You can spend hours practicing pronunciation and still feel like you’re not making progress. And sometimes, it’s not because you’re not practicing enough. It’s because of how you’re practicing.
I spent almost ten years learning how to play the piano, and the longer I played, the more I realized how similar it is to learning pronunciation.
Before I could play a piece with emotion and expression, I had to get the notes into my fingers. I couldn’t just read the notes or imitate what I heard. I had to repeat the same movements again and again, until my hands knew where to go without me having to think about it.
Only then could I focus on the music. The emotion, dynamics and expression. And pronunciation works in a very similar way!
First, get the sound into your body
There is a difference between understanding a sound and having that sound available to you when you speak.
The goal is to reach a point where the R, the TH, or a new vowel comes out without you having to stop and think about it in the middle of a sentence.
And that requires repetition.
Think about a musician practicing scales. It may not be the most exciting part of learning music, but it creates the foundation for everything else.
The same is true for pronunciation.
Slow down before you speed up
Every musician knows that when you’re learning a difficult part of a song, you don’t begin at performance speed. You play it slowly enough for your brain to understand every movement and for your fingers to learn exactly what they need to do.
But many English learners skip this step when they practice speaking.
They try to use a new sound while speaking at full speed. It feels unnatural, difficult, or even robotic, so they assume the new pronunciation isn’t working.
But of course it feels uncomfortable!
You’re asking your brain and your speech muscles to do something new at a speed they haven’t practiced yet.
Start slowly, practice the sound in a word. Then in a phrase. Then in a sentence. Repeat it until the movement becomes more familiar, and only then begin increasing the speed.
Train your mindset as a separate skill
I still remember one of my piano recitals…There was one difficult part in the piece, and I was so focused on not making a mistake that the moment I got to it, I froze.
I started. I stopped. I tried again. Eventually, I had to skip that part completely. The interesting thing is that I knew how to play it, but my thoughts got in the way of my performance.
The same thing can happen when you speak English in front of other people.
You begin monitoring every sound. You wonder whether you’re making a mistake. You start judging your accent while you’re still speaking.
And suddenly, you sound less fluent and less confident than you actually are.
Managing your thoughts while speaking is a skill. Staying present is a skill. Continuing even when you make a mistake is a skill.
Pronunciation work is not only about drilling individual sounds, it’s about training your muscles, giving yourself permission to slow down, and learning how to stay out of your own way when it matters most.
When you work on all three, the sounds begin to feel more natural, your speech becomes more expressive, and you can focus less on being perfect and more on connecting.
Want to go deeper?
In my free Pronunciation Masterclass, I’ll teach you how to practice pronunciation in a way that creates real, lasting change.
Join here: hadarshemesh.com/masterclass
