The Three Ps
Learning pronunciation means mastering three speech characteristics: perception, production and prediction.
Perception involves:
Hearing: actually hearing the sounds the speaker makes
Listening: actively trying to understand what the sounds mean
Seeing: observing the body language and gestures the speaker is using to communicate
Feeling: awareness and use of how speech is formulated and how your body helps communicate what you are saying.
Production involves:
Time--to listen, think about and prepare a response.
Knowledge--of the elements of language to help you understand how sounds and words are pronounced and how the rhythm within sentences helps communicate messages .
Prediction involves using your perception to help you predict what the speaker will say next--and to anticipate your answer.
Many languages, like Spanish, are syllable-timed languages, where all syllables take approximately equal amounts of time to pronounce.
English, on the other hand, is a stress-timed language. In other words, it's a language where the stressed syllables are said at approximately regular intervals, and unstressed syllables are shortened to fit this rhythm.
Many tools are used to help shorted the unstressed syllable, like contractions (won't instead of will not, etc.), elision (not saying certain sounds in unstressed words) and the schwa sound.
So, instead of trying to understand every single word in English, listen for the words that are stressed, and let your mind predict the complete message--and your response.
You'll find that, once you master the stress-timed rhythm of English, it actually is easier to understand--and speak--English with native English speakers.
