LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

  In the Preface to his The Defence , Vladimir Nabokov , lashes out against book reviewers and others, saying: "... I would like to spare the time and effort of hack reviewers - and, generally persons who move their lips when reading...". As I understand it, those who read moving their lips are equated in intellectual stature to hack reviewers. I promote reading a foreign language with the lips and in a whisper. Reading in the brain does not exercise the mechanical part of the language: throat, lips, teeth, alveolar ridges, nose, air, vocal cords, and even the saliva that make language what it is. We may scoff at those who read with their lips as ignorant intellectual dwarfs but in language learning it is essential to drill out loud moving the lips, the tongue, and everything else. Perhaps Nabokov, a polyglot himself, was blinded in this instance by his dislike of book reviewers, probably rightly so. So, you should practice the language you are studying by reading aloud, in a...

Old sayings die hard but I stick to the "practice makes perfect" one because in the case of foreign-language learning, the physical practice of sound making I find essential. We must coordinate the various speech organs and muscles in order to develop backup memory for accurate pronunciation. Thus, if the point of articulation of the Spanish and English /t/ is different, we must practice either sound, in context, in order to imprint our memory with the precise movement to make the sounds. This is a question of repetition, not understanding, and so we make a full circle back to "practice makes perfect".  Physical practice allows learners to develop muscle memory and train their speech organs to produce the desired sounds. It is through repetition and consistent practice that learners can improve their pronunciation skills and strive for greater accuracy.