122 - Why Better Pronunciation Starts With Listening

Position your mouth in the right position.

I mean, yeah, it makes sense.

But the biggest problem is, is that you don't really have a clear target because the spelling is one thing and the mouth position is another thing.

But your mouth needs a really clear target to aim for.

And the way you get that is through listening.

So your ears give your mouth the target, right? And that's the biggest problem.

Most people do the first two things, but then the listening is kind of an afterthought when actually it should be the first thing that you do, right? And there's a few reasons for this.

The first reason is quite simple.

You can't pronounce what you can't hear.

You know, think about it this way.

English has got a bunch of similar sounds, especially in the vowels.

You know, we've got a, r, i, e. They're very similar, right? So if you can't clearly hear the difference between those two sounds, how on earth are you going to pronounce them correctly? You can't because your mouth doesn't have a target, right? It's the same with like sounds that don't exist in your language.

So I'll give you an example from Japanese, right? They don't have L and they don't have R.

They have something in the middle, right? So when they hear words like light and right, they sound the same to Japanese people because their brain processes those sounds to the closest familiar sound in their language.

So they're not going to hear light and right.

They're going to hear right and light, which is the same to them, right? And this probably happens in your language as well.

It happens every language.

There's sounds that exist in English that don't exist in your language, but there's something close.

So when you hear that sound, your brain puts it to the closest sound, right? So this leads you with a problem.

Like if those two words sound the same in your head, you don't have two clear targets to aim for when pronouncing.

You just got one.

And that's why if you're unable to clearly hear the sound, you've got no chance of pronouncing it.

So what I always tell people is before you want to work on anything else with your pronunciation, you've got to practice minimal pairs, but listening to minimal pairs, okay? So the kind of the process is you hear the difference, you identify the two different sounds, Then you reproduce it and then you use it in speech, okay? But you can't skip the first two steps.

You can't just reproduce it and then use it in speech.

It won't work.