Mirroring – The Best Way to Improve Your Pronunciation

Hello hello, james in the house.

Today I want to go over what I believe to be the very best way to improve your pronunciation. It’s simple, basically free, and you can start doing it immediately after reading this post.

That’s right. Talking with native speakers, singing along with your favorite English songs, and the 100s of other methods are all fine, but for me, there is one method that is much better than the rest.

That method is mirroring. 

The verb form of “mirror” has many definitions, but the meaning I am talking about today is the following:

verb (used with an object):
to imitate something accurately.

But what does that mean?

First let’s get to the materials you need. Besides some free time, to put this in action you will need:

① A method to watch a video (Computer, TV, smartphone, etc.)

② A video! (Drama, Movie, Youtube video, anything is fine as long as it is native English speakers talking!)

Once you have your video prepared, go ahead and push play and wait for the first line of dialogue. Once that line finishes, PAUSE THE VIDEO!

Then, repeat the line out loud. Repeat it 2 or 3 times if you like. However many times it takes you to reproduce the line smoothly. Then, continue the video and repeat for each line after that. If you think you have a tough time with any line, rewind and listen to it again before repeating the process.

That is it!

Before you get started mirroring yourself, I have a few final tips and tricks to make it as effective as it can be:

#1. It is most effective to mirror speakers that are of the same sex as you are. You can definitely do it with speakers of either sex, but since you probably want to speak like someone that is the same sex as you, this is just smart.

#2. Be careful of mirroring young children, as their pronunciation might not be fully developed yet.

#3. It does not matter the content of your media AT ALL! Science fiction, drama, documentary, they all include native pronunciation that is ready to be learned from! Choose what is fun for you, not what you think you SHOULD learn from.

Improving your pronunciation is a long road, but if you use the method listed above as much as you can, you can make that road significantly shorter.

Good luck on your quest and be sure to let me know what you think of mirroring after you give it a shot yourself!

James

メリーランド大学ビジネス学科卒業。アメリカの幼稚園で５歳以下の園児と長く過ごし、その後の銀行勤務では主にカスタマーサポートを担当。様々な人種・年 齢層の顧客とうまくコミュニケーションを図る中で培った一見フランクそうな英会話の中でも相手によって話し方、言葉の選択を変える英語力スキルを指導しま す。ジェームス先生から、アメリカのカスタマーサービスでも通用する英語コミュニケーションスキルを学んでください。日本語能力も日本人レベル。日本語能 力検定試験N1保持者。