When most peo­ple think of ways to improve spo­ken Eng­lish, they think of lis­ten­ing to audio record­ings, recit­ing prac­tice words and sen­tences, and con­vers­ing with oth­ers. Rarely do they think of using their sense of touch as part of their prac­tice rou­tine. Rub­bing smooth stones, twist­ing a bracelet, or mov­ing a watch may not seem to have any­thing to do with improv­ing your Amer­i­can accent, but for some peo­ple, those activ­i­ties can pro­vide just the incen­tive needed to make the nec­es­sary prac­tice a nat­ural part of their day.

Every­one needs reminders of some sort when learn­ing a new habit, and each of our five senses can pro­vide dif­fer­ent ways of cue­ing, or remind­ing us, to do some­thing new. We can see a note remind­ing us, or lis­ten to a phone mes­sage, or per­haps touch some­thing that trig­gers our brain to engage in the new behavior.

You may not think about using your sense of touch as a way to improve your spo­ken Eng­lish, but I would sug­gest that you give the fol­low­ing activ­i­ties a try. You may be sur­prised at what you learn about how your brain remem­bers best!

Choose a day that is an ordi­nary day, and choose just one sound to prac­tice. Make a list of 10 – 20 words that have your tar­get sound in them, and either mem­o­rize them or keep the list with you.

Find a small smooth stone that you like the feel of to keep in your pocket for the day. If you don’t have pock­ets, wear your watch on the oppo­site wrist or wear a stretchy bracelet that you’re not accus­tomed to. The idea is to have some­thing unfa­mil­iar touch­ing you dur­ing the day so that you will notice its pres­ence, but not be too uncom­fort­able. (This rules out wear­ing your belt too tight or wear­ing an itchy sweater, as those are too much of an irritation!)

Every time you feel the stone in your pocket, or stretch the bracelet, or think about mov­ing your watch back to the other wrist, use that momen­tary inter­rup­tion in your day to prac­tice a few of your words out loud.

As you con­tinue to prac­tice through­out the day, you will find that almost with­out try­ing, you are think­ing more about your tar­get sound and using it cor­rectly in more situations.

You may find that you like wear­ing your watch on the other hand or car­ry­ing that stone because those sim­ple reminders begin to make a big dif­fer­ence in your pronunciation.

Exper­i­ment with dif­fer­ent items in your pocket or jew­elry on your wrist until you find the item that you feel works best at remind­ing you to prac­tice and improve your spo­ken English.

Not sure which sounds you should be prac­tic­ing? Why don’t you take my free online speech and accent screen­ing at http://www.losemyaccent.com It only takes a few min­utes, and you will get free per­son­al­ized tips to improve your Amer­i­can accent.