![]() ![]() So when I'm watching TV and I hear word that I don't know, I'm not quite sure how to pronounce, I check my dictionary again, and sometimes I even bring the word to work, and I asked my co-workers to help me pronounced it. It doesn't matter if you don't understand everything, is just to listen and to be able to tell when the words starts and when the words end. I recommend my students to watch TV every night for half an hour just to listen. Now what? Here are a few ideas that have worked for our UCI teachers and for their students. So it's good to be aware that you may be listening through the filter of your own language, and try to avoid that, try to hear sounds as they really are instead of interpreting them as sounds in your own language. So if I hear the composer's name bax, I might try to say it, but maybe I would say /bak/ instead of bax, because /k/ is the closest sound that English has to that. So for example, if I were learning German, German has a sound that English doesn't have. It's like the hear unfamiliar sounds, and their minds tell them, "I can't hear that sound, it's unfamiliar I don't know it." So they interpret it as some more familiar sound, they translate it into sound of their own language. One problem that many learners have is that when they learn the sounds of a new language, they hear those sounds through a filter of their own language. How can you listen in a way that will help your pronunciation? Well, the first step is to remove your first language filter. Noticing these differences is an important first step for improving your accent. Paying attention to how people pronounce the sounds of American English will help you to notice the ways that our sounds are different from the sounds of your own language. So one first step to improving your pronunciation doesn't even have to involve speaking, it's really more about listening. The answer to today's question is, pay attention while you're listening. ![]() We non-native speakers, we focus so much on vocabulary, grammar, and all these other parts of language that helps us understand and comprehend what people are saying, while we sometimes forget to pay attention to the pronunciation. Today's question is, what's the first step I can take to improve my American English pronunciation? What has worked for me is when I'm listening to native speakers speak, whether it's in person, or on TV, or the radio, which by the way I listened to all the time when I'm driving, is to pay attention to not only what people are saying, but also how they are saying it. Hi, I'm Gail Schwartz from the University of California Irvine, the Division of Continuing Education. I teach English as a second language at UC Irvine Division of Continuing Education. Hello, my name is Marla, and I'm an ESL teacher at UC Irvine, and I'm from California. My name is Safineh Tahmassebi, and I'm an ESL instructor at UC Irvine Continuing Education. We've asked some English teachers to give you advice on learning American English pronunciation. ![]() This is why we say "cheese" rather than "chiz" (or "whizz") when we take photos.Let's learn some helpful tips for learning American English pronunciation. The sound /i:/ is said with the mouth much more spread, something like a broad smile. You will also notice, however, that /ɪ/ does not have a dot over it, making it a different mouth position from /i:/. ![]() As indicated by the /:/ part of its symbol, /i:/ is a longer sound than /ɪ/ and pronouncing it this way can help distinguish between the two in the pairs of words below. ![]()
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