As the saying goes, practice makes perfect. If you are wondering how to improve your American English pronunciation, practicing speaking English like an American should be one of your first priorities. While practicing speaking in a different accent can make some self-conscious, working with other cultural groups can help both you and your peers with potentially opposing strengths and weaknesses.

There are a few benefits to hanging out with other cultural groups with regard to pronunciation help. Given that other cultural groups that are non-natives are learning American English as well, you can practice speaking with an American accent with them, hopefully more comfortably than with strangers. Working with other cultural groups can help you pick up on words that your friends may not be pronouncing correctly and allow you to point that out to them in kind. Likewise, while many native English speakers may feel it would be rude to point out areas of growth to you, your friends from other cultural groups may be perfectly fine mentioning a word or phrase that could use extra attention. By practicing speaking in an American accent with other cultural groups, you can possibly feel more comfortable working on your pronunciation, and gain great study partners.

While there are benefits to working with other cultural groups to improve your pronunciation, there is one key drawback as well. When it comes to learning a new accent, how you learn the pronunciation from the beginning can often influence how you continue to speak those words down the line, as repetition forms a habit. Without a proper guideline to ensure that you and your peers are learning pronunciation properly, errors in pronunciation can form and can be hard to break away from later on. Working with a program to help ensure that you and your peers are learning American English pronunciation correctly can be a great way to have the extra help you need, while retaining your schedule with your study peers. Having additional help online as well can be a great option, to ensure that you can keep on track with your pronunciation goals and can hold yourself accountable to your timeframe in the off chance you’re unable to meet with your other peers for a variety of reasons.

Choosing to apply yourself towards learning correct American English pronunciation is a great, and reasonable goal to have that can be accomplished with time and effort. Practicing speaking in an American accent with other cultural groups can be a great resource when paired with your own online pronunciation classes to ensure you get the most out of your invested time. With ASHA-certified online pronunciation courses promising results in as little as 12 weeks, dedicating time both by yourself online with pronunciation practice courses and speaking in person with your peers can contribute to your greatest opportunity for growth.