🎀 If I were a beginner at English conversation again, this is what I would do first

This may be sudden, but

please imagine this for a moment.

・What if you could have smooth conversations with native speakers?

・What if your friends told you, "You sound just like a native speaker!"?

・What if, just by chatting with native speakers,
people around you praised you by saying, "You're so good at English!"?

Just imagining it makes for an ideal English-speaking life, doesn't it?

Wouldn't you like to be like that too?

What if, the moment you started speaking English,

a native speaker

gave you a "???"

look on their face...?

"Could you say that again?"

If they kept asking you that over and over...?

Even if you were trying your best to learn English,

that alone would be enough to break your spirit, wouldn't it?

But, it's okay.

If you read this article and put it into practice,

you will definitely be complimented by native speakers.

Today's article is,

simply put,

content that is important enough to influence your future English learning growth,

and

what I would absolutely do first if I were a beginner again.

It is.

If you proceed with your English studies without doing this,

you will inevitably hit a wall somewhere.

Whether it's speaking or listening,

if you skip this, you will definitely reach a plateau.

If you want to advance your English learning without taking unnecessary detours,

I will tell you what I want you to do first.

If you do this first, your English learning will accelerate.

Oh, I apologize for not introducing myself sooner.

This is who I am.

The first thing you should do is pronunciation.

In school, we are made to study English vocabulary and grammar

to the point of saying,

'Enough already!'

but we didn't really learn pronunciation properly, did we?

However, pronunciation is the very first thing taught overseas.

Have you ever heard of Phonics?

Phonics is a learning method for understanding the relationship between English sounds and letters.

For example, A is read as 'a' not 'ei', and B is read as 'b' not 'bee'.

If you don't know this, we end up replacing all the English we hear with 'katakana'.

That is why, if a native speaker talks to you and you don't know the pronunciation, this is what happens.

The sounds that Japanese and English have in common

are only 10 percent

of the total.

Therefore, even if it's just an 'a' sound for a Japanese person,

there are five types of 'a' pronunciations in English,

so if you don't pronounce them correctly when you speak, you won't be understood.

(Represented by phonetic symbols as 'ʌ', 'æ', 'ɑ', 'a', 'ə')

If you can't pronounce it, it means you can't hear it either.

So, this is quite important, isn't it?

How to study pronunciation

You can study pronunciation on your own.

The best way is probably to use books or YouTube.

Nowadays, you can find plenty of results on YouTube just by searching for 'phonics'.

The key points when choosing are

✔ Something that shows the shape of your mouth when pronouncing

✔ Something that includes phonetic symbols

✔ Something that comes with audio

If you choose these, you can't go wrong.

When learning pronunciation, always

make sure to actually practice by saying it out loud yourself.

Native pronunciation might

feel embarrassing at first.

It feels like you might get teased for showing off, right? ^^;

I understand.

But you practice by yourself, right?

At this point, throw away any feelings of embarrassment and

fully commit to imitating a native speaker.

This is super important, so I'll say it one more time.

When learning pronunciation, always

practice by actually saying it out loud yourself!

I also recommend recording your own voice.

I used to do that often, too.

I studied pronunciation using books,

30 minutes a day. For about five months, I think.

Please refer to this article for the books I used.
*This will take you to an external link.

If you learn pronunciation first, you won't have to relearn it later.

Once you've grasped the basics, the rest

can just be picked up while you study.

After I properly learned pronunciation, native speakers

"You have clear pronunciation"

"It's easy to understand"

started saying things like that to me.

You should also study pronunciation while you can

"You sound just like a native speaker!"

"You're so good at English!"

Let's secure a future where people say things like that to you! ^^

I hope I've managed to convey the importance of pronunciation a little bit.

To summarize briefly,

✔️Pronunciation is so important that even native speakers learn it first

✔️There are five types of "a" sounds in English, so if you can't distinguish them, you won't be able to understand or be understood

✔️Only 10% of sounds are shared between Japanese and English

✔ It's important to actually practice and master pronunciation yourself!

So, if I were a beginner again,

"Pronunciation"

is what I would study first,

that was my story.

Next is

I think I'll talk about memorizing phrasebooks.

Do you have a phrasebook?

Are you perhaps memorizing it by heart?

If so, that's a bit of a waste.

You might be able to do it more efficiently. ^^

If you're interested, please follow me and stay tuned.

If you leave a comment, I'll be so happy I'll do a little dance. ^ ^

Thank you for reading until the end.

I would be happy if this helps with your English studies.