Whenever you put efforts to gain mastery in any new language, you have to face a big challenge i.e. suppress your English or new language accent to produce sound as similar to any native speaker. Most of the times, you fail to realize about accent until and unless any other people indicate it or you observe that your listeners are finding difficulties in understanding your opinion. Even though eliminating one’s accent is not piece of cake, but following the mentioned accent reduction exercises recommended by LocalMasters accent trainers will help you to neutralize the native accent so that it cannot create further problem.
(1) Read Loud and Record Your Statements
You should read in a loud voice and listen to the respective recording properly. This means, you should pay attention to words and phrases, in which you often face difficulty in pronunciation. You may find easy to identify errors in case you write the phrases in the same way, as you pronounce and later on, look on sentences containing difference from your write-up and the actual text.
(2) Pay Attention to Stressed Syllables to Develop Expertise
Next, Local Masters trainers always suggest you paying attention to the stressed syllables in the spoken words of a native speaker. This is especially important when you have to speak English, as it is a type of stress-based language
(3) Notice Lips/Mouth Movement while Pronouncing Specific Words
Whenever you watch any English movie or communicate with any native speaker, you should observe the lips or mouth movement of the speaker while he or she pronounces any particular world. Later on, you should practice with pronouncing such words by watching you in front of the mirror.
(4) Listen to the Audio Books in English
Individuals want to overcome the accent problem should definitely dedicate their valuable time to listen to Audio Books available in English language. As native speakers record these audio books in English language and they have clear pronunciations, listening such recordings help you to recognize how each word or sentence in English sounds actually.
(5) Essential Training to Pronounce Words with ‘th’ at Forth or Back
Whether ‘th’ comes at front or back of any word, its sound is a challenging sound often dealt by a large number of new English language learners. Another reason behind the difficulty is that it seldom occurs in most of the other languages. You have to stick the tongue just beside the front teeth to produce such sounds and you have to practice regularly by saying a few common words beginning or ending with ‘th’ to gain mastery in your pronunciation.
(6) Gain Expertise on Vowel Sounds in English
We all know that English language has five vowels i.e. a, e, i, o, u. However, only a few of us, especially native English speakers know that the combination of five vowels produces 12 different types of vowel sounds. Hence, to develop your accent as similar to any native English speaker, our LocalMasters team often recommends you reviewing each of the vowel sounds and focus on vowel sounds often used in common sentences with common words.
To conclude, we should say that learning English language and speaking in the English language with proper accent similar to a native speaker is not a difficult task. Only, students have to work hard with Local Masters pay attention to their valuable recommendations related to overcoming the accent problem.