My English Pronunciation Progress

Over the past few week I have tried to improve my English pronunciation in order to make it sound more "American". To accomplish that I've done some exercises and watched a few videos from our teachers' pronunciation practice page.

I tried a few of the Merriam-Webster's Perfect Pronunciation exercises, but I think that they are not that useful. Different words and sentences are pronounced by native speakers and you are supposed to repeat them correctly, but they don't give you any tips on how the sounds are produced.

I also had a look at the videos on manythings.com. Since one of the sounds I feel I still have to work on a little is the "r" sound, I watched the videos about words containing it. These videos didn't really help me at all, because they focus on words with the endings "-er" or "-re", which I don't have any problems with. I have difficulties pronouncing double "r"s correctly, like in "horror", and none of the videos were about this type of words.

I've practiced quite a bit over the last weeks and I think that I've made considerable progress on the "v" sound that I used to pronounce more like a "w". The only thing I still have to improve now is the "rr" in the middle of words, but I can't pronounce this sound properly in other languages as well, so maybe this is an innate problem. Nevertheless, I will try to solve also my last pronunciation issues.

English Pronunciation

Learning the correct pronunciation is a vital part of learning a language. While I can say that I'm happy with my fluency in English there are a few pronunciation-related things I still have to work on.
When I was in the US last year, nobody actually doubted that I was an English native speaker, but they weren't so sure about where I might come from. Most people guessed either England or Canada.

In San Francisco my then-boyfriend and I went into a small shop and talked to a salesclerk. When asked where we came from, my boyfriend replied "Austria." The clerk then turned to me and said "You're not. But where are you from? England?"

A few days later an Australian, whom I met in LA, told me that I make the letter "v" sound more like a "w", which I know is something I really have to work on. I strive for an American accent, and my ultimate goal is that the next time I come to the US nobody will address me with "Canada, eh?"

In order to achieve my goal I have been taking closer looks at some English pronunciation websites. One of the videos there I found very helpful was about the difference in pronouncing "v" and "w", which helped me a great deal. I also looked at videos made by Rachel Smith, but I have to say that I didn't find her methods to be particularly helpful to me. I prefer Amy Walker's videos, because she shows you where the sound are made in your mouth and I think she explains that pretty well.

Pronunciation – V & W · engVid

Here's the link to the V&W video I mentioned above, it's from another pronunciation site I found pretty good. Enjoy!