Once you’ve com­pleted an accent reduc­tion course and learned some new sounds, you need to prac­tice those sounds to improve your spo­ken Eng­lish and make it a habit in every­day conversation.

Of course, you can plan get-togethers with your Eng­lish speak­ing friends, and a fun activ­ity to get every­one talk­ing is to play a board game. Many board games will encour­age inter­ac­tion, and they are all great for prac­tic­ing con­ver­sa­tion, but there are a few that are par­tic­u­larly good for build­ing your Eng­lish pro­nun­ci­a­tion and vocab­u­lary skills.

The harder you have to think about what you are going to say, the harder it is to remem­ber to use the cor­rect Eng­lish pro­nun­ci­a­tion. That is what makes these games such great prac­tice. And, they’re lots of fun!

One of my per­sonal favorites is Taboo. The object of the game is to get your team­mates to guess a word writ­ten on your card, but you can’t use the most com­mon words to describe it. You have to find another way to tell what it is so your team­mates can guess. For exam­ple, you may have the word “lad­der”, but you can’t use the words “rungs, steps, paint, or high” to describe it. So you might say “an object you lean against your house when you need to get on the roof.” Get the idea?

Another great game is Balder­dash. You are given a card with a word on it and sev­eral def­i­n­i­tions, but only one is the cor­rect one. You also make up a def­i­n­i­tion for the word and ask the other play­ers which one they think is cor­rect. You get points for bluff­ing, or fool­ing, them when they choose your definition.

A third great game to build your vocab­u­lary, descrip­tive skills, and knowl­edge of Amer­i­can cul­ture, is Apples to Apples. In this game, each per­son gets noun cards with a per­son, place, or thing listed on them. An adjec­tive card is placed in the mid­dle and each per­son selects the noun card that they think goes best with the adjec­tive. Here’s the fun part: each per­son has to explain why they think their card is the best, and the per­son selected as the judge gets to decide whose is the best.

While these games are read­ily avail­able and not too expen­sive, you could make up your own ver­sion of each of them with a good dic­tio­nary and some paper. To make a game sim­i­lar to Taboo, you can choose some com­mon words and list the words used in the def­i­n­i­tions as the ” not allowed ” words.

A home ver­sion of Balder­dash can be played with just a dic­tio­nary. You choose a word from the dic­tio­nary, read its def­i­n­i­tion, a def­i­n­i­tion of another word on the same page, and one you make up on your own.

For a com­par­i­son game like Apples to Apples, you need a stack of index cards and a list of nouns and adjec­tives. Write one word on each card, keep­ing the nouns and adjec­tives sep­a­rate. Pass out five noun cards to each player, put an adjec­tive card in the mid­dle, and you’re ready to go.

So, whether you choose the con­ve­nience of pur­chas­ing ready-made games or you decide to spend the time to make them up your­self, lan­guage games are a fun way to enjoy time with friends and to improve spo­ken English.

Not sure how to improve your Eng­lish pro­nun­ci­a­tion? 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 tips on exactly which sounds to work on.

• 7/9/2010 8:11 PM Jeff Brun­son wrote:
  Apples to Apples is one of the most fun boxed games I’ve ever played. Played it only once with some life-long friends at our annual reunion. I’m amazed at the pos­si­bil­i­ties of such games to help one with com­mu­ni­ca­tion and con­nec­tion thru improv­ing lan­guage skills.
• 7/10/2010 2:05 PM Melanie McGhee wrote:
  I have to agree with Jeff here. I love your out of the box approach.