Neglecting Pronunciation Is Your Big Mistake

While mastering pronunciation is fundamental for language learning, many learners underestimate its importance. That’s a big mistake and I want to tell you why.

Why does it matter?

Getting to grips with pronunciation in your target language unlocks smoother interactions with native speakers. This creates a positive feedback loop: increased speaking practice will strengthen your pronunciation and speaking confidence.

So, the quicker you develop a good grasp on your target language sound system, the faster you’ll get to the point of experiencing fluent conversations (which is probably your goal in the first place). In other words, strong pronunciation skills act as a catalyst for accelerating your language-learning process.  

And hey! I am not saying that you need to put pronunciation before everything else. But at the very least, you should put it on equal footing with the rest. Pronunciation matters a big deal and you ought to purposefully work on it from day one.

Why do people neglect it?

Well, because they probably are not aware of what I just said above. I see most students focusing too much on grammar or vocabulary and too little on their pronunciation and listening skills (these two are inextricably connected, more on that at the end).

Many of us are oblivious to the importance of pronunciation in the context of language learning. Some will even assume that pronunciation left to its own devices eventually catches up. If that was so, why should anyone bother?

But the opposite tends to happen: lousy pronunciation settles in for good slowing down the whole language-learning process. It might even lead you to give up the entire enterprise.

How can you improve it?

There are many ways to go about improving your pronunciation skills. One of them is “shadowing”: play something in your target language (e.g., a podcast show or just turn on the radio) and say the sounds as you hear them (there’ll be some delay between the two, of course).

Importantly, when you’re shadowing, depending on your current language skills, you may want to discard semantics altogether and solely focus on the sounds you hear and reproduce them as best as you can.

We should realize as quickly as possible that some sounds in our target language will not be present in our mother tongues and that we may find ourselves at odds to reproduce those “new” sounds. This is why shadowing is so powerful: it helps you tune into the new sound system.

Before even getting into shadowing, you can start by just listening and paying close attention to the sounds of your target language. Turn on the radio as often as possible and immerse yourself in sound. These sonic baths help you raise your phonetic awareness of your target language. Important stuff!

If you want more ideas for improving your pronunciation and speaking skills, read this: Why Is Speaking Portuguese So Challenging and How to Improve It?

My own experience

Before I sign off, I want to stress that your pronunciation and listening skills are crucially intertwined. You won’t be able to make new sounds if you can’t hear them! 

I’ll give you my example. When I first moved to Sweden, it took me a while until I could hear these 3 Swedish vowel sounds: ö, ä, and å (none is present in Portuguese). Instead, my brain mapped those vowel sounds onto the closest Portuguese sounds I could comfortably hear and reproduce. That’s how brains work!

Also, back then I didn’t care much about pronunciation and as a result, my pronunciation had been far off the mark for a long time, longer than needed. It was not before I started paying close attention to what I was hearing that I honed in on the Swedish sound system. Needless to say: my pronunciation improved substantially after that.

One last note. Focus on clarity, not perfection.

Don’t worry about achieving a flawless, native accent. There’s nothing more natural than to speak a foreign language with a foreign accent, it is even endearing! Embrace your unique way of speaking. The key is ensuring your pronunciation is clear enough for confident communication. After all, the primary goal of language is to connect with others.