How Can You Improve Your English Pronunciation? Improve your English pronunciation with our essential techniques and exercises. Whether you’re a non-native speaker or looking to fine-tune your skills, our guide will help you speak English with confidence and clarity. Learn how to master difficult sounds, use stress and intonation effectively, and practice with exercises designed to improve your pronunciation. Start speaking like a native with our expert tips and practical advice.
As an ardent pursuant of British English and Received Pronunciation or RP, I am going teach people who are struggling with appropriate pronunciation in their day-to-day life. Pronunciation is quite an affair that sometimes determines our standard of choice and cultural quality. Because of pronunciation and the deplorable quality of English, many are still lagging behind in the global market while many other sheen employment prospects are getting away from our hands. Having said that, I am not suggesting anglicised local British pronunciation is sometimes does not fulfil pronunciation criteria and incomprehensible to many speakers.
Moreover, proper use of any language sets qualitative standards for the language we speak and skilful use of language helps us influence people. As a strong lover of British pronunciation, I have studied plenty of books and watched videos and spent numerous days watching BBC, Podcasts and Films. After spending almost, a decade I have come to distinguish the American and British pronunciations.
With a view to telling about my linguistic knowledge, I am going to talk about the 47 sounds of the English language which include ‘Short Vowels’, ‘Long Vowels’, ‘Diphthongs’, ‘Voiceless Consonants’ and ‘Voiced Consonants’ with help of Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary and Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English and occasionally Bangla Academy English to Bengali dictionary.
What is Language and how does it work
Language is ‘audile, articulate speech as produced by the action of the tongue and adjacent vocal organs…..The body of words and method of combining words used and understood by a considerable community, especially when fixed and elaborated by long use; a tongue’- Webster International Dictionary.
As you have taken heart to go through this pronunciation learning process you will also have to bear in mind this is a scientific method of learning to be familiar with signs and symbols of the English language and their sounds.
Having said that, language is based on two objectives: competence and performance. ‘competence, says Noam Chomsky, is the native speaker’s knowledge of his language, the system of rules he has mustered, his ability to produce and understand rules, and performance is the study of the actual sentences themselves, of the actual use of a language, is a real-life situation’.
Again, whereas competence is a set of Principles which a speaker musters performance is what a speaker does in real life. Therefore, competence is a kind of code and performance is an act of encoding or decoding. Competence concerns the kind of structure the person has succeeded in mustering and internalizing, whether or not he utilizes them, in practice, without interference from many factors that play a role in actual behaviour’, says Noam Chomsky.
Phonetics is the scientific study production, transmission and reception of speech sounds. It studies the defining characteristics of all human vocal noise and concentrates its attention on those sounds which occur in the language of the world. In learning phonetics, the speaker or learner uses his lungs, larynx, soft palate, tongue and lips in the production of speech.
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