Hint: Speaking a bit slower and pushing, or forcing, each sound in each word out of your mouth will help make your speach clear and allow people to understand you better.

Remember to:

1) keep the tongue down and back for "r" and "w"

2) use English vowels, don't replace them with your native vowel sounds

3) pronounce each letter when saying a word (except for those few silent letters)

4) use the correct sound for word endings (suffixes) such as "-ed" and "-es" 

     For example, "ended" sounds like "end-Ed" and "started" sounds like "start-Ed", but "finished" sounds like "finish-d" and "looked" sounds like "look-d".  If there is no "d" or "t" at the end, do Not say "Ed", say "d".  I tend to say "-Id" like in "did" when I say words that end in "t" or "d".  That is okay too.

--Try fixing these mistakes by listening and repeating.  This will help your muscle memory.  You can ask your teacher to repeat them aloud.

Work on clarifying sentences such as those below.  Repeat them over and over (again and again).  Feel free to ask your teacher to say them for you and repeat after him or her.

"Clark is an English professor. He edited my papers."

"She has four classes on Thursdays."

"I cannot attend your fifth meeting next year."

"I would be delighted if you could join our adventure."

"The passengers boarded the yacht this evening."