These Pronunciation Mistakes REDUCE your English Level
Well hey there I’m Emma from mmmEnglish!
In today’s video, I want to talk about some really
common pronunciation mistakes
but these particular mistakes actually reduce
the level of your English or how people perceive your
your English.
Now you may have really great grammar but if you’re
mispronouncing words, it can make it seem like
your grammar is not very good.
And we want to avoid that right? Because you’ve worked
really hard to get your grammar to where it is today.
So don’t let your pronunciation let you down. Come on!
The interesting thing about the pronunciation errors
in this video is that you’re unlikely to have a problem
with all of them.
These errors are really strongly influenced by someone’s
native language, our strongest
and our most dominant language.
And your native language is a problem for you
when you speak English in two main ways.
Firstly, it acts as a filter when you’re listening to English.
Your brain doesn’t necessarily identify or pick up on
all of the sounds that you hear in English because
they’re foreign sounds or they’re different combinations
of sounds that are not common in your own
native language so your brain might skip over them
or assume that they’re something else instead.
Secondly, your tongue and your mouth
are very comfortable making sounds from your own
native language, right? You’ve been doing it
all your life.
But if there are new sounds, the muscles
feel uncomfortable and it takes a lot of training for them
to relax and to get into the right position
so that they can make the correct English sound,
really easily.
To fix these particular problems is going to take
a bit of effort on your part or quite a lot, right?
Deliberately practising.
Now this is not very sexy English practice, this is like
standing in front of a mirror with a list of words
that you know you can’t pronounce very well.
So you need to spend the time working on these
specific problems, working on those muscles.
It won’t magically fix itself.
You’ve got to put in the work.
Anyway, I’m starting to sound a bit like your mum
or someone nagging at you so let’s just move on
and get started with the lesson.
The first pronunciation error is a really common one
for all of my Asian students because
many Asian languages don’t often have words ending
in consonant sounds.
In fact there are quite a few other languages
where actually there’s only a couple of final consonant
sounds that are used but in English, we have
heaps of words that end in consonant sounds.
And grammatically these final sounds
are really important.
Think about the final S for example, which we use
for all plural nouns and for verbs when we’re using
we’re talking about the third-person singular.
So that’s he, she and it.
So every time we use one of these English pronouns,
it changes the verb and we add that S.
You take…
He takes…
I cry…
She cries…
They bite…
He bites…
So the pronunciation of that final S is so important
if you want to sound like you’re using English
accurately when you speak.
She laugh every time the dog take a biscuit.
It’s wrong! Without pronouncing the final S on those
verbs, it sounds like you’re making a grammar mistake.
She laughs every time the dog takes a biscuit.
Practise it with me.
She laughs every time the dog takes a biscuit.
I need four apple and seven potato.
If you’re not pronouncing the final S on these nouns,
then it’s grammatically incorrect.
It doesn’t matter if in your head it’s grammatically
correct or the way that you would write it
would be different,
the way that you’re pronouncing it, seems like
you’re not using the correct grammar.
I need four apples and seven potatoes.
There are twenty-four months in two years.
Can you hear that final S on both of those nouns?
There are twenty-four months in two years.
Nice!
Now ‘months’ is a particularly difficult word
to pronounce here.
There are three consonant sounds together.
That’s really hard and one of them is the -th sound.
But when you’re trying to pronounce this word
in a sentence with other words around it
you’re much better off skipping the -th sound
and just saying ‘months’
because people will still understand what you’re saying
and it’s grammatically correct.
In fact, that’s a really good little tip because
native speakers do this quite a bit
when they’re speaking quickly.
We’re going travelling for six months!
Months.
Regular past tense verbs in English cause
different pronunciation challenges
for different English learners
but the one that I’m talking about today is quite similar
to the last one. It’s related to the pronunciation of
final consonants.
So I want you to
listen to the difference between these words.
Walk.
Walked.
Watch.
Watched.
Close.
Closed.
Now the final consonant sound here is the only thing
that tells someone that you’re using the past tense.
If you don’t pronounce it, then you’re using the verb
in the present tense.
I talk with him yesterday.
I talked with him yesterday.
I talked.
I talked with him yesterday.
You have to practise this
so that you’re speaking accurately.
After we finished eating, we walked through the park
and gazed at the stars.
So listen.
Finished.
Walked.
Gazed.
If you want some more pronunciation practice with
past tense regular verbs and how to pronounce them
correctly, then check out this lesson up here.
I’ve made a whole lesson about past tense verbs
and the correct pronunciation.
Hey guys! A super quick reminder to subscribe
to my channel if you haven’t done that already.
