How To Change The Way You Speak...

By Eugene O'Reilly

Do you want to pronounce American English better or more clearly? People use three pathways to acquire and "memorize" new speech sounds, i.e., change pronunciation:

We watch the movements of the speech sounds when another person is talking and we see how they are shaped. Then we imitate those shapes by using a mirror.

We listen to learn and know the difference between mispronounced sounds and acceptable pronunciation. Then we imitate what we hear.

We "study" the feeling of what our various speech muscles, i.e., tongue, jaw, etc. are doing to produce the speech sounds. We see and hear the sound and then feel the sensation of tongue placement, jaw movement etc., then we remember those postures when we acquired a new way of speaking

Each speech sound corresponds with a specific "posture" of the lips, tongue, teeth, jaw, voice, etc. By seeing, hearing and "feeling by doing" each posture, we can learn the specific sounds and reach our goal quicker.

We memorize the "look," the "sound," and the "feeling" of correctly producing sounds and combine those memories to speak in a new way.