How to Improve your Pronunciation for TOEFL Speaking
Improving your pronunciation is one of the most difficult aspects of learning and speaking English. When students prepare for their TOEFL speaking test, they often focus only on what to say. Of course, content is important and your answer should have some substance in it. How you say it is equally important. While preparing for the exam, you should focus on the pronunciation of English words. Whenever possible, practice speaking English with a partner or a tutor. Visit online forums where you can find native English speakers willing to engage in a conversation with you online.
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The basics of English pronunciation
In order to pronounce words properly, you have to manipulate your mouth, tongue, lips and breath in specific ways. Learn the right actions required for pronouncing various sounds. English words have specific stress patterns. When a word is pronounced, a particular syllable is stressed. When you emphasize the wrong syllable, you pronounce the word incorrectly. It is therefore important to learn the stress pattern of English words. Also, if you do not know which syllable is to be stressed, you will not be able to reduce vowels.
What are reduced vowels?
These are vowels that are not fully pronounced. Not all vowels are reduced. Generally speaking, stressed vowels are fully pronounced whereas unstressed vowels are usually reduced. The vowel that comes before or after a stress is usually reduced.
Articles, pronouns and prepositions are usually reduced. Since it is common to reduce vowels, non-native speakers who do not know which vowels are to be reduced often over pronounce making their speech sound unnatural. Reducing vowels also enables you to say the word faster. So, when all vowels are pronounced without reduction, it slows down your speech and makes it difficult for you to speak with a natural rhythm.
If you want to make your speech sound natural, you have to speak at the same pace or speed. While speaking, native speakers may at times speed up or slow down a bit, but these fluctuations are rarely felt. However, students often speak quickly on the test because of nervousness. It requires some practice to avoid this tendency to speed up. It is also not recommended to speak too slowly. Sometimes, students speak slowly because they want to be understood clearly. This is not a good strategy because you get only about 1 minute to say your answer. A short or incomplete answer will only get a low mark. So, practice speaking at an even pace.
Pay attention to rhythm
Rhythm is another aspect of English speech. Each word has stress on a particular syllable. However, when we speak, not all words in a sentence are stressed equally. Some words are stressed more than others. It is this stress of particular syllables and words that creates the rhythm of speech. Words that provide much of the meaning of a sentence are usually stressed more. By contrast, words that serve only a particular grammatical role are usually unstressed. Generally speaking, articles, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions and auxiliary verbs are usually unstressed whereas nouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs and negatives are stressed. Question words (who, which, what etc.) and demonstratives (this, that etc.) are also stressed.
Pause appropriately
Words are rarely spoken individually – they are always spoken in groups. Pause between phrases and clauses or between sentences. Do not pause in the middle of a phrase or clause.
