How to sound like a native English speaker

Five things fluent speakers do

1. They link words together

“Give it away” is not three separate words but one flow: “gi-vi-ta-way”. A consonant at the end of one word runs into the vowel that starts the next.

“But before I give it away, I want to ask you to right now do a little audit of your body and what you're doing with your body.”

Amy Cuddy · Practise this line →

2. They say small words small

Words like to, of, and, a and can are usually said quickly and softly, in their weak forms: “a lot of” comes out close to “a lotta”.

“So in college, I was a government major, which means I had to write a lot of papers.”

Tim Urban · Practise this line →

3. They stress the words that matter

English gives the important words more time and force and hurries through the rest, so not every word takes the same time. Listen to which words stand out here:

“It's the most powerful sound in the world, probably.”

Julian Treasure · Practise this line →

4. Their voice carries meaning

The rise and fall of the voice tells you whether a speaker is asking, checking or stating. A falling tag question expects you to agree (more patterns, with lines to practise, in question intonation):

“It's been great, hasn't it?”

Sir Ken Robinson · Practise this line →

5. They speak in ready-made chunks

Phrases like “you know”, “the thing is” and “to be honest” are said as one unit, to link ideas and buy a moment to think.

“You know, it used to be that in order to have a polite conversation,”

Celeste Headlee · Practise this line →

A realistic goal

Few adult learners end up with an accent nobody can place, and you don’t need one. The useful goal is speech that is easy to follow and sounds natural, and that is within reach with regular practice. Work on rhythm first: a learner with clear rhythm and a few foreign sounds is easier to understand than one with perfect sounds and flat, word-by-word rhythm. A step-by-step plan is in how to reduce your accent in English.

A daily plan

1. Open an exercise from this guide. Choose a captioned video for this guide’s topic and a line whose meaning you understand.
2. Listen and read the caption, then say the line after the speaker in Repeat mode.
3. Try saying the line with the speaker in Shadow mode, following the rhythm and pauses.
4. Record a take, then open Compare and play your recording and the original. Review words and timing; Sada does not grade individual sounds.
5. Repeat the line while focusing on one difference you heard, then move to another line.

Why shadowing works for this

A rule tells you that “to” becomes weak; only listening and copying makes you do it at speed. When you speak along with someone, you have to match their rhythm or you fall behind, and Sada shows you both: which of your words came across, and how far behind the speaker you were. To drill the joins and reductions on their own, try connected speech practice; to stop hesitating between them, how to speak English fluently; to stop translating each sentence before you say it, how to think in English. If there is one particular speaker you want to sound like, pick their official video from shadow the person you want to sound like. New to the method? Read what shadowing is.