How long does it take to reduce your accent? People ask me this all the time. There is no easy answer. It really depends on a variety of factors. These include: 1. Your Listening Skills You must be able to hear the difference between the sounds and patterns in your native language and the sounds
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One of the most frequent questions that people ask about accent reduction is: ‘how long will it take me to reduce my accent?” Here is my response to that very important question. Most people will never sound like a native American English speaker, but everyone is capable of reducing their accent and making their speech
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Over the past 6 months I’ve been very busy with one-on-one accent reduction coaching, so I have not been conducting any group accent reduction classes. If you are interested in taking an online accent reduction class, follow the link below to see a great course taught by a talented and very experienced instructor. The American
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In my accent reduction coaching program I work with many South Asian or Indian language speakers. In the program I address the specific American English pronunciation problems of Indian language speakers. Course participants learn the following accent reduction techniques: How to use syllable stress correctly so that Americans will understand you How to pronounce the
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American English has about 15 different vowel sounds. Some of these vowel sounds are particularly difficult for Koreans to pronounce. These include the /iy/ sound and the /ae/ sound. Koreans often pronounce /I/ vowel sound as in the words sit, still, & live more like the /iy/ vowel sounds in the words seat, steal &
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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
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Many professional people need to learn to speak with an American accent quickly in order to do their jobs better. This article from the New York Times explains how some non-native English speaking professionals are using speech coaches to improve their spoken English. Many of the coaches are trained in drama techniques and they use
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Many people don’t realize that the past tense “ed” has three different sounds in spoken American English. These sounds are /d/ as in the word loved, /ed/ as in the word wanted, and /t/ as in the word stopped. Correct pronunciation of these grammatical endings is extremely important if you want to improve your American English
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When you take a pronunciation or accent reduction class your instructor will teach you lots of new vocabulary to explain the pronunciation features that you must learn. Here is a mini pronunciation glossary with words that I taught the students in my accent reduction classes this month. 1. Reduced speech-The relaxed pronunciation of commonly used words and phrases
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When Americans talk they stress the CONTENT and FOCUS words in a sentence. That’s because these words are the most important for sentence meaning. English speakers will reduce the function words in a sentence because these words are not key to meaning. In spoken American English each sentence or phrase contains: A Focus word-the most
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