How to speak with a British accent: 2 home exercises

No matter how good your English is in terms of grammar and vocabulary, there is always one element missing for you and probably 99% of other non-native speakers: the accent. The problem we all face is that even though we've been learnig English for ages, our accent doesn't seem to improve as the time flies. For this reason, you might wonder if it's at all possible for a foreigner to ever sound like a Londoner without being born there.

Is it possible for foreigners to learn a British accent?

At this point, you can calm down because the answer is yes. From my personal experience, I can tell you that there are only two ways to achieve satisfying results. These are:

• moving to Great Britain
• behaving as if you were living in Great Britain

If you're able to move and live there, this article is redundant. Sooner or later, the results will come without much effort on your part. Unfortunately, for most of us, moving to another country isn't an option. Considering that all we can do is to follow the second option. Before I explain what it means to behave as if you were living in Great Britain and what the secret exercise is, we need to understand why moving to another country is so effective for getting the proper accent.

Why foreigners learn the accent so easily when they move to Great Britain?

The answer to this question couldn't be simpler. They spend entire days on listening to others and repeating what they hear. You might say that's not true because you do the same thing for years, yet the results aren't satisfying. It turns out there are two main reasons for their success and your struggle

• the accent of the speakers you listen to
• the time of exposure to a given language

People moving to Great Britain are exposed to several hours of listening to native speakers every day. Being under such strong influence for a long time means that when they start speaking, they subconsciously repeat what they've already heard. And it doesn't just apply to the words they say. It also affects how they say them, so to the accent. This conclusion shouldn't be surprising. That's how you learned your native language. As a baby you were constantly listening to native speakers talking all the time and eventually you started repeating what you heard.

Do you already see what's the difference between your situation and the one described in above? The problem is that even when you speak or listen to English, your conversation partners are most likely from the same country as you are (or any other non-English speaking country), and second of all you don't spend on it as much time as is required. Luckily there are a couple of ways to overcome these obstacles.

How to learn a British accent at home?

Exercises that will let you speak with British accent can be divided into two categories:

• active exercises
• pasive exercises

Let's start with the active ones. As proven above, the key to success is repeating after native speakers. To do this at home you'll need only two things: an English version of a book you like and its audiobook read by a British native speaker (both are easy to be found for free online). What you'll want to do is to read aloud from the book repeating after the speaker. Let them read the sentence first, listen closely to how they pronounce every single word and then pause the audiobook to repeat aloud, reading exactly the same sentence from the book. What you must pay attention to is to mimic the accent as closely as possible. For this reason, the repeated parts shouldn't consist of more than 10 words, so you can correctly remember they way the speaker pronounced the words. If a sentence is too long, split it to smaller parts. I suggest doing this exercise everyday for 30 minutes to achieve satisfying results.

Active exercises are the ones that bring the best results, but they could be even better if you decide to introduce passive ones to your daily routine. Passive exercises base on one simple rule: listening to the language as often as possible. This means that you should be surrounded by the spoken English all the time. It can be audiobooks, podcasts, YouTube videos or anything else where you'll be able to hear native speakers talking. You can listen while eating, training, driving a car or whenever possible. Do you know what's the best part of this excercise? There is no need for you to pay attention to what they say. It's completely enough for it to play in the background, allowing your brain subconsciously get used to and learn the pronunciation. Just play the audio and focus on whatever else you want. There's no time limit for this exercise. The more, the better.

Summary

Now you know what to do to learn British accent at home. If you dedicate enough time to both described exercises, you'll be surprised by the quality of the results very soon. What's even better is that the accent won't be the only outcome. Following the instructions you'll notice that your vocabulary and grammar will also improve.

Enough reading for now. It's time to find the book and its audiobook and start practicing. Good luck!