5 step guide to improving your accent

Everyone wants to sound like a native when they speak English, but is it possible to lose your accent and develop an English one?

As an adult, it is unlikely you will fully lose your native accent, but there are things you can do to make it sound more like a native English accent.

Here’s how you can improve your accent:

1) Pick the accent you want to speak with.

Whether it’s British, American, Australian, or any other accent, it is useful to have a particular accent in mind.

2) Listen

Listen to as much audio with the accent you want as possible.

This can be TV shows, YouTube videos, podcasts, audiobooks, etc.

3) Shadowing

Shadowing means listening to a short sentence or phrase, and then repeating it afterwards, trying to imitate the sounds, intonation and word stress and noticing how your mouth and tongue move when you speak.

4) Record yourself speaking

After you practised shadowing, you can then record yourself speaking, then listen back to the recording and make a note of any sounds you have a problem with.

4) Do some exercises

Depending on your native language, some sounds in English can be hard to make if you don’t have them in your native language.

For example, lots of Spanish speakers have problems with the difference between the /b/ and /v/ sound.  We make the /b/ sound by joining our lips together and then letting go. The /v/ sound is similar but your top teeth should touch your bottom lip before you let go.

The Sounds of English section on the BBC's Learning English site has a good selection of video tutorials which explain how to make different sounds and activities to practice them.

5) Research minimal pairs

Minimal pairs are words that have almost the exact same pronunciation, but with one sound that is different.

For example, ship and sheep. The difference between the /I/ in 'ship' and the /i:/ in 'sheep' is the length of the vowel.

Have a listen to some minimal pairs here.

Knowing some of the different minimal pairs can make it easier for you to make the various sounds

Follow the advice here, and with time your accent should start to improve.

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See you on Tuesday!