3 Underrated, Free Apps for English Pronunciation Practice
Let's first get this out of the way.
It can definitely be a hard pill to swallow to plunge into the world of accent modification.
It costs money and it requires an investment of time, so you want to do whatever you can for free in the beginning to gauge how interested you are in actually moving forward with paid services.
Kinda like the Free Spotify before you commit to it.
You do not need to pay your way to English proficiency or improve your English communication skills. There are legitimate and effective free applications that you can leverage to learn and practice English. The caveat being that you need to do a bit more background work to organize it and structure your learning rather than it being all within a single program.
Here are 3 apps to start your journey.
1. Metronome app
The metronome app is an underrated application to learn the musicality or rhythm of English. There is a rhythm to English that is based on the stress-timed property of English. Whereas other languages such as Cantonese or Spanish may be syllable-timed, this can make their transition to English communication less smooth (because they may apply syllable-timed rhythms to English instead of stress-timed rhythms).
In English, syllable stress occurs on a regular and consistent beat. Determining which syllable falls on that regular beat is important and whatever doesn't fall on that beat may subsequently be unstressed.
Practicing with a metronome can focus your attention on the beat and focus your attention on planning your practiced speech phrases.
What words are going to be stressed?
What syllable is going to be stressed?
What words and syllables are therefore not going to be stressed and can therefore be said quicker?
By Intentionally focusing on the rhythm of your speech and focusing your attention on this instead of the specific word or speech sound pronunciation, you may notice that your rhythm can also affect your understandability - you may perfectly pronounce the correct sound but without the correct rhythm, you may stress the wrong part of a sentence.
This may ultimately mean you bring attention to a part of the sentence that is atypical and that may confuse a listener.
Let's think of the following sentence.
I CAN Help
Normally, a native English speaker would say:
I Can hELP
The only reason a native English speaker would emphasize can instead of help is if can is there's something unique or important - like when you're saying, "I can't help".
This can result in self-doubt by the listener.
Maybe I misheard or didn't hear the 't' sound. But why would the speaker stress can instead of help if they were saying the affirmative instead of negative. Did I hear correctly?
Even though you may completely enunciate the sentence correctly and don't even pronounce the 't' in can't, listeners may have doubts, which impacts their understanding.
Metronome App Options include:
2. Voice Recording App
The simple, easy voice recording app. This free app is an important one because of a few reasons.
Firstly, you have to get over listening to yourself. Yes, it is weird. Yes, it can be awkward. You NEED to get over it in order to become comfortable with auditing yourself. There's no way around it.
No one likes to scrutinize their own work. No one likes to find mistakes and errors or ways that they are not so good at communicating. I get it. The problem is for 99% of people looking to improve their communication, they already are in a good place with English proficiency.
What that means is a lot of people already communicate functionally in English. They can already hold a basic conversation in English. They can already order food. They can already work professionally in English.
As a result, no one is going to openly nitpick on your behalf. You need to develop a self-criticism and pickiness that is more sensitive than what others think. Otherwise, you're already good enough.
Except if you're looking to improve, you, yourself, think you aren't already good enough.
So record yourself and listen back. Listen back for specific things though.
Are your sentences clear? Do you get to the point quickly or do you ramble on and on? If you know of specific sounds that you struggle with, pay attention to only the words with those particular sounds. Is the sound crystal clear?
With a voice recording, you can also wait a couple days so you no longer have the bias of knowing the topic ahead of time. Waiting a couple days gives you fresh ears to pick up nuances, unclear communication habits and mispronunciations that you may not have noticed in the moment.
Otter.Ai is a voice recording and transcription service with free and paid premium options. It can give you perspective on what words are clear enough for an AI-generated transcript and what words may be harder to discern.
Another option is Apple native Voice Memos or Rode Reporter
3. English Accent Coach
I've talked about this site in the past, but it truly is an amazingly structured and reliable website for practicing speech sounds. Sure, it doesn't look the nicest and sure, it doesn't have all the bells and whistles, but it has the core principles needed.
Think of it like this. It is the set of 20lb dumbbells in the corner of your room instead of the fancy Pelaton bike or multi-exercise machine. For most beginners, the 20lb dumbbells can address a TON of things.
That's what English Accent Coach is.
I have previously made a post about the English Accent Coach website and how it provides ample education material for you to practice. You can tailor it to focus on your specific weaknesses, your specific speech pattern tendencies and if you apply habit cue-process-reward principles, you can build that new pathway to have increased success.
So Now, What Will You Do?
I've recommended 3 apps. All you need to do is invest the time to learn to use them. Just like any other worthwhile interest.
Will you try them out?
Will you invest the time needed to learn how to use them effectively?
Will you TRY to improve?
