Pronunciation Diary #2

Even though I have neglected my blog these last few weeks, due to exams as you all can probably imagine, I have used my vacation for working on my pronunciation. What helped me a lot were Amy’s videos that Frank has uploaded on his WBW. True, it takes quite some time to watch her videos and it won’t help your pronunciation if you just watch them once, but her videos are quite fun and she repeats the words over and over again.

I also decided to look through the minimal pairs exercises, though I think that most of them were really quite simple, and checked the different pronunciations of words that I did not know on memidex. For the latter I have to say that I LOVE THAT PAGE. I mostly concentrated on words containing the letter ‘z’, as I mispronounced this letter in our last pronunciation exercise in class. And I wrote down how to pronounce thermometer and diameter correctly, so as never to forget that again. θə(r)ˈmɒmɪtə(r)

Among all things, I have to say that listening to my own recording helped me most. True, I can hear myself talking all the time in class, but listening to the mistakes I make while speaking English helps me improve a lot faster. And, of course, listening to English TV or radio shows helps. I love watching TEDx videos (and yes I know that not all of the people appearing there are native English speakers) and The Game of Thrones series (though I chose to use American and not British English).

During the upcoming holidays, I am planning on checking out Rachel’s videos as well and on using the different games provided by merriem-webster for further improving my pronunciation. Though my pronunciation is still lacking now, I know that I can improve it….and how to improve it.