G'day, what's up mate? I always think that pronunciation is everything when it comes to English. What does it mean? Well, without further ado, let's get underway, shall we?
First up, pronunciation leads to four skills of the English language: namely, listening, reading, writing and speaking. The precision of your pronunciation relating to vowels and consonants depend on how people can easily understand you. As for listening, if you cannot pronounce some particular phonemic symbols clearly, then in all likelihood you won't be able to catch the same sounds even though you could've heard. Hearing and catching is a different story, right? Probably, what you are hearing is considered to be noise. So, it's going to be extremely difficult for you to decipher what is being talked. Reading, in contrast, many of you guys might think the accuracy of pronunciation is not directly intertwined with reading skills. Hell, no. Think about the situation where you are reading some sentences aloud. Inaccurate pronunciation causes spelling errors, misunderstanding of the articles, and so on. If you can pronounce all sounds clearly, then there won't be any issue at all in reading, at least, getting a big picture of what the article is about.
As concerns writing, the same. I mean, your written skills hinge on how clearly you can pronounce words. The precision of your pronunciation is proportionate to that of spelling. So, if you can say something in English, then you can also write down the same sentence as you speak, which is quite normal for native speakers as well. But, of course, there is no doubt that not every native speaker is good at spelling, depending upon their educational level. Since they have grown up in an English speaking environment and learnt English with phonemic sounds naturally, some of them haven't adequately got trained themselves in proper writing at school. Hence, it all depends. But for us as a non-native speaker, we are learning English from both phonemic symbols and spelling in speaking and writing in a deeper level. So, learning style fundamentally differs, and non-native speakers who put a concerted effort into studying English tend to be adept at writing compared to native speakers. And, finally, speaking of speaking skills, pronunciation is undeniably critical.
All in all, pronunciation is the cornerstone of the English language. First and foremost, we should make sure that pronunciation is at least 80% crystal clear, which means that you need to be effortlessly understood by ordinary native speakers. In other words, there is no room for them to say 'What? What's that? What did you say? Say that again? Come again? Pardon? I beg your pardon? Sorry? Once you stop hearing these phrases from native speakers, that's a good indication whether or not you are developing English skills.
If you are persistently worried about pronunciation, then why don't you contact me? So I can offer you a special course for fixing pronunciation. Thanks for reading my blog. Ta.