It can really help improve your pronunciation if you take a little time to learn the phonetic symbols and the sounds they represent. Learning them has helped many of my students with their pronunciation. And it will save you time in your English adventure!
Start here and then come back and practice! https://elt.oup.com/student/englishfile/advanced3/pronunciation
You don’t need to worry about learning to write them just to recognise them so that when you see them in a dictionary or on social media or your teacher writes them out, you know what sounds should be produced.
Do these quick pronunciation exercises and you’ll pick them up in no time.
NB. These exercises are based on my British southern accent (but also work for RP)
Very important!! There are many accents so I really encourage you as you are learning English to expose yourself to different accents from different countries and regions. However, just because an accent is different, it doesn’t mean that every word is pronounced in an entirely different way.
If you want a deeper dive into pronunciation, check out my recommendations below.
Exercise 1 Common Words
Exercise 2 Common Words
Exercise 3 Common Words
Exercise 4 Common Words
Exercise 5 Common Words
Exercise 6 Common Words
Exercise 7 Common Words
Exercise 8 Common Words
Exercise 9 Common Words
Exercise 10 Animals
Exercise 11 Personality Adjectives
Exercise 12 Free Time Activities
Exercise 13 Health and the Body
Exercise 14 TV and Film
Exercise 15 Work
Exercise 16 Thanksgiving
Exercise 17 Christmas
Exercise 18 Cats
Exercise 19 Football
Exercise 20 Tennis
Exercise 21: Halloween
My recommendations
If you’d like to learn more about pronunciation, I highly recommend checking out Papa Teach Me’s series of pronunciation videos: https://youtu.be/7iIfqstWcX8 I have learnt from him myself!
Learn more about the schwa which is the most common sound in English with this very short video. It is really worth your time to know the basics about this hugely important sound.