Bad Pronunciation ! Effects and Ways To Overcome

Salam and Hello to all readers ! Today's posting is about pronunciation . Let's look at the way we pronounce English words. Sometimes we might come accross certain words that we are not sure on how to pronounce, we are also quite often confuse on which is the correct pronunciation on certain words, to use American English or British English !!! Or may be sometimes we are very embarrassed to have too many mother tongue interference in our English pronunciation... this very often happens to Kelantanese !!! Poor pronunciation commonly happens when the tongue not used to uttering the words. The words are very strange and new to the tongue which causes the tongue needs more practices to say out the words. That's why the key factor in sharpening and improving English pronunciation is practice,practice and practice. Through consistent practice and usage, the interference of mother tongue could be reduced and sooner we could be a good speaker of English. Another vital thing to know is, the pronunciation of American English and British English has a lot of differences. Lots of my students always address a question to me, whether to use A.E or Br.E. For me, the usage of pronunciation is rather flexible, either you are prone to AE or Br.E. Some people especially teenagers prefer AE due to widely exposure to American movies and songs. Some rather choose Br.E for its standard and formality. Well, for pronunciation you are free to choose your own choice, however for writing, it's solely compulsory to use Br.E as Br.E has been recognized as standard and formal English. So be careful in your writing... avoid these spellings : color, center, favorite, etc . The most important thing to do in improving our pronunciation is having the knowledge of phonetics . Phonetics is actually the study of symbols and sound. Each phonetic symbols carries sound which helps us to pronounce each word correctly. By right, it's not hard to learn phonetics as claims by many, but yet it's very fun and enjoyable. Now, it's very easy to learn phonetics as in most good dictionaries like Oxford , Longman- Dict. of Contemporary English and many others, the notes and brief lesson of phonetics are provided. What you need to do is try to study on your own first and then you need to get an expert to provide you with further guidance. I used to provide phonetics class before to a group of SPM leavers for 4 weeks and the outcome of the class was very magnificent as my students enjoyed and mostly benefited . They started to enjoy English dictionary, English phonetics and English pronunciation ! Now, I stiil provide the same class to those interested and also frequently getting offers from school to deliver talk on phonetics & pronunciation. I think students should get first and quick exposure about phonetics as the knowlegde will help them most in becoming a good speaker of English. Well, that's all for now till i write again. Good luck & Do improve your pronunciation.