Want to improve your pronunciation with a native speaker and effective feedback?
This is a complete guide to help you improve your English pronunciation. While we primarily focus on the American accent, we have covered other popular English accents like the British accent and Australian accent, so you can sound like a native English speaker.
More importantly, we have focused on many pronunciation patterns and exercises that are universally important, regardless of your accent.
Unlike other English learning materials, this English pronunciation course is not level-specific and can benefit learners of all level.
You may use this take this course on your own, but we strongly recommend that you use this course together with SpeakUp, so you can practice what you learned live with a native speaker and receive effective feedback.
If you want a crash course on English pronunciation and different accents, start from here from top to bottom. You will learn basic English pronunciation rules, the fundamentals of American and British accents, and perfect all 44 sounds (phonemes), which are critical building blocks for improving your English pronunciation.
Phonemes and an interactive Phonemic Chart
English pronunciation is like music composition. You have to figure out how and when to use volume, pace, pitch (intonation) and emphasis (stress) to create a pleasing sound. In this section, you will learn important word stress patterns, sentence stress rules, and definitions and examples of commonly confused words called heteronyms.
English learners often struggle with pronouncing words ending in ed, ity, ety, ous, inal, and ate. We’ll take a look at them one by one.
How to pronounce ed ending sounds?
How to pronounce words ending in -ity and -ety
How to pronounce words ending in -ous
Remember how word stress has everything to do with vowels in a word? We are diving into all 15 vowel sounds here in this section. Meanwhile, you will also learn how the schwa sound and r-controlled vowels work. These two modules will surely improve your English pronunciation and make you sound like a native speaker. To top it all off, you will practice vowel pronunciations with a minimal pairs exercise.
As a bonus, you’ll also learn how these vowel sounds are treated differently when you have an American accent vs when you have a British accent.
In this section, we’ll examine a subset of the 15 vowel sounds we’ve introduced. This subset is called diphthongs, where all sounds are made of two vowel sounds. Again, we’ll look at how a British accent and an American accent deal with diphthongs differently.
/eə/ (Bear, Square, Mare) (British English)
/ɪə/ (Ear/Here/Near) (British English)
Consonants can easily get in the way of your flow of speech and cause misunderstandings if you don’t pronounce them properly. We’ll start with an overview of all consonant sounds including consonant clusters, move on to tackle the most challenging consonants, and end with another round of minimal pairs exercise.
Voiced and voiceless consonants
Consonant Blends (2 & 3-letter blends)
The Most Challenging Sounds
Minimal Pairs: Commonly Confused Consonants
/ŋ/ sound (vs. /nk/ & /n/)
In this section, you will learn how words are connected together, a concept called connected speech, so that your speech sounds smoother, more natural and more fluent. We’ll also explain which words you should reduce and how to reduce them.
Linking (When sounds are connected)
Intrusive Sounds (When sounds are added)
Elision in Words (Removing Sounds)
Assimilation (When sounds change)
People from different regions tend to make different types of pronunciation mistakes, quite often influenced by their mother tongue. Today we’ll look at some of the most represented languages and regions in the world, and correspondingly, the type of sounds people from these backgrounds tend to struggle with.
English pronunciation for Thai/Vietnamese Speakers
English pronunciation for Spanish Speakers
English pronunciation for Russian Speakers
English pronunciation for Portuguese speakers
English Pronunciation for Italian Speakers
What are Vowel Sounds? English uses a combination of different letters to make 15 vowel sounds. Usually, these are divided into three categories: long vowels,
What is the Schwa sound? The schwa sound is THE most common sound in American English, although its pronunciation can vary based on the speaker’s
What are Vowel Sounds? English uses a combination of different letters to make 15 vowel sounds. We usually divide these into three categories: long vowels,
What are minimal pairs and how can they help me with pronunciation? Do you struggle to pronounce certain vowels sounds in English? English vowels can
How to pronounce the “ng” sound: /ŋ/ The “ng” sound, or /ŋ/ sound, is a voiced nasal consonant produced with the back of the tongue touching
The “sh” and “ch” sounds are two sounds commonly confused by some English learners, depending on their native language influence. As you’ll see on this
The s and z sounds are very similar sounds. No wonder they are commonly mixed up by English learners! The difference between these two sounds
For learners of English, the j, ch and y sounds can prove challenging to pronounce and distinguish, depending on one’s native language. Let’s take a look
The V sound and how it’s often confused For many learners of English, the v, b and w sounds prove difficult to distinguish. Let’s take
The Trouble with the TH Sounds The problem many English learners have when pronouncing the TH sounds is twofold. We cannot pronounce the TH sounds
You’re probably very familiar with the voiceless /t/ sound as you would pronounce it at the beginning of words like time. The tip of the
Why are there two pronunciations of the same spelling? You may have noticed that many English words are spelled the same but pronounced differently. Words
Many languages have a “trilled” r sound, where the tip of the tongue touches just behind the front teeth (like the /d/) in quick, repeated
Many English learners pronounce each word separately because they want to make sure their speech is clear and easily understood or because they may “think”
Intrusive sounds are a feature of connected speech. What does intrusion mean? This phenomenon happens in American English when we say two words one after
While elision means dropping a sound, assimilation means changing a sound, due to the influence of neighbouring sounds. Let’s take a look at some of
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