If you have subscribed make sure you let me know
in the comments and which of these pronunciation
errors you feel like you’ve been making.
There are a few numbers that you need to be really
careful of when you’re speaking in English
because it can make you sound like you’re making
mistakes when you’re not.
Or even worse with numbers, it creates
a lot of confusion.
Can you think of the numbers
that I’m actually talking about?
Listen up!
Thirteen.
Thirty.
Fourteen.
Forty.
Again that’s the consonant sound at the end.
It’s so important.
Fifteen.
Fifty.
Sixteen.
Sixty.
Seventeen.
Seventy.
So you can see how this can get really tricky
if you’re mispronouncing these sounds.
It’s really just that one consonant sound on the end
that tells us which number we’re actually using.
In fact, you’ll even sometimes hear native speakers
asking for clarification on this because if that word isn’t
pronounced clearly, it’s really difficult to be sure.
Now I’ve got a whole nother video where you can
practise pronouncing numbers correctly with me
up there
but right now I want to focus on the difference between
fifteen and fifty.
So again, it’s that consonant sound. It’s so important.
Fifteen.
Fifty.
Can you feel the difference in your mouth
when you’re practising?
With fifteen, the tip of your tongue should be
touching the ridge behind your top teeth.
Fifteen.
With fifty, the tip of your tongue is down. It’s down low.
Now if you need to practise this pronunciation
then really pay attention to the tip of your tongue.
Where is it when you finish saying each of those words?
Fifteen.
Fifty.
Fifteen.
Fifty.
Okay here’s something a little different,
adding an extra sound after a final consonant.
Now my Italian students,
you know where you’re at. This one is definitely for you.
Pronouncing the final consonant
is not a problem for you, it’s just that you tend to
add an extra vowel sound on the end of the word.
You know when it ends in a consonant sound.
And again, this is something that occurs in your native
language but it doesn’t happen in English.
So how can this little tiny extra sound
make you sound incorrect or less accurate
when you’re using English?
So listen to what can happen when you add
a vowel sound after a final consonant.
Wait.
Waiter.
Stop.
Stopper.
Speak.
Speaker.
So you’re adding this extra syllable which can change
many verbs into a noun.
The way that you’re pronouncing these verbs
is really similar to the way that Australians
and British English speakers pronounce these nouns.
So practise it with me.
Please wait until they speak before you take photos.
Please wait until they speak before you take photos.
So if you need to practise this and you want to
reduce the influence of your native language
on your English pronunciation,
then try writing some simple sentences with lots of
words that end in a consonant sound
and then record yourself as you say them out loud.
Listen to the recording again and hear how you’re
mispronouncing these sounds, that’s one of the
best ways to practise.
Our final point here is about words that
end in /i/
Let’s look at words like community, opportunity,
responsibility,
ability, reality.
Now these are challenging to say because of the
number of syllables in them.
But also in English, we have different stress patterns
and different syllables are stressed in different ways.
What you need to remember is that
we definitely want to hear that vowel sound on the end.
It’s not a stress syllable
so it’s a really soft sound but it must be there.
Not
Now these errors don’t really make you grammatically
incorrect but it does disrupt the flow of your sentence.
When you aspirate instead of
just making the correct vowel sound at the end,
it changes the rhythm and the pattern in your sentence.
Like I said, the last syllable in all of these words is
unstressed but it is clearly there.
It’s just pronounced as a soft T.
So if this is a problem for you then let’s practise.
This is your opportunity to take responsibility.
In reality,
the community doesn’t have the ability to leave.
In reality,
the community doesn’t have the ability to leave.
So there you have it, five pronunciation errors
that English students make that not only sound wrong
but they actually make your English level sound
lower than it really is.
Now there are lots of ways to practise and improve
your pronunciation.
You can make recordings of yourself.
You can use a mirror to make sure that your mouth
and your tongue are in the right places
as you’re practising your pronunciation.
If you can, get some feedback from a native speaker.
You could get a tutor, you could join classes with
Lingoda where there’s native English teachers in
all of those classes.
If you have a speaking partner to practise your
conversation skills with,
make sure you tell them what pronunciation errors
you’re really trying to correct
and ask them to tell you if they hear them.
If you’ve got one or three or five different people
reminding you of your pronunciation errors,
you’ll be able to correct them and improve them
much more quickly.
You can also practise with mmmEnglish Imitation
Lessons like this one right here. You’ll practise
the correct pronunciation with me and again,
making a recording of yourself imitating me
and listening back to it will really help you to identify
the sounds that you’re mispronouncing.
Anyway I’ll see you in the next lesson.
Thanks for joining me!