Learning to speak a new language can be challenging, no doubt about that. Especially English.
All those funky words like knight, laugh, paradigm and psychology that have all these letters that are not pronounced.
And what about the confusing pairs like celery-salary, back-buck, pool-pull that if we confuse them, we may sound unclear?
Or words like beach, focus, spreadsheet and fox that if we mispronounce them, we might get a face-palm moment ?
Even when you know how certain words should sound like, you don’t necessarily know what to do in order to pronounce them correctly. And this uncertainty leads to insecurity.
But what if I told you Google has come up with a brand new feature just for that? Pronto is a tool I helped Google develop, and it’s based on the experience and detailed feedback I give to my own students.
How to use it:
- Open Google on your mobile phone and make sure you’re logged in to your Google account (use Safari on iPhone)
- Type “how to pronounce” and add any word you’re not sure how to pronounce. The Google search tool would spell the word for you as it should be pronounced. The transcription is plain and pretty straightforward
- Listen to the pronunciation of the word, and pay attention to the sounds that are most challenging to you
- Push the “practice” button
- Record yourself saying the word
Pronto would detect the specific sounds that you mispronounced and let you know what you need to do in order to improve, as well as offer you more words to practice with.
So you don’t need to be confused anymore about whether you pronounce words correctly or not. Listen to the episode and find out how you can use Google’s Pronto yourself.
If you want to improve your accent and understand spoken English better, download my free American Accent audio crash course.
You can also download an interactive list of 50 of the most mispronounced words in English and master the pronunciation of those tricky words.
You want to improve but you need to practice? Join our community on Facebook – the best place to practice English online for free.
The InFluency Podcast