It’s a common situation among English learners: You’re excited to practice your pronunciation, but there’s nobody you can talk to.
But did you know you can actually do a lot of English pronunciation practice on your own?
These are my favorite activities to do when I don’t have anyone to practice my English with—I hope you’ll find them useful.
1. Reverse Dictation
Goal: To check how easily understandable your pronunciation is
Phones are the ultimate gadget for studying. You can use your phone to review flashcards, check the dictionary and—yes—even to test your English pronunciation.
One way to do this is through reverse dictation. Dictation means to listen to someone speaking and then write down what they say.
Reverse dictation turns that around. This time, it’s you who has to speak—and your phone will be the one writing down what you say.
This is doable through the speech recognition feature, which is present in pretty much all modern phones. Here are the instructions for Android and iPhone.
You can then say simple sentences or even dictate a whole grocery list out loud! If your phone ends up misspelling a word, then most likely your pronunciation of that word is less clear. The beauty of this method is that you can repeat the sentence until your phone recognizes every word perfectly
2. Act It Out
Goal: To pick up natural intonation and body language
English movies and TV series are some of the most fun learning materials you can use!
However, for this activity, you’ll be going beyond passive listening. Instead, you’ll have to pick a specific movie scene and give each line your full attention. To make it easier, turn on the subtitles.
Listen closely to each line, then hit pause and repeat exactly how the actor said the line. There’s a little bit of acting involved! You won’t only be imitating the pronunciation but also the intonation and emotion behind the line.
To take your pronunciation practice even further, you can even try dubbing on the second pass. Put the clip on mute, then say each character’s line in real-time. Do your best to match your speech with their mouth movements.
To learn with more media such as film clips, inspiring talks, music videos and more, FluentU could be helpful.
FluentU is a language learning platform with a range of authentic videos that include interactive dual-language subtitles. You can take personalized quizzes that include speaking questions, which will help boost your English speaking skills.
3. Minimal Pairs
Goal: To clear up the confusion with similar sounds
Minimal pairs are two words in English that are almost the same except for one sound. It’s very common for English learners get these words mixed up.
For example, most English learners (myself included!) have struggled at some point with minimal pairs such as reach vs. rich and feet vs. fit.
Here are some other examples:
- lot vs. rot
- sink vs. think
- pun vs. pan
To conquer minimal pairs, turn them into a sort of tongue twister or warm-up exercise.
Pick one to five minimal pairs. Say each pair repeatedly and as fast as you can while still maintaining proper pronunciation. You can do this every morning or whenever you start practicing your English.
This forces you to distinguish between the two words. The next time either word comes up in a conversation, you’ll be able to pronounce it much more accurately.
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