How to Sound More Like a Native English Speaker?

The journey of losing my accent.

Fanni

Dec 04, 2023

Hi there, Funday, Sunday community!

But Fanni… It’s Monday.

Okay, this is how my apartment looks because I'm moving across the world in three weeks. Please cut me some slack.

But not even this messy hell can stop me from learning something new. Actually, I have quite a few things on my list:

Crocheting
Minimalist graphic design
Skateboarding

For December, I’m focusing on improving my English pronunciation.

Where are we starting from?

These last 8 months of my sabbatical were pretty long, and since I started to work again, I realized how subpar my speaking abilities became. My aggressively Eastern-European accent is one thing, but I caught myself looking for the right words and idioms several times recently.

Guys, I didn’t watch 12 seasons of Rupual’s Drag Race for my brain to empty when a sassy comeback is needed.

I honestly feel inferior to my former self, and my move to Canada and having to communicate in English every day really took a toll on my self-image. So when my bf sent me the Black Friday deal for Rachel’s English Academy, I was like:

I’ve spent more than 5 dollars on stupid things. Let’s try it.

English Learning Tools

Although titled as such, these tools won't teach English grammar. They will, however, help you sound more like a native speaker.

thesaurus.com

www.thesaurus.com is THE place to expand your vocabulary.

Recently, I started checking it every day to learn the synonyms of the day and even caught myself using some of them.

The other way I use it is by looking up some frequently used words and learning synonyms for them.

Grammarly

Grammarly is an online tool that checks your grammar everywhere on the internet.

Emails
Drive documents
Notion

I used the free version for years before upgrading recently, and I learned a lot just by letting it rewrite my sentences.

It makes me sound like a native English speaker in writing, which is a must when working with my colleagues. Having a language barrier can be catastrophic.

I highly encourage everybody to at least try it out.

CapCut

Okay, this may sound weird at first.

So CapCut is a video editing app I mostly use for my TikTok videos. It has a great Auto-Caption feature, which transcribes your video.

If I have some extra time, I just record a video of myself talking about a random topic and see what words the AI missed. Of course, there can be technical errors, but generally, this means that my pronunciation was off.

So, I take note of that word and will try to say it in a different way next time.

Rachel’s English Academy

This is the course I mentioned earlier. LOVE IT!

Rachel is originally a singer and speaks about how to hear the melody of the English language. She makes you repeat the same phrase 6-10 times and explains everything so well.

The best thing is they have teachers giving you personal feedback after every module. It’s on the pricey side, with the cost of 40 USD per month, but it’s worth every penny for me.

If you want to try this method for free, just open TikTok and find a video that has subtitles. Stop the video after every sentence and try to mimic the creator's pronunciation.

It’ll feel weird even sitting alone in your room, but the win is much bigger than the cringe factor.