I often see comments on Reddit like:

“I’ve been shadowing for 30 days, but I don’t feel like my accent is improving.”

Or:

“I’ve been practicing for three months. Why am I barely seeing any results?”

I recently recorded a longer voice note about this for my Telegram broadcast, where I share quick lessons, pronunciation tips, and thoughts on how accent improvement actually works.

And if you’ve been practicing your English pronunciation without seeing the progress you expected, here are six questions I’d want you to ask yourself.

1. What exactly are you trying to improve?

Are you working on a specific sound, stress pattern, intonation feature, or aspect of connected speech?

Or are you simply shadowing and hoping your accent will gradually improve?

More practice isn't necessarily better practice.

If your focus changes every day, you may not be getting enough repetition to actually build a new pronunciation habit.

Start by identifying one specific thing you want to change and give it enough focused practice.

2. How advanced are you?

Progress isn't linear.

When you're making bigger changes early in your accent journey, you may notice improvements relatively quickly. As you get closer to your goal, the changes can become much smaller and harder to notice.

So if progress feels slow, consider whether you're actually stuck—or whether you're simply at a stage where improvements are more subtle. You can read more about this in this blog post.

3. Can you actually produce what you're practicing?

If you're working on the American R, for example, can you consistently produce the sound correctly?

And have you had feedback from someone who can reliably hear the difference?

This is important because repeating an incorrect version hundreds of times won't turn it into the sound you're aiming for.

Before doing more repetitions, make sure you're practicing the right target.

4. Are you practicing at the right level?

Maybe you can produce the sound correctly in isolation.

Great.

But can you do it in a word?

A short sentence?

A longer sentence?

A specific combination of words?

A conversation?

Your practice needs to match where the difficulty actually is.

If you can already produce a sound perfectly in individual words, spending most of your time practicing individual words isn't going to move you forward very much.

Find the point where the new pronunciation starts to break down—and practice there. If you have my Accent Training Companion Course, take the quiz to find out which level you are at in the sound you are currently working on.

5. How long have you been speaking English?

Your current accent isn't just a collection of sounds. It's a collection of well-established habits.

If you've been speaking English for 10 or 15 years using the same pronunciation patterns, those habits have had a lot of time to become automatic.

That doesn't mean you can't change them.

It means you may need more deliberate practice and patience than someone who is catching these patterns earlier in their English-learning journey.

6. Is your routine sustainable?

You don't need to practice for hours every day.

In fact, I'd rather see you do 5–15 minutes of focused practice consistently than create a two-hour routine that you abandon after two weeks.

Ask yourself:

“What can I realistically keep doing for the next year?”

Five or ten minutes might not feel significant today.

But consistent, targeted practice over months and years can create meaningful change.

And by the way, we typically recommend spending 10-15 minutes/day doing targeted practice, so practicing for hours per day really isn't necessary.

The goal isn't to practice more. It's to practice more intentionally.

So if you've been shadowing, repeating, or studying pronunciation for months without seeing the results you want, don't automatically conclude that accent training doesn't work.

Instead, step back and ask:

What am I practicing?
Am I practicing it correctly?
Am I practicing at the right level?
And can I sustain this routine long enough to let the changes become automatic?

Sometimes the missing piece isn't more practice.

It's a better understanding of what to practice, how to practice it, and when to move on.

You've got this!

-Accent Coach Jess

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Full transparency: This article was AI-summarized from my most recent audio drop in my Telegram group, where I share quick lessons, pronunciation tips, and thoughts on how accent improvement actually works.