English as an Additional Language: Pronunciation

At the end of this section, you will understand the basics of English pronunciation.

Clear pronunciation is essential in communicating your thoughts and ideas. You must get accustomed to the common sounds of the language.

Here are some general tips to help you in achieving clearer pronunciation:

Verbal accents refer to the distinct sounds we make when we speak, often influenced by one’s home or region, culture, education, social class, and personal background.

Watch the video below to hear how some common words are pronounced differently by Canadian, American and British English speakers. Can you spot the difference?!

Word stress refers to the part of the word that is emphasized when speaking.

Stress is important to what the listener hears and the meaning conveyed.​ Watch the video below for an illustration of how wrong stress can impact listening and understanding. 

In English we accentuate only one syllable in a word.​

The stress  can be found in any syllable  but it depends on the  characteristics of the word, some people rely on experience but not all of us can rely on it and that’s why we learn the word stress rules or we succeed with a combination of experience and rules.

• Words are made from syllables.​
• Each word has one, two, three or more syllables.​
• The words are divided according  to its pronunciation​

Examples:​

One syllable : Dog​
Two syllables : or-anger​
Three syllables : Ex-pen-sive​
Four syllables: In-te-res-ting

Rules​

• Each word has only ONE stressed syllable​

• We stress vowels not consonants

Sentence stress refers to the emphasized portion of the sentence. ​

When a speaker says a sentence, there is usually one focused unit of meaning which the speaker stresses. ​

When the sentence is simple, there is only one sentence stress. ​

But if the sentence is a compound or complex sentence, which may carry more than one clause, there will be more than one sentence stress. ​

 Watch and listen to the speaker in the video following to learn more about sentence stress. 

Now, try reading different texts with word, sentence stress and intonation. 

1. Open a page, any page!
2. Choose a paragraph. 
3. Decide which words are important and which words you want to stress.
4. Highlight the sections you want to stress. 
5. Try reading the sentences aloud giving extra stress to the words you marked.

There’s no really right or wrong way to stress words in a sentence although different patterns will imply different meanings.  

As long as you are stressing something in the sentence you will sound closer to a native English speaker. Not stressing anything at all will make you robotic and others may have trouble understanding you. 

The truth is that pronunciation and speaking really will only improve with persistent practice. So, practice often!

Visit EnglishClub Pronunciation Practice for more focused practice on the different sounds in English.