Hey andrew,
Congratulations for joining this discussion board where you will get help with your english from other students and also trained English language teaching professionals.
It would be helpful if you can identify the kinds of words which you find hard to pronounce, then i can give you guidance on how to practice the sounds which you find hard. My guess it that it may be sounds which are unfamiliar in Khmer language such as consonant clusters. However, help is at hand. I can recommend some good books, and tapes for you to practice pronunciation of words you find difficult yourself.
A good book which you can look for at Angkor bookshop ( end of Norodom near Cogitel, Central Market ) is called Ship or Sheep, which helps some students differenciate between hard sounds and then use the tape to listen to the correct pronunciation modelled by a native speaker.
I personally find you easy to understand when i have talked to you, and dont lose confidence. For every problem there is always a solution. Do try as Bunkheam suggests post up the words you have difficulty with and then i can help you more as i have a lot of books on pronunciation and there may be another one other than ship or sheep which i can recommend to help you.
It is a common problem! but dont lose confidence, remember understanding one word is not always that important as long as we can understand the context of your sentence! so keep positive, i think you can speak very well myself!
Anyway, hope you post back with more information, then i can guide you more, or Bunkheam or any other student can also offer advice as to how they learn words which are hard to pronounce for khmers.
Welcome to the site,
I hope you keep posting and i hope we can continue to help you! :wink:
have fun,
Paul
