Identifying and Eliminating bad English pronunciation habits after years of English learning

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redcrab
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Identifying and Eliminating bad English pronunciation habits after years of English learning

Postby redcrab » Thu Feb 16, 2017 6:17 am

Here's the thing, like probably many foreign students out there I learned English during high school. Even though the lessons are mainly taught in English students rarely speak to one another in English. And even if we do speak English we used what what most likely is non-standard pronunciation due to the fact that almost everyone is non-native. Combine that with Indonesian very regular spellings, my pronunciation is largely skewed to sounds available in Indonesian. The learning environment made it such that I remember words largely based on their spellings instead of their real pronunciation.

Back to 2017 I have probably spent years talking in such non-standard way and when I came to English speaking country to study the problem became really apparent. I remember needing to repeat myself constantly to native speakers because they either find my pronunciation weird or that I somehow speak too fast. Now I regret myself not paying closer attention to English pronunciation. (My justification was I almost have no problem in speaking, reading or writing, and that I can somehow reproduce the correct sound automatically just by knowing the spelling. Terrible mistake. A stern warning to other language learners out there)

So now I have been learning phonetics and paying close attention to IPA. But I wonder though if it's really possible to completely eliminate my old speaking habits and gain more natural way of speaking English? I was thinking that I should probably relearn all English words one by one from one of those pronunciation videos in YouTube. The task looks really overwhelming. I don't require a perfect BBC accent, but at least I hope I can speak in a manner that doesn't annoy people or make people make that twitching expression on their face trying to understand you)

I add sound cloud clips so that hopefully you can recognize what my most critical mistake is:
https://soundcloud.com/user-297265303/firefall
https://soundcloud.com/user-297265303/order

Thank You
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Adrianslont
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Re: Identifying and Eliminating bad English pronunciation habits after years of English learning

Postby Adrianslont » Thu Feb 16, 2017 10:59 am

Hi redcrab. Are you asking for feedback on your recordings and advice? If not, please forgive me for offering you advice!

I think your English sounds pretty good. I think Indonesians generally sound pretty good when they speak English. I would have preferred to hear you speak freely rather than reading. I think that you would sound better if you weren't reading! Reading aloud well is a separate and demanding skill.

You talk about learning words one by one but, as you say, that really is overwhelming, and inefficient.
Basically you are getting most words right anyway. One thing that stands out as a problem though is your pronunciation of words with "th". And another thing I notice is your rhythm - I actually think you would be better off working on your rhythm and intonation rather than individual words. And when you are reading making it a habit to look up the IPA of words you know that you have never heard before and can't be sure of the pronunciation.

I was a big reader as a kid and learned much sophisticated vocabulary from books before I ever heard the words spoken - it was only when I grew up and heard these words spoken at university or on television that I realised I had been pronouncing the word wrongly (sometimes only in my head, sometimes in public to my later embarrassment). So this happens in English to native speakers to some extent, too, because of the craziness of English spelling compared to languages such as Indonesian that are highly regular in their pronunciation.

I know you struggled a bit with the word "phenomenon" in your recording but I, and many other native speakers struggle with that word too!

I think you are in a good position to improve: you realise there are some issues, you are motivated to improve, you are getting skills such as using IPA and monitoring your speech. I think it will just take time and ongoing monitoring. And are you still living overseas? If so, that should help. If not, English language movies and TV would provide useful models of spoken English.
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Re: Identifying and Eliminating bad English pronunciation habits after years of English learning

Postby redcrab » Thu Feb 16, 2017 12:10 pm

Adrianslont wrote:Hi redcrab. Are you asking for feedback on your recordings and advice? If not, please forgive me for offering you advice!

I think your English sounds pretty good. I think Indonesians generally sound pretty good when they speak English. I would have preferred to hear you speak freely rather than reading. I think that you would sound better if you weren't reading! Reading aloud well is a separate and demanding skill.

Oh no worries, I do want to hear advices on how to improve my pronunciation. It's always nice to see Australian learning English. The good thing I notice about English L1 speakers with a lot of L2 languages exposure is they have easier times understanding my haphazard pronunciation and sometimes strange way of speaking. (I've been studying in Melbourne) :D
You talk about learning words one by one but, as you say, that really is overwhelming, and inefficient.
Basically you are getting most words right anyway. One thing that stands out as a problem though is your pronunciation of words with "th". And another thing I notice is your rhythm - I actually think you would be better off working on your rhythm and intonation rather than individual words. And when you are reading making it a habit to look up the IPA of words you know that you have never heard before and can't be sure of the pronunciation.

Ah ok yes, I'll take note of that and try to improve my "th" sound. It's interesting that you mention rhythm and intonation because I find that they do tend to vary a bit across the English speaking regions. Australian English notably has that unique raise in intonation at the end of sentence that I tend to hear quite a lot. From now on I think I'll pay more attention to them and if possible mimic them repeatedly so that I can say produce it naturally myself. (The thing is I don't watch local TV shows a lot other than the regular ABC news)
I was a big reader as a kid and learned much sophisticated vocabulary from books before I ever heard the words spoken - it was only when I grew up and heard these words spoken at university or on television that I realised I had been pronouncing the word wrongly (sometimes only in my head, sometimes in public to my later embarrassment). So this happens in English to native speakers to some extent, too, because of the craziness of English spelling compared to languages such as Indonesian that are highly regular in their pronunciation.

I know you struggled a bit with the word "phenomenon" in your recording but I, and many other native speakers struggle with that word too!

I think you are in a good position to improve: you realise there are some issues, you are motivated to improve, you are getting skills such as using IPA and monitoring your speech. I think it will just take time and ongoing monitoring. And are you still living overseas? If so, that should help. If not, English language movies and TV would provide useful models of spoken English.

