American English Pronunciation and Accent Reduction

How to pronounce the /dʒ/ sound

Many of my Spanish. Arabic and French speaking accent reduction students have problems pronouncing the /dʒ/ sound. The /dʒ/ is an affricate sound. Click on affricate to see how the sound is pronounced here on the University of Iowa Fonetiks website. Here are a few words with the /dʒ/ sound. judge joke adjust manager budget educate exaggerate college Thanks to

Phonemic Converter

Here are two online tools that you can use to convert regular text into IPA or American Phonetic Alphabet symbols. The first one is nice because each sound symbol has an audio component. http://theaccentlab.com/ I also like the one below because it shows which syllable is stressed. When it comes to spoken English, stress is

Intonation & Chunks of Speech

Do you think that spoken English should be learned word by word? Or do you think that it’s better to learn speaking using chunks or phrases? I like to teach individual words according to their syllable stress patterns and primary vowel sounds. That helps my students and clients be better understood right away. However, I also like to teach chunks

How to clearUP BREAKdowns in communication

One very useful American English pronunciation tip I give my clients is this- When a conversation breaks down, think about the most important word in your message. This is called the focus word. Repeat that word again. But this time be careful to lengthen the main vowel in that word. Use a slightly higher pitch

My American English Pronunciation Tips

If you learned some new American English pronunciation and accent reduction tips here on my blog why not add this blog to your bookmarks? That way you can refer to it more often AND you can help me out. Bookmarking tells the powers at Google and Yahoo that you find my information valuable. By the

Accent Reduction Audio Courses

I know that many of you are planning to improve your American English in 2012. You may be looking for a good American accent audio course. I’ve bought and used two of these courses… so let me tell you about them. The first one that I recommend is called Best Accent Training. I like this

Learn Syllable Stress Patterns

Learning American English syllable stress patterns can be problematic if you don’t know the patterns. Here are two patterns that are fairly common: In words ending with the suffixes ion, ity, ic, ical, ian, ial, tion & ious we typically stress the FIRST syllable BEFORE the suffix. inVAsion fanTAStic fiNANcial GLORious In words ending with

How to Improve Flat Speech

Many of my accent reduction coaching clients have told me that native speakers often comment that their speech is too “flat”. It’s true. Many non native speakers do sound flat and monotonous. The American listener prefers to hear some vocal variety when others are speaking. So, what can you do to speak with a varied

Medical English Pronunciation

In my accent reduction coaching course I often work with international doctors and other medical personnel. I help them learn and improve many aspects of American English pronunciation, including the following: Syllable stress in words like: antibOtics, radiOLogy and HOspital. Stress in phrasal verbs such as: checkIN, checkOUT and lookOVer. Intonation patterns in statements and

Short Lessons on Sentence Stress

When it comes to spoken English, all words are not equal. What I mean is this: some words are stressed or emphasized. Other words are not. Most English pronunciation textbooks refer to stressed words as content words. Content words are typically key nouns, verbs and adjectives. Unstressed words are referred to as function words. Function

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