this
By Malar .AT. on Jun 14, 2008
Thank you very much for your ideas.. They are really fantastic.
By Mukund Joshi on Jun 14, 2008
It really works…….
Please guide me about US way of speaking english
By vishal on Jun 14, 2008
excellent
By saroj verma on Jun 14, 2008
your work is very excellent……
but plz you add some practice excercise …..
information………
because i want to prepare the some compitative exam..
By dilsath on Jun 14, 2008
it’s useful msg!!!
By dilsath on Jun 14, 2008
please send more tips!!1
By Mona on Jun 15, 2008
it makes our eng. speaking clear & effective.
it’s very useful…
By bulbul on Jun 15, 2008
thanks alots…..expecting more.
By vis on Jun 16, 2008
It is very informative.
By Clara on Jun 16, 2008
I think it’s good, but an audio in addition to it would make it even better.
By mary-an on Jun 17, 2008
i want to practice listening using an audio
By mary-an on Jun 17, 2008
thanks
By aruna on Jun 19, 2008
its very useful to all,especially for the people who want to speak english fluently.thanks alot
By HASAN RAZA on Jun 20, 2008
Today’s topic was very good.
By sandeep on Jun 20, 2008
I m very glad to learn it
thank u very much.
By shweta gupta on Jun 22, 2008
thanks i don’t have enough confidence
By M.KARTHIK on Jun 24, 2008
“a good example is twice better than a good advice”, you are not only explaining it instead providing with an appropriate example.This gives us an fruitful knoledge,thanks a lot.
By phani on Jun 25, 2008
it’s Good….
providing some more examples(or related sites) would have been more helpful for us….
By Sathish M.R on Jun 26, 2008
hai thanks very much it is good article to learn…
pls continue it…..
By Miles Arce on Jul 1, 2008
I think it will more effective if i heard your voice while pronouncing those word.but well i’ve learn much thanks…
By arul on Jul 8, 2008
iam very happy to hear from you. your suggestions are very useful for me and sure it will improve my spoken english. thanks a lot to TechPrepration
By pravin on Jul 9, 2008
useful to me, i will learn more
By sunil varma on Jul 23, 2008
it is very easy process to learn english it is useful to me
By reshma on Jul 25, 2008
thank you.It is very useful to me.
By sridhar on Jul 29, 2008
it is very useful to me…………..thank youuuuuuuuu
By D.Govind on Aug 5, 2008
it’s very nice to go through ur words sir, keep on encouraging………..
By kiran dabral on Aug 12, 2008
It’s a magnificient matter which u provide us.Really it will provide a great help.Please provide us benefecial articles about the language & send us regular messages on our id’s.
The initiative you are taking is very much praising.It’s superb and i am thankful for that.
By nagaraj on Aug 22, 2008
thanxs for the tips n good continue n better to remember the best
By nagaraj on Aug 22, 2008
thanxs for the tips n good to continue n better to remember the best
By ajay mehta on Aug 26, 2008
u made speaking a fun ,really game like , waooooo!
By Mahavir prasad on Aug 28, 2008
i really found this article helpful ever since.
By swati on Aug 30, 2008
i need mor tips on pronouncition
By devi on Aug 31, 2008
First try to read the words in dictionary which have pronouncation .