Improve Your Pronunciation with These Exercises and Advanced Techniques

Here are the exercises. (Remember, the key is to do these eight exercises out loud.)

1. Distinguishing short and long vowels:

SHORT VOWELS	LONG VOWELS
lip	leap
sit	seat
hit	heat
chick	cheek

2. Comparing the following vowels:

pen	pan
hat	head
look	Luke
sock	soak
tin	ten
caught	coat
peach	pitch

3. Exercising the unvoiced ‘th’ sounds by reading aloud the tongue twisters below:

• My thumb is too thick to flick this.

• Thirsty throats find things to drink.

• These things finish sooner than you think.

4. Exercising the voiced ‘th’ sounds by reading aloud the following tongue twister:  

The thirty-three thieves thought that they thrilled the throne throughout Thursday.

5. Distinguishing the voiced ‘th’ and the unvoiced ‘th’ in the tongue twister below:

They thankfully think this thing is the best thing that they can throw the three times they need to throw a thing.

 

6. Distinguishing the ‘l’ sound from the ‘r’ sound in the following tongue twisters:

• • I looked right at Larry’s rally and left in a hurry.

• • Round and round the rugged rocks the ragged rascal ran.

• • A really leery Larry rolls readily to the road.

     

7. Pronouncing the past tense endings clearly as in the following words:

a. When the last letter in the verb is an unvoiced consonant, pronounce -ed like a /t/:

• • liked

• • watched

b. When the last letter in the verb is a voiced consonant, pronounce -ed like a /d/:

• • screamed

• • considered

 

c. When the last letter in the verb is a ‘t’ or a ‘d’, the ending sound is /ɪd/:

• • voted

• • landed

 

8. Pronouncing plural sounds correctly [s], [z], [ɪz]:

• works vs. wigs 
• laughs vs. loves
• glass vs. glasses
• trousers vs. pants 
• likes vs. hates vs. loves

   

How do you find the exercises above? If you found them quite difficult or you are unsure about some of these sounds, then listen and watch the episodes above as I go through each of them.

If you found the exercises quite easy, then you’re ready to try some advanced techniques to help you sound natural. The techniques are:

1. 1. Catenation
   2. Assimilation
   3. Intrusion

 

If this is something you are ready for, watch or listen to episode 84. Pronunciation: Consonants to find out more.