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I am often asked why it is important to work on pronunciation when studying English.

Well, did you know that incorrect pronunciation is the main cause of misunderstanding? Although, you don’t need to worry too much about having a native-English accent, it is obviously important to be able to speak clearly enough so that people can understand you.

Here are just a few reasons why it is important to work on pronunciation:

1. English is absolutely not a phonetic language! Words are very rarely pronounced as they are written as, for example, in Italian;
2. You can never guess the pronunciation of a new word, you have to know it;
3. There are no accents to help you with word stress as, for example, in Italian and French;
4. There are stressed and unstressed words in every sentence;
5. Vowels and consonants can be pronounced in many different ways;
6. Words that are spelled the same can be pronounced differently depending on whether they are verbs or nouns;
7. Many words have silent letters   i.e. answer – the w is silent,  comb – the b is silent;
8. Many words when pronounced wrongly mean something totally different – this can cause some embarrassment i.e. classic problems for Italians  – beach and bitch, sheet and shit, sheep and ship!!!

Do not let fear of pronouncing words wrongly block you from speaking. Working on your pronunciation will give you much more confidence to interact and communicate in English.

I just wanted to let you know that:

If you go to the download page, you can download the pronounciation of the ‘ed’ endings of regular verbs in the past and past participle forms;

I will occasionally upload other pronunciation materials for you;

I have just found this free-online dictionary of English pronunciation which I wanted to share with you – check it out – www.howjsay.com