My pronunciaion - Part 2

A few lessons ago we had to record ourselves in class in order to have our pronunciation analysed. We had to read out a text we had written ourselves, a text we haven’t seen before and we also needed to describe a picture. A couple of weeks later we received our feedback and had to start working on improving said flaws.

The most common mistakes that I seem to make is the wrong pronunciation of the consonants “d” or “t”. I seem to have difficulty in distinguishing the two different ways of pronouncing the d and t in the words e.g. “tin” and “dame”. A video on a subpage of the BBC website  helped me solve this problem by showing me how those two sounds are actually produced. Even though both sounds are created by touching the tip of your tongue to the back of your top front teeth, they still sound different. The trick is, in fact that when pronouncing a t, a puff of air is supposed to leave your mouth. You’ll see that I am right if you try out the following: hold a thin piece of paper in front of your mouth and say the words “dame” and “tin”. If you do it correctly, the paper will sway a bit when you pronounce the "t".

Another sound I seem to struggle with is the pronunciation of the “v” and the “f”. The same website I mentioned above also had an interesting video on this topic. The “f” sound like in the words “fat” or “coffee” is produced by touching your lower lip to your top teeth and blowing air out of your mouth. When you pronounce the “v” sound like in e.g. “move” or “very” your lips and teeth are supposed to touch in the same way but they are supposed to create a vibrating sound. 

The last sound that I would like to improve on is the "ae" sound as in “lap”, “back” or “trap”. Only after getting my pronunciation feedback I realised that I never ACTUALLY pronounced one of these words correctly. After listening to the correct pronunciation and the explanation of how the vowel is produced, I had a hard time pronouncing words like “stamp” or “trap” because the new way of pronouncing the words felt so foreign to me.

Altogether, I realised that there are still a number of flaws in my pronunciation but I am glad that I now am aware of them. My pronunciation is nowwhere near perfect but I love a good challenge and that is why I am definitely going to try and improve in order to get as close to perfection as possible. :-)