English Pronunciation Exercises (Practice Them to Sound Like a Native Speaker)

Pronunciation mistakes can be embarrassing.

Are you looking for practice exercises to improve your English pronunciation?

If yes, you’ve come to the right place.

This page contains pronunciation exercises organized into 5 chapters:

How to Practice the Exercises

Improving your English pronunciation is hard. But you can make it easier by focusing on only one pronunciation skill at a time.

That’s why the exercises are organized into five chapters. Focus on one chapter at a time so you don’t feel overwhelmed.

There are a lot of exercises on this page. If you don’t have time to practice them all, focus on the ones that address your pronunciation problems.

Chapter 1: The Main Sounds of English

In this chapter, you’ll find exercises to help you pronounce every main sound in English correctly.

English has a lot of words that sound similar (heel vs. hill, sell vs. sale, pool vs. pull). It’s important to pronounce them correctly.

In many of the exercises, you’ll be practicing two similar sounds at the same time. This is an effective way to practice English pronunciation.

The Vowel Sounds

English has about 15 main vowel sounds. If your native language has fewer vowel sounds, you probably speak English using only the sounds that are present in your native language.

As a result, you might pronounce two different words the same way because you can’t hear the differences between them. So, let’s do some practice to fix that.

/i/ (heat) and /I/ (hit)

/eɪ/ (late) and /ɛ/ (let)

/ɛ/ (bed) and /æ/ (bad)

/æ/ (hat) and /ɑ/ (hot)

/ɑ/ (calm) and /ɘ/ (come)

/æ/ (bat) and /ɘ (but)

/ɔ/ (want) and /oʊ/ (won’t)

/ʊ/ (full) and /u/ (fool)

/ɑ/ (lock) VS. /ɘ/ (luck) VS. /ʊ/ (look)

/ɘr/ (heard) and /ɑ/ (hard)

/ɘr/ (work) and /ɔ/ (walk)

/aɪ/ (time, nine, dry, etc.)

/aʊ/ (south, house, cow, etc.)

/ɔɪ/ (oil, choice, voice, etc.)

The Consonant Sounds

Let’s practice the consonants sounds, which are just as important as the vowel sounds.

When do you an exercise, it’s helpful to pay attention to the mouth movements of the presenter.

/t/ (cotton, better, etc.)

Understanding voiced and unvoiced consonants

/s/ (Sue) and /z/ (zoo)

Stop Consonants

/h/ (horse, hot, etc)

/dʒ/ (drawer, education, schedule, etc)

/dʒ/ (job) and /tʃ/ (chop)

Words Ending in –ed

/θ/ (this, think, thank, etc)

/θ/ (thin) and /s/ (sin)

/θ/ (they) and /d/ (day)

/l/ (light) and /r/ (right)

/l/ and /n/

/v/ (van) and /b/ (ban)

/b/ (bee) and /p/ (pee)

/p/ (pan) and /f/ (fan)

/v/ (verse) and /w/ (worse)

/j/ (jet) and /y/ (yet)

/j/ (budge) and /z/ (buzz)

/ʃ/ (ship) and /tʃ/ (chip)

/n/ (thin) and /ŋ/ (thing)

Consonant Clusters

Chapter 2: Stress and Intonation

When we say someone has a strong accent, it means they speak English with incorrect stress and intonation patterns, making them difficult to understand.

So, if you want others to understand your spoken English, practice the exercises in this chapter carefully.

Syllable Stress

A syllable is the smallest unit of pronunciation. (The word “water” has two syllables. The word “inferno” has three.)

Stressing the wrong syllable in a word can cause misunderstandings because people think you are saying a different word.

Word Stress

Native speakers always stress certain words within sentences.

If you learn to stress the right words your speech will have a natural rhythm similar to that of native speakers.

Intonation

Intonation is like the melody of a song.

When you listen to native speakers, you can hear their speech rise and fall in pitch. Some syllables are high in pitch. Some are low.

Intonation is important because it tells the listener whether you’re finished talking or whether you have more to say; whether you’re asking a question or making a statement.

Chapter 3: Word Connections

This chapter will help you sound more like a native speaker. You’ll practice “linking words” together so that your speech flows better and sounds more natural.

Contractions

Word Linking

Chapter 4: Reduced Sounds

When speaking, native speakers don’t pronounce every syllable clearly. Instead, they “reduce” certain sounds, making it easier to speak.

Chapter 5: Common Pronunciation Mistakes

A few bonus exercises for you to practice.

Other Ways to Practice Your English Pronunciation

Using the lessons on this page is one way to improve your pronunciation and accent.

But there are two more methods you can use:

  1. Practice the Parrot technique. (Imitate native speakers.)
  2. Do an accent inspection. (Compare your accent with the native accent.)

If you combine all three methods together, the results will be amazing!

So if you want to learn more, check out my article on how to improve your English pronunciation. You’ll learn a complete process for sounding like a native.

Want to improve your spoken English?

Check out my English Fluency Course:

Course Details & Sample Lessons

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