#01 Pronunciation: Tips to Improve Your Diction!

Pronunciation is very important in language. Most of the time, it hides a poor Grammar as well! English is a very complex language and has various accents. Which one do you prefer? But I think the easiest to achieve or practice is the Standard American Pronunciation.

The key to a perfect pronunciation is to practice the long and short vowel sounds first. Make sure to master them! Yes! The short and long vowel sounds! We gotta admit, that Asians have strong native accents and we don't really have long and short vowel sounds in our diction.

Many students mistakenly believe that pronunciation is not as important as grammar. Keep this in mind, if you have a perfect grammar, but can't pronounce the long- e correctly, you might convey a different message. In English language, there are a lot of words that have different pronunciation, but Asians read them all the same. 

E.g.: 

mitt - meet

bitch - beach

shit - sheet

bag - beg

Luke - look 

Try reading them using your native accent and see what I'm trying to say. I will give you some tips on how to improve your diction. 

1.) Sing English Songs - if you don't like American singers, then try to like their songs. American singers pronounces every word in their song properly to convey the message. Best examples for singers who have really nice diction when singing are, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, One Direction, Jason Mraz, Michael Buble, etc... 

2.) Watch American Films or TV Series - be careful on picking a show, make sure it's an American TV Series that characters speak American English too like, Gossip Girls, Friends, Orange is the New Black, Teen Wolf, 90210, etc... 

3.) Audio Book - I think this is pretty effective! Audio books' narrators are using Standard American Accent and they don't speak fast like on the TV Drama. Get a a very interesting novel and buy the audio book as well. Listen while following the words in the book. 

Surround yourself with American Shows, Novels and other medium that you find very interesting. It's more effective to practice and improve when you're having fun.