One of the issue with English language pronunciation for Thai people is /sh/ and /ch/ vowels because we have only one sound in Thai consonants for both vowels. When I was in school, teachers usually taught us to voice English words by mixing Thai consonants and vowels. I have never been taught pronunciation as in real English. Therefore, at times we may have wrongly pronounced some words without knowing because we believe that this is the right way to read those words.
For me, I used to think that /sh/ and /ch/ have the same pronunciation. If I read this sentence ‘Cheap sheep eats chips on a ship’ , some people might get confused because it may sound like ‘Sheap sheep eat ships on a ship’ ?!? However, I’ve known about this when I was in Australia for English language studying. At that time I was trying to practice the pronunciation but I have been still struggling to differentiate those 2 sounds since then.
At my company, we currently have English class for Thai staffs and my class has pronunciation lesson which came to this /sh/ and /ch/ sounds. I am trying to understand what difference between those sounds and then read them out loud. It is quite difficult which these 2 sounds also act as a final consonant eg. watching television is different from washing my clothes.
So the way to practice this pronunciation is to read something like this out loud and hope that other people can understand.
‘I am watching television while washing my cloth with pattern as cheap sheep eats chips on a ship.’ (-_-“)