How to improve your pronunciation?

[Torsten]

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Just some thoughts on English pronunciation, intonation, voice and accents....

TOEIC short conversations: A caller wants to be connected to a hotel guest's room

[Washfi]

hi my name is washfi .My problem is that whenever i speak with any person i started fumbling specially speking with someone over the phone .i get conscious. But, i don;t know why this short of things happen to me .Furthermore ,whenever i started talking to myself specially in front of the mirror i realised that though i may not be an excellent communicator but still i am a good communicator.Moreover i wanted to increase my length of speech .i couldn;t speak more than a minute.Even when i have to read newspaper i read it loudly.Pliz help me .All in all i just wanted to know from you what is the ideal time for self studing in terms of hours. I wanted to improve my communication skill excellent.This is one of big problem.i don;t know how can i overcome this problem.

[Jamie (K)]

Torsten, your pronunciation is more like 85%. If you fixed your problem with word-final consonant devoicing, you would be above 95%.

But anyway, what was your question? Just write it, don't record it, please.

[SkiIucK]

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For Torsten.

P.S. '... far better than authentic speech.' AHAHAHA :lol: Risks of being live... xD

[Torsten]

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For Dimitar.

TOEFL listening lectures: A university lecture in the Social Sciences Department

[Torsten]

[Jamie (K)]

Torsten, I think the word-final devoicing is just about all you need to fix.

SkiIuck pronounces like an adult who moved to the United States when he was 10 or 12 years old and got his schooling here. So there's nothing he needs to fix in his accent, because his accent is clear and easy to understand, and he would fit right in.

I completely believe him when he says he can't understand native English speakers very well. I used to be able to speak French with a very good accent but could understand almost nothing French people said. I did fine with Africans and Romanians, but the speech of the French was just too hard to hard to make out. I fixed the problem just by listening a lot.

[SkiIucK]

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A voice response.

[Torsten]

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Some more questions for Dimitar....

TOEFL listening discussions: A conversation between a professor and his student

[Jamie (K)]

Guys, I know it's great to be able to record spoken posts here, but they're suffering from the same problem people have with voicemail. You need to keep the message focused and not ramble on longer than you have to.

[Torsten]

Jamie, once we get the project off the ground we might look into putting restrictions on the length of a recording. For the time being you can ramble on for as long as you like. There are so many people here on the forum who want to improve their listening skills so why not give them the opportunity to just listen? Voicemail is a different story because it usually is not intended for people who want to improve their listening skills.

By the way, how to define 'ramble on longer than you have to'?

TOEFL listening discussions: Why did the young woman sit in the rear seat of the car?

[Jamie (K)]

By rambling on longer than you have to, I mean padding the message with so much talk that people lose track of what you wanted to say.

[Torsten]

To understand what a person wants to say you need requires good listening comprehension skills as the listener. I also agree with you that developing good speaking skills requires constant training. That's why I'm so glad you are supporting our new project.

TOEFL listening discussions: A conversation between a university professor and a student in the professor's office

[SkiIucK]

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A delayed response... sorry for which.

[Torsten]

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Summary of Dimitar's recording:

- Started speaking to yourself about three years ago.
- Describing your surroundings.
- Asking and answering questions in English rather than in your native language.
- Started to think in English.
- Contents of the questions didn't matter that much.
- Read only a few books in English.
- Didn't read aloud.
- Has recorded his own voice many times.
- Some advice: Practice (practise) as much as you can even or especially if you don't like the results.

Summary of my recording:
Thanks for answering all my questions.
Why? So many people want to know how to improve their pronunciation.
Hope it's OK that we are featuring you in our email English course.
New question: Do you play any musical instrument?

TOEFL listening discussions: A conversation between two students in their first class of the term