How to Improve Your English Pronunciation As a Spanish Speaker

One of the primary challenges facing Spanish speakers when learning English is pronouncing English words correctly. Pronunciations issues related to American “r,” also known as the molar r can lead to difficulty understanding speech.

Practice makes perfect. Here are a few fun ways you can practice: 

1. Listen to English Audiobooks

One of the greatest challenges in learning English pronunciation as a Spanish speaker is mastering its unique sounds. When learning consonants like /r/, not only should you tap your tongue where necessary; you must also know how to move your mouth correctly – something which takes practice and time.

There are many English listening resources online to help you comprehend and practice new sounds. Listening to podcasts, music videos, movies or TV shows and copying their dialogue in your head or out loud are great ways to train your ears and improve English pronunciation before trying out whole words yourself.

Finding a native English speaking friend who’s also interested in Spanish to practice with can be invaluable; both parties will benefit immensely! They can correct your Spanish while you correct theirs, strengthening both of your languages at once. Or take an online course with a certified teacher for more personalized feedback on pronunciation and faster growth!

2. Repeat

When faced with difficult sounds, repetition is the key to improvement. Luckily, there are numerous online resources that provide examples of specific sounds to assist with this endeavor.

Another challenge facing Spanish speakers when learning the language is word stress. English words often have different syllable stresses than their Spanish equivalents, creating confusion for new students when reading both languages simultaneously. For instance, “Canada” in English would be pronounced as “Cah-nuh-duh,” while in Spanish this phrase would be read as “Barcelon-uh.”

To overcome this obstacle, create yourself a pronunciation study playlist of English songs you enjoy listening to at normal speed, and imitating each speaker. Doing this will not only teach you how to pronounce individual sounds correctly, but will also allow you to practice the different stresses found within English words until their difference becomes less apparent over time.

3. Sing

English pronunciation and Spanish speakers make for a formidable duo, but there are ways they can work more effectively together. Georgie Harding, with her Speech Pathology degree and CELTA qualifications, assists individuals from around the globe reduce their accents with award winning online courses and 1:1 Skype lessons from Georgie.

One of the great difficulties of English is distinguishing its various vowel sounds. Spelling is no help here; oftentimes the ‘e’ sound can be mispronounced as an ‘y’ (such as in “Yob” and ‘November”) while there’s also the tricky sound /v/ in words like ‘available” and “product”, not to mention double and diphthong vowels like the /i:/ found in words like ‘week” and “coat”.

Word stress is another issue to keep an eye on when speaking English; when an emphasis changes the pronunciation of certain syllables within words. For instance, in campus and just, the emphasis lies more heavily on their final letter than on their second syllable (such as when pronouncing realise or trip). This technique is called “molar accent,” since when done properly the letter hits its target teeth directly and thus enhances clarity of speech when spoken out loud in English. Getting this right will improve clarity of speech as you speak the language better!

4. Watch English Movies

Watching English movies is one of the best ways to sharpen both your pronunciation and listening skills, though be wary not to rely too heavily on subtitles and choose an appropriate movie for yourself. Furthermore, if the dialogue contains regional dialects or accents not common among general English speech, perhaps other audio-visual learning materials like podcasts or music could be more suitable than cinema.

Spanish speakers can find some English sounds particularly challenging to adapt. One such challenge lies in distinguishing between the Spanish ‘r’ (tap or trill) and its equivalent rolled English sound ‘rr’. With consistent practice and repetition however, this obstacle can easily be resolved.

Word stress can also be difficult. While most English words don’t have accent marks, determining where stress should fall can be challenging for those that do. To help with this task, this website breaks words into their constituent syllables and shows where stress should go for each word.

5. Read

English pronunciation can be an immense challenge for Spanish speakers. Many struggle to discriminate between short vowels from long ones and double (diphthong) vowels in English pronunciation, often making mistakes like saying ‘cot’ instead of ‘coat’ or “Nobember” instead of November when learning the language.

Spanish-speakers face another formidable obstacle when transitioning to English: learning how to stress words correctly in English. Doing this effectively ensures people understand your message, which makes this 21-day course essential in developing American English Stress Patterns and Speech Music.

Pau is an experienced language learning ninja who speaks Catalan, Spanish, English and Swedish (with some French and Russian thrown in for good measure). At Idiomas Ninja he writes about language acquisition as well as Lindy Hop. When not writing or dancing he enjoys drinking wine and playing guitar as well as spending time with family – as he lives in Barcelona Spain you can follow him on Twitter or Instagram and leave any questions or comments below! Thank you for reading!