Thanks for your encouragement and reassurance. I think in my case I still don't have a good inventory of regularly pronounced words that I can just spit out, so to say, during conversation. In some cases I tend to insert sometimes inappropriate or stilted sounding English because that's what I encounter the most during reading.
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Re: Identifying and Eliminating bad English pronunciation habits after years of English learning

Postby Ani » Fri Feb 17, 2017 7:21 pm

Your accent is very familiar to me and I don't see it as something that needs a complete overhaul. I think about 25-50% of the TA's at my university spoke like you. What makes it harder to understand is definitely the prosody and a softening of hard consonants at the end of syllables so that each word blends into the next.

I have never had to learn English pronunciation so no advice on how to fix it :)
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Re: Identifying and Eliminating bad English pronunciation habits after years of English learning

Postby DangerDave2010 » Fri Feb 17, 2017 7:35 pm

I was able to completely change the way I pronounce English by learning IPA, and doing lots of reading out loud, looking up words in a dictionary as necessary. At first I'd have to look every word, but after a while, I could guess 99.9% right, drawing form my listening experience.

Listening is of extreme importance, but it will only be truly helpful after you have consciously assimilated the phonetic system. It is probably a good idea to pick the words from the top of the frequency list, and make sure you can nail them all.

Today you should probably be able to find IPA transcribed texts online, or you could use an automatic converter, but you should be aware of the homographs it may miss.
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Re: Identifying and Eliminating bad English pronunciation habits after years of English learning

Postby tomgosse » Fri Feb 17, 2017 7:49 pm

Adrianslont wrote:I was a big reader as a kid and learned much sophisticated vocabulary from books before I ever heard the words spoken - it was only when I grew up and heard these words spoken at university or on television that I realised I had been pronouncing the word wrongly (sometimes only in my head, sometimes in public to my later embarrassment). So this happens in English to native speakers to some extent, too, because of the craziness of English spelling compared to languages such as Indonesian that are highly regular in their pronunciation.

I had the exact same problem. Added to this was my native Boston accent combined with my father's Newfoundland accent. What I could write and read was far superior to what I could say. In school a number of my teachers thought that my written assignments were copied from other people until they saw me sit down and write them. :(
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Re: Identifying and Eliminating bad English pronunciation habits after years of English learning

Postby redcrab » Sun Feb 19, 2017 1:53 pm

DangerDave2010 wrote:I was able to completely change the way I pronounce English by learning IPA, and doing lots of reading out loud, looking up words in a dictionary as necessary. At first I'd have to look every word, but after a while, I could guess 99.9% right, drawing form my listening experience.

Listening is of extreme importance, but it will only be truly helpful after you have consciously assimilated the phonetic system. It is probably a good idea to pick the words from the top of the frequency list, and make sure you can nail them all.

Today you should probably be able to find IPA transcribed texts online, or you could use an automatic converter, but you should be aware of the homographs it may miss.


Other than the ipa pronunciation, I wonder how do you learn the prosody and intonation of the language? Do you think learning correct pronunciation will lead to better prosody automatically?

Ani wrote:Your accent is very familiar to me and I don't see it as something that needs a complete overhaul. I think about 25-50% of the TA's at my university spoke like you. What makes it harder to understand is definitely the prosody and a softening of hard consonants at the end of syllables so that each word blends into the next.

I have never had to learn English pronunciation so no advice on how to fix it :)


It's good to hear that Ani! Though I still want to improve my accent though. Can you give me example of what do you mean by softening hard consonants? Is it like when you say 'I like that cake' the t in that got changed to k sound giving the sound of 'I like thak kake".
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Re: Identifying and Eliminating bad English pronunciation habits after years of English learning

Postby Voytek » Sun Feb 19, 2017 2:07 pm

I`m not an English native speaker but I`ve found your pronunciation totally comprehensible to me.

Henkkles has posted a link to a very useful method of mastering an accent and pronunciation which you may find here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/51074116/Kjellin-Practise-Pronunciation-w-Audacity.pdf

Also here you may find good advice about improving those things:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Hd-Cvle1Fg
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Re: Identifying and Eliminating bad English pronunciation habits after years of English learning

Postby DangerDave2010 » Sun Feb 19, 2017 2:38 pm

redcrab wrote:Other than the ipa pronunciation, I wonder how do you learn the prosody and intonation of the language? Do you think learning correct pronunciation will lead to better prosody automatically?


It's like acting, puting on an accent, I haven't ever given any attention to the details, but my imitation is fairly decent nonetheless.

Even if I use some nonnative patterns, that is not a hindrance to understanding.
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Re: Identifying and Eliminating bad English pronunciation habits after years of English learning

Postby Ani » Mon Feb 20, 2017 4:02 am

redcrab wrote:It's good to hear that Ani! Though I still want to improve my accent though. Can you give me example of what do you mean by softening hard consonants? Is it like when you say 'I like that cake' the t in that got changed to k sound giving the sound of 'I like thak kake".


Well, it should never sound like thak kake. The t in that does sort of fade it out, but the glottal stop remains and even though it is slight, it is needed for comprehension.

I tried to listen to the recording again for examples. You lack the /d/ /t/ contrast sometimes. These letters should have identical mouth position but the /d/ is voiced and the /t/ is unvoiced. This seems to extend into /th/ sounds which you seem to replace with a /d/. /th/ comes in voiced and unvoiced but has a very different, tongue forward position.
Words that end in -ing seem to rise and are too soft.
A example of of the above and syllables blending from your first recording are your words: water, blending and perfectly.

But do listen to others over me :) I have the disadvantage of thinking you accent sounds perfectly normal and I have never worked on correcting an accent.
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