Here are tips to reduce your accent. Spoken English is made up of the components below:
 

• The individual distinctive sounds of English are called phonemes. These are sounds that are connected to each letter or combination of letters of the alphabet and there are many ways to pronounce them. You need to teach yourself how to first hear the English sound correctly. This takes time as you may not have all the English sounds in your native language. You need to be able to tell the difference between the new sounds and the ones you already know. Then make or vocalize the sound by itself by shaping your mouth and tongue and repeating it. Then place that sound in the rest of the word.

​

• ​Rhythm is affected by unstressed syllables in reduced speech. This is a large part of being understood, as it affects how a native English speaker comprehends what you are saying.

​

• ​Intonation – Where the voice rises or falls.

​

• ​Word and sentence stress (emphasis). As a rule, content words are stressed the most. These words have the most information in a sentence. Content words are nouns, main verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and questions words (who, what, where, why, when and how).

​

• ​Where to pause and link sounds and phrases.  For example, “cab is” is pronounced “ca bis”, “can’t always” is pronounced “can’ talways”.

​

• ​Word reductions like “cream and sugar” is pronounced “cream n sugar”.

​

 

A good exercise and habit to do is to get a book with an audio CD from your library. Listen to the recording, read a few sentences from the book, then record your voice saying the same sentences. Compare the two and correct yourself until you are saying the words the same way as the person telling the story. You can also record a newscast with a news anchor you like and repeat the exercise in the same way.

 

One last note, always remember to speak slowly. It helps with pronunciation.

​