Pronunciation and Intonation

3.1Understand the critical importance of correct pronunciation

English is now an international language. It no longer “belongs” to the British, Americans etc. But the fact that it has no unique cultural identity of its own does not mean that there is no standard in pronunciation. Although there are many differences in pronunciation among native speakers (for example, not all native speakers pronounce the second t in twenty), no native speaker would pronounce the gh in high or height, the b in doubt or debt, the w in yellow or write, or the d in Wednesday. All such pronunciations are considered nonstandard for both native and non-native speakers.

Having the right pronunciation in a presentation is probably more critical than in any other situation where you will use English. In other circumstances your pronunciation probably does not seem very important to your interlocutors (the people with you), for one or more of the following reasons:

•you are of the same nationality as them, so your accent/pronunciation is very similar

•if they don’t understand you they can simply ask you to repeat

•it doesn’t really matter to them whether they understand you or not, as the information you are giving is not critical to them.

At an international conference, there will be people from many countries with many accents, they cannot ask you questions during the main part of your presentation, and most will be interested in understanding the information you are giving them. So, if you cannot pronounce the key words of your presentation correctly, the audience may not understand you and thus they will not be able to follow your presentation.

Pronouncing words correctly is fundamental.

An excellent way to learn the correct pronunciation of words is to use transcripts of oral presentations. Many news and education corporations (e.g., bbc.co.uk and ted.com) have podcasts on their websites where you can hear someone speaking and read the exact words in the transcript. You could try practicing reading the transcript yourself with the volume off. This will motivate you more strongly to listen to the correct pronunciation when you turn the volume back on.

3.2 Find out the correct pronunciation

You might not be conscious of the fact that you may not know the correct pronunciation of every word in your presentation. This could be because you have heard English words being pronounced by other non-native speakers from your own native country, and you unconsciously think that that is the correct pronunciation.

The sounds you have in your own language will certainly influence the sounds that you can and cannot produce in English.

If you are Chinese you may have problems differentiating between l and r, and pronounce a v as a w. But if you are Indian or German you may have the opposite problem and pronounce a w as a v. If you don’t have aspirated sounds in your language then pronouncing h in house or hardware may be difficult. Certain vowel sounds can be very difficult, for example the vowel sound in work is hard to distinguish from that in walk.

The first step to improving your pronunciation is to discover what words you mispronounce so badly that the audience may not understand you.

To find out the English sounds that people of your language have difficulty with you can do an Internet search: “name of your language + English pronunciation + typical mistakes.” If possible, find a site that (1) lists the typical sounds, (2) has audio (so that you can hear the sounds), and (3) illustrates the shape that your lips and tongue need to make to produce the relevant sound. If you don’t have your lips and tongue in the right position it will be impossible for you to reproduce the correct sound.

There are two other ways to find out whether your particular pronunciation of individual words is correct.

The first is to ask a native speaker to listen to you practicing your presentation and write down every word that you pronounce incorrectly, and then teach you the correct pronunciation. This may be expensive and time consuming, but is very useful.

The second is to write out your entire speech (see Chapter 2) and convert it into a pdf file. Then you can use the Adobe reader to read your speech. The voice of the reader is robotic, but the pronunciation of individual words is very accurate and even the tone is generally good (e.g., a falling tone at the end of each phrase). Using Adobe you can

•note down where the stress falls on multisyllable words (e.g., architecture not architecture)

•listen for vowel sounds, and learn for example that bird rhymes with word and so has a different sound from beard

•understand which words you cannot pronounce. This means that you can find synonyms for non-key words and thus replace words that are difficult to pronounce with words that are easier. For example, you can replace

◦a multisyllabic word like innovative with a monosyllabic word like new

◦a word with a difficult consonant sound like usually or thesis, with a word that does not contain that sound, often or paper

◦a word with a difficult vowel sound like worldwide with a word that has an easier vowel sound like globally

•make a list of words that you find difficult to pronounce but which you cannot replace with other words, typically because they are key technical words

•understand which sentences are too long or would be difficult for you to say

3.3 Learn any irregular pronunciations

Unfortunately English has a very irregular pronunciation system. Often words that are spelled similarly have different pronunciations. This is particularly the case for words that you may never have heard spoken before. For example, if you are a researcher in plant life and irrigation, then the word drought (period of time when there is no rain) may be a key word for you. You would naturally associate it with words that you commonly use such as thought or bought which rhyme with sort. In reality, drought rhymes with shout, but if you pronounce it so that it rhymes with thought many in the audience will not understand you.

This is true not just for technical words. For example, imagine that you think that the pronunciation of the word surface sounds like saw face. Someone in the audience then asks you a question that includes the word surface, but they pronounce it correctly as sir fiss—in fact, sur rhymes with her, and face (in this context) rhymes with kiss. So you may not understand the question because the questioner’s correct pronunciation of surface does not match the pronunciation of the word that you have in your head.

So it is essential that you create a list of key words that

•are contained in your speech/slides

•that might be used in questions from the audience

and that you learn the correct pronunciation.

3.4Be very careful of English technical words that also exist in your language

A lot of English words have been adopted into other languages, often with different meanings but also with different pronunciations. Here are some English technical words and acronyms that are also found in many other languages: hardware; back up, log in; PC, CD, DVD.

Note that

•words that are made up of two words have the stress in English on the first syllable: hardware, supermarket, mobile phone

•words whose second part is a preposition also have the stress on the first syllable: back up, log in

•letters in acronyms have equal stress: P-C, C-D, D-V-D

It is a good idea to say the key words and English technical words more slowly.

Give equal stress and time to each letter in an acronym. Remember that an acronym such as IAE is very difficult to understand because it contains three vowels,