My Pronunciation Sample

Posted by Tara Benwell on June 15, 2011

Are you wondering how to improve your pronunciation? Do you want a teacher or advanced learner to listen to your voice and offer some suggestions for weak areas? Do you want your peers to let you know which words are difficult to understand?

 

Why not record a pronunciation sample? If we all use the same piece of text for our sample, we can compare our voices.

 

Your Task

1. Read Josef Essberger's article: Word Stress and Sentence Stress-The Golden Key to Pronunciation

2. Open an online recorder like Audioboo or Vocaroo or Cinch

3. Record the text (or just the first paragraph). Embed it in a comment below. 

4. Request corrective feedback from a teacher on MyEC. (You can send a DM to Tara to say that you've submitted a sample.)

5. Leave feedback for other members who take this challenge.

 

Note: This discussion was inspired by our hardworking member Selma. She wants to improve her pronunciation. Congratulations on focusing on a very important skill, Selma!

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Replies

  • This reply was deleted.
    • Tara Benwell June 21, 2011 2:55

      Excellent! Everything sounds very clear to me, Nida. Your intonation is a bit robotic at the beginning. At other times it sounds great (voice going up and down rhythmically). You speak a little bit fast. With your accent, that can lead to this kind of linking: "when-a-speaking English" (not a big deal, but you can work on eliminating that). 

       

      Great work!

       

    • Nafis June 20, 2011 16:16
      Great dear Nida!
  • selma June 23, 2011 22:05

     

     

    Hi Dear Tara,

    Thank you for kind interest, you made me incredible happy, assestment from a teacher is remarkable to me,

    because I couldn't help myself to understand my ability, nevertheles I know how long way I need to walk :)))

     

    Thank you so much, you motivated me and I think I came over the first step of learning process. I admit that being part of this club convey me to my goal.

  • selma June 23, 2011 15:50

     

    Hi Dear Tara,

    Here is my pronunciation sample, although it seems to be late, in fact I don't want to record without reading some rules, so I try to recognize what's happening in the part of that skill of english.

    I can say that; Both consentration on speaking correctly and keep the rules in mind actively is highly difficult. I have pain with hearing every word in the dictionary etCETera,,,,,,,,

    In conclusion, the question is ; How do students really study, apart from constant listening...??

     

    If you could have some time to feedback, I would  appreciate it.

     

    Have a wonderful day,

     

     

     

    • Tara Benwell > selma June 23, 2011 18:23

      Hi Selma, 

       

      Your pronunciation is excellent. I can understand you perfectly clearly. To me, it seems like you have to work hard to distinguish between /v/ and /w/, but you have done it very well here. If these are sounds you work hard at, you could practice minimal pairs, such as

      vail, whale

      vest, west

      Vick, wick

      ville, will

      Then make some sentences that have lots of v,w words and practise reading them out loud. 

       

      Your sense of word stress is perfectly fine. The only place where I might have put a different stress on the word was in the phrase:

      This can make it difficult...(instead of make)

       

      Note: 


       Every student, depending on his or her first language, has different needs when it comes to improving pronunciation. Personally, I don't think you need to work too hard on your pronunciation, Selma. You seem to have a really good speaking voice and understanding of stress and intonation.

       

      Here are two individual words I noticed: 

      in/stant/ly 

      QUI/et (make sure it has two syllables otherwise it sounds like "quite")

  • Nafis June 22, 2011 15:20
    You are very welcome Aisha.
  • Rabab June 21, 2011 12:38


    Hello Everybody here's mine.

    Waiting for ur corrections :))

    Thanks in advance.

    By the way I am glad that vocaroo isn't blocked in my country anymore ^_^.

    • Tara Benwell > Rabab June 23, 2011 18:09

      Excellent intonation! Your pronunciation is great! I can understand you very clearly. I don't see any major concerns. Here are a few words that you can work on (I'm being picky!): 

       

      anxious (make sure the "n" sound doesn't disappear)

      IN/stant/ly 

      QUIet (2 syllables)

       

  • Nafis June 20, 2011 16:15

    Hi,

    Your feedback is highly appreciated.

     

     

    • Tara Benwell > Nafis June 21, 2011 3:38

      Hi Nafis,

      Thanks so much for recording a sample. Great job! I noticed two main things that you can work on:

      1) The first word in most of your sentences sounds a bit high pitched. If you lower your tone a bit at the beginning of each sentence your voice will sound more natural. (I imagine this is probably only something you do when you are reading out loud.)

      2) You often have an extra ə sound  linking some of your words (This is common with some accents. It's not a big deal, but it can cause confusion once in a while.)

      feelə_anxious

      kind ofə_stress

      that isə_spoken

      wordə_stress

       

      Also, check the word stress on REcognize. Many learners put the stress on the wrong syllable for this word. 

This reply was deleted.