Clearly articulated vowel sounds are an essential part of good French pronunciation.
English speakers typically have to work on this consciously: our natural tendency is to swallow unstressed vowels into an “euh” sound.
There are only 19 vowel sounds in French, so if you put your mind to it, getting them right is an achievable goal.
Reading exercises
One of the best exercises for working on your accent is very simple: recording yourself speaking in French and listening back.
You can do this on computer, smartphone or tablet. There are web apps like duolingo which will feed you with words, but you may find it more enjoyable to choose a text whose content interests you: a newspaper article, a page from a novel… whatever takes your fancy.
The Dictées on this website also provide a useful stock of materials, as they provide both a good length text and a reading from a French native speaker for you to compare yourself with. Here is an example, with the recording below.
Il y a toutes sortes de soupes. La soupe à l’oignon est traditionnellement servie aux jeunes mariés le soir de leurs noces. La soupe au pistou a un goût de Provence, le pistou étant le nom donné dans le Midi à une pommade de basilic broyé avec de l’ail et du parmesan. On sert de la soupe au poisson tout au long du littoral atlantique. La soupe garbure est, dans le sud-ouest du pays, un mélange de légumes variés enrichi de lard et de confis d’oie tandis que la soupe aux choux évoque la nourriture simple du paysan pauvre. Et puis il y a la soupe à la grimace, d’un genre bien particulier. La grimace n’étant pas un ingrédient gastronomique, il va de soi que la chose n’a de soupe que le nom. Au mari rentré le soir à une heure indue après une partie de cartes bien arrosée en joyeuse compagnie, les copains demanderont le lendemain d’un air entendu: « Ta femme t’attendait encore pour dîner hier soir à l’heure où t’es rentré? » À quoi le gars répondra, goguenard : « Oui, mais j’ai eu droit à la soupe à la grimace! »
Refer to our dictionary of sounds if you need help knowing what the target sounds are.
Checking yourself
The first thing you should notice is that it’s not that easy!
It can be hard work physically. Our facial muscles are formed around the sounds that we use regularly and reading a long text in French will probably leave you feeling strain on muscles that don’t normally get exercised.
It can also be hard not to stumble: even simple sentences may seem like tongue twisters to begin with. Moving from one “strange” sound to another requires an agility that needs to be acquired.
Listen back to your recording. If you’re familiar with what French should sound like, areas for improvement will probably stand out for themselves.
You may also like to do a “Voice Typing” test. Voice to text technology is freely available on smartphones or computer applications such as Google Documents (Tools > Voice Typing). Try reading a text in your native language and you should see a near perfect transcription of your words.
Now read some French. If your pronunciation is clear the results should be just as good. If some of the words come out like gobbledeegook, you know what to focus on.
Improvement
Do this exercise each day and you’ll notice immediate improvement. Your muscles will become used to those strange positions and the transition from one sound to another will become more fluid.
One of the nice things about this routine is you’ll quickly start noticing the results, so you should find a positive motivational loop kicking in. Practice makes perfect or as they say in French:
C’est en forgeant qu’on devient forgeron.
