Finding opportunities to practice and improve your English pronunciation can be difficult for many nonnative English speakers. Traditionally, nonnative English students go to accent reduction centers—which are held in physical brick and mortar buildings. This has been a great resource for many nonnative English speakers trying to reduce their foreign accent when speaking English, but there are a few big problems with this option.
First, these accent reduction centers are open only during office hours, which is difficult for many to attend because most people work during those hours and only have time to study early in the morning or later in the evening. Second, these accent reduction centers are very expensive and usually cost hundreds of U.S. dollars per training session—which many nonnative English speakers are unable to afford even though their general English skills are advanced enough to study English pronunciation. And lastly, most of these accent reduction centers are located in the United States, which makes it harder for English language students who don’t live in the United States to have access to qualified and certified accent reduction centers. There are many ESL centers around the world, but accent reduction centers are far and few between. Students living outside of the United States must travel long distances and waste time while traveling to attend physical accent reduction centers in their country (if there is any in their country). In addition, trainers in these countries might simply be a native English speaker from the U.S. or U.K. with a bachelors’ degree and no accent reduction training or certification.
THE SOLUTION
Recently there has been an increase in online resources that help nonnative English speakers improve their English pronunciation! This is great news for all intermediate and advanced ESL students living around the world. Below are just a few online options available to anyone wanting to practice and improve their English pronunciation and reduce their accent.
1. FREE Videos On YouTube
If you haven’t done so already, go to YouTube.com and search for “English pronunciation webinar”, “accent reduction”, “how to speak American English”, etc. You’ll be surprised how many videos and lessons there are on YouTube that teach you how to improve your English pronunciation!
2. Online English Pronunciation Course
Recently there has been an increase in online programs that focus on English pronunciation. While many of these programs are relatively new, very few programs offer quality instruction from qualified and certified accent reduction trainers.
The Pronunciation Pro program, for example, is an online science-based American English pronunciation course that offers different membership options at a fraction of the cost of a physical accent reduction center. The Basic package—which offers the entire 12-module online video course, LIVE online webinars with Annie Ruden (M.S. CCC-SLP, CEO, and lead accent reduction trainer), bonus online pronunciation lessons, and downloadable lesson materials—is only $19.97 a month. This is by far the most affordable quality accent reduction course offered by anyone online. Because of how affordable and how effective this course is, over the years it has helped hundreds of students worldwide from more than 65 different countries improve their American English pronunciation.
Other Pronunciation Pro membership options, like the PLUS and Premier packages, are also available to nonnative English speakers who want a personal highly qualified trainer. (All our trainers have a Master’s degree in Speech Language Pathology and are nationally certified by ASHA. In addition they are COMPTON PESL certified in accent reduction techniques).
Sound too good to be true? You can try out their 7-day free trial to find out for yourself and read their Frequently Asked Questions page to learn more.
3. FREE Online Resources
Other than free English pronunciation YouTube videos there are also other free online resources available to you. Here are a few free online English pronunciation resources:
- Spoken Skills: helps you learn the North American English pronunciation with IPA (vowel sounds, consonant sounds, intonation, etc.) and covers other English communication skills. Their listening practice also provides you with a record and playback option so that you can compare what you hear and what you’re saying.
- Sounds of Speech: this is an amazing resource from Iowa University. You can go through each phonetic sound (in IPA) and play both the audio of the sound and also play the video of the mouth, tongue and throat.
- Ship or Sheep, and Minimal Pair Practice and Quizzes: both of these websites are a great resource that help you distinguish between vowel sounds that sound the same to nonnative English speakers. It’s incredibly important to hear the difference in vowel sounds so that you can then learn to pronounce the vowels sounds correctly.
- Word Builder: this is similar to the resource above and it is kid-friendly.
- Guide To Phonetic Symbols: is a great English pronunciation resource to anyone who wants to learn how each IPA phonetic symbol is pronounced.
- Merriam-Webster Dictionary: if you’re not sure how to pronounce a certain word you can go to merriam-webster.com, search for the word, and you’ll then be able to see the IPA for the word and play the audio to learn how to pronounce the word.
- Business English Resources: this is a great resource for nonnative English students wanting to improve their Business English communication skills. This includes business vocabulary, conversation lessons, and pronunciation lessons.
4. Other Online Resources
- TED Talks: Although TED Talks are not lessons, nor they teach pronunciation, the TED Talk videos are still great resources that will expose you to professional native English speakers who have given great presentations. The reason I include them in this list is because you can learn a lot about intonation, pace, word and sentence stress just by listening to them and following their example.
- iTalki: is not free, but it’s still a great way to learn how to speak English online. There are currently 449 American English teachers and 938 American English tutors that you can choose from to help you with your spoken English. Although most teachers and tutors are not certified in accent reduction, it is still a great place to improve your communication skills.
- Kent University: Kent University have an overall communication skills (speaking and listening) webpage. This is the place for you if you want to improve your presentation skills, telephone skills, body language, and more.
- Masters In Communication: This article and several other articles on this site give you valuable tips on overall communication skills which include verbal, written, non-verbal, and listening skills.
As you can see, there are many English pronunciation online resources out there! The ones listed here are just a few of my favorite. I truly hope this has been a helpful post for you and I wish you all the best in your English studies! Have you used any of the resources I have listed in the past? Which resources are you going to give a try? Let me know in the comments below! Contact me through my website or follow me on LinkedIn so you don’t miss any future posts about English pronunciation. Cheers!