Inspiration

I recently watched this excellent video from Tim Ferriss about language learning and in the Q&A session at the end, he gave some excellent tips for fixing your pronunciation.

Pronunciation tips:

1. Find a native speaker
   1. Ask a language exchange partner, friend, tutor, teacher, coworker, OR, find someone on Craig’s List, Livemocha, Verbling, or RhinoSpike
2. Have a text
   1. Write out a 5-minute self-introduction (because that bio will be 90% what you talk about when you meet other people in that language)
3. Read that and record it
4. Send it to the native speaker with the same text
5. Have them circle or highlight the things you have trouble with
   1. Note: Don’t try to do this in real-time. Most people are too polite to interrupt you and by the time you finish, they’ll forget where your pronunciation faltered.
6. Then “drill the hell out of those” over and over and over
7. Then read it all again (rinse and repeat)

Challenge

Do what he suggests. Take some time to:

1. Write out a good, long self-intro and get it grammar checked and proofread until it’s exactly what you want
2. Record yourself reading through your self-intro and send it to a native speaker for feedback
3. Drill your bad pronunciation (based on their feedback – and try to get them to record a “properly pronounced” version that you can “listen and repeat” along with)
4. Then, MEMORIZE it all with good pronunciation

Now, whenever anyone asks you to give your self-intro, you can surprise and awe them with your amazing Korean ability.

Over to you:

Have you ever done this before? Ever memorized a GOOD self-intro in Korean? I’ve been wanting to do so for a while, so I will try to give it some good time this next week to do it. I’ll post the video here when I finish. What will you do? Let me know in the Comments below or on social media with #120TOPIK.

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