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Accent Reduction for Chinese Speakers

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Chinese students seeking to study in the United States often have the money and the reading & writing skills that they need. What they lack are good spoken English skills. University bound students need advanced linguistic skills that will enable them to participate in discussions and seminar-type settings.

What happens to the brain when you hear an accent

This article from the journal, Scientific American, describes some current research on how the human brain reacts when it hears a foreign accent. Do you think that speaking with a strong accent reduces your credibility? Research indicates that speaking with an accent that is difficult to understand, reduce one’s credibility in the eyes and ears

Why Th is so difficult to pronounce

Do you ever wonder why the voiced and voiceless TH sounds are so difficult for non native English speakers to pronounce? Here’s a very interesting article from The Economist that explains the historical-geographical reasons for this problem. Indeed the dental fricatives, as they’re known, are rare, existing in European languages today only in languages on

Accent Reduction & Listening

Over the weekend I was working on vowel sound articulation with one of my accent reduction coaching clients. We were working on the difference between the /iy/ sound in the words feet & leave and the /I/ sound as in the words fit & live. My client, a project manager at an international communications company,

Pronouncing Consonant Clusters

Here’s a great question that I received from one of my accent reduction clients this week. Q: I have trouble pronouncing words that contain groups of consonants. Why is this and what can I do to change this? A: American English has lots of consonant clusters, groups of 2 or 3 consonants that occur together

The Power of American English Pronunciation & Accent Training

Here is a great story about the power of pronunciation and accent reduction classes- Foreign born scholars at the University of California at Berkeley may have PhD’s but they found that spoken American English is a very tricky subject. Before the class, few of the scholars knew what their specific English pronunciation problems were. They

Two American English Intonation Patterns

Intonation refers to the rise and fall of pitch in spoken language. Intonation patterns convey meaning and emotion so it’s important to use these correctly. If you are trying to improve your American English speaking and communication skills you must learn to use the correct types of intonation. The most common type of intonation in

USA Today: Pronunciation & Accent Reduction Classes

An article published today in USA Today reports that more people are taking lessons and classes on how to improve their American English pronunciation. Accent reduction can be controversial because one’s accent is part of their identity. We all know that there is nothing wrong with an accent because we all have one. However, for

American English Spelling & Pronunciation

Do you ever feel like the English spelling system does not match the sounds of spoken American English? It seems that way doesn’t it? English spelling is the way that words are written using the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet. Since English is not a phonetic language there is not always a one-on-one relationship

American English Vowel Sounds-How Can You Tell the Difference?

Last week, I was working on vowel sound articulation with one of my accent reduction coaching students. We were working on the tense /iy/ sound in the words feet & leave and the lax /I/ sound in the words fit & live. My student, a project manager at an international communications company, said “but Susan,

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