To improve your pronunciation, you need to focus on:
a. the sounds of English;
b. syllable stress.
The sounds of English
If you are really, really serious about improving your pronunciation I urge you to become familiar with the phonemic chart.
It may take a while to master all 44 phonemes.
But once you do, you will have a clear understanding of the sounds that make up a word. You will be able to taste words!
Here is an excellent video about the phonemic chart. Highly recommended.
Syllable stress
Apart from being familiar with the sounds of English, you need to know about syllable stress.
I hear you ask: but, what is a syllable?
A syllable is a complete sound with a vowel sound in it.
A word can have one or more syllables. For example, in the word ‘syllable’ there are three syllables.
Next question: what is syllable stress? If there are two or more syllables in a word, then one word is stressed. For example, in the word syllable, the first syllable is stress:
syll / a / ble
In India, many people stress on the incorrect syllable.
For example, some Indians say: senTENCE. While the correct syllable stress should be: SENtence.
Here are some other common errors:
Indian UK/US
DEbate deBATE
tenDENcy TENdency
POtential poTENtial
For more on commonly mispronounced words by Indians, check out these videos:
amalfabian 