Getting Tongue Tied: Talking about Pronunciation

Join Britta and Clémence as they talk about pronunciation! What makes pronunciation so difficult? How important is it? How can you improve your pronunciation? Our language teachers offer you information and advice to help you improve your pronunciation as you learn languages. This week’s episode takes a dive into English and French pronunciation.
This week's guest is Clémence Grison. Clémence is part of the teaching team at ACA, and has a bachelor’s degree in english literature along with a master's degree in English studies, and a master's degree in journalism. She’s taught ESL in France and Quebec, and has a deep understanding of the difficulties of mastering pronunciation in a second language.

In the show:

• We mention Gretel Kahn’s essay for CBC about her accent, and how her feelings about it changed. You can read or listen to it here.
• Clémence recommends Likewise, a website and app which offers suggestions for everything from books and movies to restaurants and places. She likes it because the recommendations come from other users, not an algorithm. Check it out here.
• Britta recommends Ted.com, a website that offers videos with excellent support for language learners. You can watch videos on thousands of topics from experts around the world and use subtitles in many languages as well as interactive transcripts to improve your understanding.

Come check out our website, at lesbonsmots.ca. You can see Lauren’s video on the “th” sound, one of the trickiest sounds in English, and read Nathan’s blog posts on news, culture and language learning. We will also have our episode transcript available there. We’d love to hear from you at [email protected].