Hi a,

I had a consultation call with a woman called Nuria (from Spain) this morning to talk about her pronunciation, and she said something that made me think "oh, I wonder if a has the same problem?".
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She said:
​"I don't know why exactly, but I feel like I sound very unnatural when I speak, and people know quickly that I'm Spanish."
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Now, change "Spanish" to your own native language and tell me honestly, do you think the same when you speak English too, a?
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For example, do you constantly hear people asking you "where are you from?" and you KNOW that it's because of your pronunciation.

Or do you feel that after years of improving your grammar and vocabulary you still hesitate, stumble over difficult sounds, and change some words at the last second because you don't know how to correctly say them?

Or perhaps you feel your accent's a mix of something between British and American, so you speak with this unprofessional and inconsistent-sounding mixed accent.

You listen to yourself in a recording and think "I sound so Spanish* and unnatural, but how do I fix this?" (*change this to your native language, of course).
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Pronunciation is very difficult to correct by yourself.
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These apps that claim to correct your pronunciation are terrible. And I say that as a professional pronunciation coach with a bachelor's degree, Cambridge teaching certification, and a master's in English teaching.

They're shamefully bad and damaging to your communication skills (we're both humans, so why is everyone using apps to learn how to communicate with other humans? It makes no sense. But I'll rant about this another day).

AI and apps teach you zero human communication skills, and they correct parts of your pronunciation that are actually fine, while missing the mistakes and nuances that they SHOULD be pointing out.

YouTube videos only get you so far because nobody's actually listening to you to correct you.

And I bet you've quickly discovered that the €20 per hour teacher you started lessons with online a few months ago is just making you sit and repeat after them with no clear end goal (just never-ending lessons every week), and their methods aren't giving you the big leap in progress you genuinely WANT to see.
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Pronunciation is very difficult to correct by yourself without explicit, expert, human feedback. You KNOW this, a.
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Your ear adjusts to your own voice, so the sounds that feel right to you aren't always correct.

And how can you correct yourself when you don't know what the right way actually is?

It's also exactly why an AI app or a YouTube video is never going to fix your pronunciation for you.

Sure, they're free or cheap — great! But none of these things can REALLY hear you. They can't be picky and tell you exactly how to correctly position your mouth and tongue so you get the exact sounds of British English.
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a, I want to tell you about a student of mine called Yuliia (from Ukraine), because I think about her often since she graduated from The Pronunciation Hub a few months ago.

Her grammar and vocabulary were excellent (she's actually an English teacher too). But she had the same problems with her pronunciation as you and had tried everything else to improve before joining The Pronunciation Hub (this is my 6-month online British English pronunciation programme with over 2000 successful students and weekly human feedback on your pronunciation — not AI slop feedback).

What happened to her after she graduated from The Pronunciation Hub course genuinely still surprises me to this day and makes me feel SO proud of her.

I'll tell you the full story tomorrow about Yuliia and how she ended up being mistaken for a native speaker!

It's an incredible story.

Talk to you tomorrow,
Emma