How to improve the flow of your spoken English

One of the challenges of improving your English is getting it to sound more natural.  Nobody wants to sound like a robot or a computer.    While English as second language speakers shouldn't expect to sound exactly like a native English speaker,  it is reasonable to improve the flow of your words and sentences.    


The average English speaker will speak about  120 to 150 words per minute, ranging from reading aloud at the slower end and conversation at the faster end.

 I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

This excerpt from William Faulkner’s acceptance speech for the 1950 Nobel Prize for Literature is 184 words.   Try to read it as naturally as you can while you record it.  Then calculate your speaking speed by dividing 184 by the minutes you speak.   (Ex.  184/1.5 =122.7 words per minute).   This is not conversation, so it will probably be at the slower end of the scale.   You could also record yourself speaking without reading,  then count the words and the time and calculate your speed.

You can read and listen to the full speech here


There are two main ways to make your speaking flow and sound more natural.

1.   Stress and intonation.    The following YouTube video explains intonation and the subsequent website explains stress.   For example, in words,  the difference between "desert"  (full of sand) and "dessert" (full of sugar) is simply a difference in stress placement.  But we can also stress entire words within sentences to change the meaning of the sentences.




Dictionaries or simply listening to others are the two best ways to learn where stress within words go.

Word Stress Rules


2.    The second way to make your speech choppy is to connect words within sentences, also called connected speech and linking.

This website and video provides a good explanation.

Connected Speech & Linking | English Pronunciation Lesson

Watching television sitcoms is a great way to learn this.   For example,  you could download Big Bang Theory Transcripts and then watch the episode while you read along,  noting how they 'actually speak'.

Some of the following resources will help you to improve your pronunciation and speaking flow..

Pronunciation Tips — A Guide to Better Speaking

English Pronunciation Practice  (Try the Listen and Repeat Machine  here)

The English Rhythm Rule

Practice Speaking and Listening to LImericks

Poemhunter   (This website has many popular poems where you can listen and read the poems.   Very useful for improving your pronunciation stress and flow.)

Poetry Out Loud  (Listen to some famous actors read these poems — you might want to find and print out the poem before listening to it)

Dr. Seuss Poems (These are fun to read and listen to)

Improve your pronunciation

This is a skill (which requires some knowledge) that is too often neglected except for the lower levels of ESL classes. As a consequence,  our speaking suffers in the numerous instances we must speak in academic classes.

• asking questions of the teacher
• answering questions asked by the teacher or other students
• participating in group discussions
• making presentations

Pronunciation also influences our listening in that how we believe a word sounds like influences our comprehension.   If we believe it sounds like our pronunciation which is incorrect,  then when we hear it spoken correctly or differently we will not know it.      

Pronunciation can even impact our writing.    I will often see words misspelled because the writer has written the word based on their incorrect pronunciation.    For example,  "friend"  might be written as "frand" because the writer confuses the short e sound in "friend"  with a short a sound (as in "hand").

It is not realistic to expect that you can sound like a native speaker unless you move to an English speaking country before age seven.    Your objective should be to speak well enough that others can understand you in your present context.     How do you go about achieving this?

As with all things language related,   you must first do a self-assessment.   Where are your pronunciation problems?    You may already know which English sounds and words you cannot pronounce very clearly. This is a start.   This questionnaire may be helpful:

from the Second Language Pronunciation Assessment Handout Packet 

                                         (Amy Gerhiser & Diana Wrenn ,  GA TESOL,  March 3, 2007 

                         http://teachingpronunciation.pbworks.com/f/Pronunciation+assessment+packet+.pdf)

Another easy way to develop a balanced picture of your pronunciation is by asking someone who does not know you very well (ie. a classmate) to listen to you speak (or read something) and give you some feedback. After 5 or 10 minutes they should be able to tell you which words or sounds you do not say clearly.    Then do the same with another person.   I suggest you try the first time with a native speaker such as a Canadian classmate.    The second time you should do this with a non-native speaker but of a different nationality/first language from you.

Another trick is to  record yourself using a smartphone and then identify pronunciation problems on your own.  Using Siri on an iPhone or iPad,  or Google voice search will tell you what words you speak clearly enough. Dictionary app voice searches also do this.   You could also do a voice dictation.   If the computer cannot understand you,  then it is likely there is a problem.   If they do understand you,  then these words/sounds are probably okay.

This text, also  from the Second Language Pronunciation Assessment Handout Packet, would be helpful to practice reading aloud.

A future blog post will look at Canadian English sounds,  some common pronunciation error, s and more techniques to improve your pronunciation.

Here are some webpages/websites you may find helpful to improve your pronunciation.

English Pronunciation Podcast    (an archive of numerous audio podcasts dealing with different sounds)

English Pronunciation    (this provides a great overview of the various English sounds, with words and sounds                                        you can practice)

American English Pronunciation

English Club Pronunciation  (a useful collection of links and resources)

Librivox    (22 recordings of a poem read aloud -- you can compare different pronunciations and even record yourself on your smartphone and then compare with these.  Read the poem here)