GOOD PRONUNCIATION

Do you think your pronunciation is good，reader？ Your friends may tell you so. You speak English and they understand you. They speak English and you understand them. You have a good dictionary and you pronounce every word according to it. You pronounce every word and every syllable distinctly.

Well, you are indeed very careful of your pronunciation. You should be. I respect you. But do not be sure that your pronunciation is good. Have you ever talked with an Englishman or an American？ If not，you have not yet found out whether your pronunciation is really good. If so，I am afraid that your pronunciation is after all quite different from that of those to whom English is the mother tongue.

Let me suppose that you talk with an Englishman or an American. He speaks rather slowly and uses only common words and phrases，but somehow you do not understand him fully. It seems to you that he uses several words that you do not know，and that he does not speak as your friends do. On the other hand, though you take care to speak correctly and clearly，the Englishman or American fails to understand you fully. Perhaps you wonder whether he knows as much English as you after all.

The fact is that your pronunciation is not good. To tell the truth, I have found very few Chinese students whose pronunciation is really good. That a student can talk English with his Chinese friends does not mean that his pronunciation is good.

What is good pronunciation？ I mean the pronunciation of the average educated Englishman or American. Englishmen and Americans do not pronounce alike. Well，I will not mention any details. In the next few articles I will deal with a few points that I think you should keep in mind in learning good pronunciation. I will give practical advice and some illustrations, but not a full treatment of English phonetics. I will talk in the light of my experience and probably I shall say something that no-one else has ever said.