According to my experience, the most important part of learning a new language is a large amount of input, especially sounds from a native speaker and then we repeat exactly what we’ve heard as long as the sound is simple and short which means easy to pronounce or repeat at the beginning of our learning. All we need is just listen and repeat. Later on, speak like a native is a sure thing.

Oftentimes, language learners are keen to learn the so-called “rules” of languages including grammar. In my opinion, it is not necessarily the best way to improve our pronunciation because this method sounds a little bit boring, but it’s indeed a faster and systematic way to achieve our goal or maybe, for most of the people.

Well, if you really want to be like a pro, the best way is to learn knowledge from textbooks with an audio CD.

For instance, learning standard American English, “The American Accent Guide: A Complete and Comprehensive Course on the Pronunciation and Speaking Style of American English for individuals of all language backgrounds” by Beverly A. Lujan, is a great book to start.

It includes:

  • Intonation & Stress
  • Falling and Rising Introduction
  • Stress for Emphasis Rhythm
  • The Schwa
  • Stress & Meaning
  • Prefixed & Suffixed
  • Suffixes and Stress Placement
  • Proper Names, Titles & Times
  • Identifying Speech
  • Rhythm Reduced
  • Forms & Rhythm
  • Contracted Forms
  • Putting it all Together
  • Middle Stop
  • Consonants Linking
  • The ‘‘Th’’ Sounds
  • /S/ Blends
  • Final Sibilant Sounds
  • Stop Consonants
  • etc…

Since the rules are always been summarised by language researchers so the textbooks written by these people are preferred in order to know the rules.

I’ve heard that the best phonetics book of all time is “A Course in Phonetics” by Peter Ladefoged.

Cheers!