Hi Serenade!
I like to use the Online Free Dictionary. It's great coz every word has a sound file. In that way, you can always check words that look foreign to you. Otherwise, there's always IPA to fall back on.
When I was in NIE, we had a class called Use of English in Teaching. It was a lot of fun for me. Basically, the teacher trainees attended the lesson to enunciate! I never had such fun since pri school language lab lessons.
We got really funny words to pronounce. Maybe I can still find the book, if you'd like to see it. It must be in Sg, somewhere.
Also, everyday, we got to draw lots to practise "preaching" to our kids on petty issues, e.g. how to tell someone not to pull another's hair. Fun, right? I know you'd be one to enjoy such a class!
At the end of the term, we had to do a test. And this was the best part, we all went into the language lab and had ourselves recorded for the test! Great! My tutor was a retired Eurasian teacher, while the lady in charge of the module used to be some stage actress and sometimes, she does diction correction for TCS English shows.
I had my fair share of blunders too. But hanging around friends with international background during my school days and with a foreign language background did open horizon for me. Hee... my bro just tested me the last time i was back in Sg. He asked me how one should pronounce the word "Warwick". I told him to drop the "w", it's silent. But such things are very British. Staying in GB for a period of time would help or if you have Bristish friends.
One thing I do realise though: An American slang is generally more welcoming than the Queen's Eng. At least in Europe, you get around. Also to know the right vocab and knowing what to anticipate in a conversation. The AMericans and the British say things that aren't usually common to our ears.
Hee... the French way of pronouncing Paris, thanks to the German I've been doing, I've been made aware of that. In fact, my German prof always pronounce the French words in French, e.g. Renaissance, femme fatale etc...
And the trick with French is not to pronounce the ending unless there's an accent and the intonation goes up. Oui? But there's liaison, making French so difficult to decipher to the foreign ears.