Speaking Feedback

[MarianoM]

Hi, I would like to receive feedback from a native english speakers about my speaking.

I would like to know your opinion on:

1) Pronunciation mistakes
2) Grammar mistakes
3) Word choice
4) Accent
5) Anything to help me improve!

https://soundcloud.com/user-848291766/t ... ille-ghost

Thanks!

[lingua]

You speak quite well in my view. You have a typical accent that I hear from both Spanish and Italian speakers (outside of those Italians that choose to pick up the British accent). In spite of a few mispronunciations you are understandable.

A couple of times I heard you use a d sound instead of th (for this/that). But other times you did have the proper th sound so it may be something you have tried to work on but aren't always successful.

I believe I heard you say "he have" when it should have been "he had" but that is minor.

At one point you said "they were very noisy, they were very r____" and I couldn't make out that word.

Words you might want to listen to and repeat:
afraid (sometimes it sounded like afred)
angry (I heard something closer to hungry one time)
recommendation (should be wreck-amendation not ree-comenadation)
humiliated (emphasis on wrong syllable)
blushes (emphasis on wrong syllable)

I have no experience with the various pronunciation guides so in my view it's better to listen to them from a dictionary with sound then try to figure it out from anything I'd note here.

All and all great job.

[zjones]

I would like to know your opinion on:

1) Pronunciation mistakes
2) Grammar mistakes
3) Word choice
4) Accent
5) Anything to help me improve!

Firstly, your English is very good. You do have a moderate Spanish accent, which I think is quite lovely, and your enunciation is clear so I can understand everything perfectly! I enjoyed the story a lot, thank you for sharing it.

I don't have time to give a long review of your speaking, the only thing that really stood out to me is that you ended a few of your beginning sentences with the word yes: "It's about a ghost who lives in an old castle in the city of Canterville, yes?" Native English speakers don't usually end sentences with "yes?" as it sounds very formal. We might be more likely to say "okay" at the end of sentences. However, I would recommend cutting out "yes" entirely, it will make you sound more confident.

There aren't many errors in your English, but here are a few things I noticed, with time tags:

0:20 "Let me give you a summary." (You changed it to "make you a summary" but you were correct the first time.)
3:00 "They were very noisy, they were very r____." (As with lingua, I'm having a hard time figuring out what this word is.)
4:23 "Virginia accepts agrees to help him."

[Dragon27]

My quick two cents (although, I'm not a big expert on British accent):
- short ɪ is too open to my taste (sound more like long "i")
- l is too light (soft), where it should be darker (harder), "wonderful story" for instance.
- "story" repeated too many times (:
- haunted - look up the proper pronunciation
- "there is a ghost", "s" in "is" should be voiced (like "z")
- "inside it", you shouldn't have stressed "it"
- "They were very noisy, they were very r____.", I heard the word "rebel" but pronounced in a Spanish way (revel, with non-explosive "b")
- "h" is often too strong (resembles the Spanish velar /x/)

[smallwhite]

I listened to the first 2 minutes. I could hear you very clearly although I'm not a native speaker and my listening isn't that great. I'll point out 2 things people haven't mentioned just to make myself useful:

1.
/ʌ/ sounds like /a:/ to me:
funny
summary
comes
stubborn /ˈstʌbən/
but

2.
These T's and C's right after S should be unaspirated:
story
states
strongly
stubborn /ˈstʌbən/
scare

[reineke]

Prosody.

[leosmith]

I would like to receive feedback from a native english speakers about my speaking.

I recommend posting a much shorter (30-60 sec) recording with a text if you want more/better feedback.

[MarianoM]

Thanks for your feedback!

Here I have another shorter audio:

https://soundcloud.com/user-848291766/t ... r-a-living

[Neurotip]

Well done - if this is representative of your conversational speech, I would have to make hardly any extra effort to have a conversation with you compared with a native speaker. By the way, I'm a native speaker of fairly standard British English.

As others have pointed out, you sometimes use the vowel of 'get' instead of 'gate', 'bat' instead of 'but', 'beat' instead of 'bit'; you sometimes use unvoiced 's' where you should have voiced 'z' (e.g. in plurals), and your 'h' as in 'hat' is too much like Spanish 'j' (in English, as I understand it, your tongue should be in exactly the same position during /h/ as for the vowel that follows).

I would add a few further comments. Your 'b' and 'v' sounds tend to alternate in the Spanish way - English 'b' never weakens to 'v' except in very rapid speech, and 'v' is certainly never pronounced as 'b'. Some of your schwas (unstressed neutral vowels as in 'bAnanA') are pronounced as they are written instead of with the schwa vowel. Your 'boot' vowel sometimes sounds like 'bought'. You sometimes use voiced 'th' (as in 'the') for 'd', and 'f' for unvoiced 'th' (as in 'thing'). Your voiced stops ('b,d,g') are sometimes devoiced and/or aspirated, as if 'p,t,k'.

I agree that your rhythm could be improved; some of your short vowels in stressed positions are too long, and you sometimes stress 'it', 'there' etc. at the end of a sentence instead of the verb preceding it.

There are a couple more things, but these depend what accent you're aiming for. You often pronounce syllable-final 'r' with a tap or flap as in Spanish; in my British accent this is simply silent, in many American varieties it is pronounced, but not like that. You don't distinguish 'cot' from 'caught', but most AmE speakers don't either; and your 'coat' vowel starts with a 'cot' sound, but again this is perhaps fine in AmE.

In terms of grammar, there is very little to criticise. I agree with the points others have made, and would add:

I can assure you that. >> I can assure you of that.
I highly recommend you to read this story. >> I highly recommend (that) you read this story.
they are very noisy, they are very rebel >> rebellious
finally they reach to the conclusion >> reach the conclusion
inside this room where they spent all the day >> where they spent all day / spent the whole day
when she spent all the afternoon with the ghost >> all afternoon / the whole afternoon

Don't be disheartened! You speak English very well and your accent is pleasant to listen to.

[MarianoM]

Thank you all for the great help! It is very useful for me and now I have a lot of new insight to continue improving and honing my speaking.

Here I leave you another audio, maybe someone else can add something!

https://soundcloud.com/user-848291766/e ... and-german

Thanks again!

Mariano