The beauty of language lies not only in the words written but also in how they are spoken.
It began with a book club, where my focus was on the book’s vocabulary and discussions. This narrow focus led me to realize an important topic in language that was being ignored. It was the elephant in the room.
That topic was pronunciation—how the words written on the page sound when spoken. In our book club, the book lovers would read from the book aloud in English. However, there were moments when certain words caught my ears off guard. While they understood the words' meanings, they hadn’t heard the words spoken aloud.
For instance:
"Citizenship" transformed into "science-ship."
"Desperate" became "des-poor-ate."
"Hologram" turned into "hole-o-gram."
This highlighted the challenge: when you mishear a word, you lose track of the speaker's message. Our book club emphasized self-expression over pronunciation, but correcting students didn't always lead to improvement. Why?
"Repeat after me" didn’t work; as the speakers would often just repeat mistakes. The key to clearer pronunciation lies in shaping your mouth, tongue, and jaw to produce the right sounds. Discovering the sounds of English can empower anyone to speak it clearly. Knowledge is power.
And pronunciation is amazing! When you become aware of it, you'll see progress in your ability to captivate others with your ideas, not your pronunciation mistakes.
Finally, I also have an another version of my newsletter. Check out the video alternative below.
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