The Center for Confident American English Communication

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

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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

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A couple of people have emailed me this week to ask about American English Audio courses that they can buy and listen to in their car. While audio courses are not nearly as effective as accent reduction coaching (that’s because you don’t get the feedback that you need) they do provide opportunities for learning and

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I spend most of my time teaching one on one accent reduction courses to non native American English speakers. (Posting on my blog is just a hobby.) I call this “accent reduction coaching” and I teach primarily over Skype video. In my course I teach you the syllable stress rules, linking rules, intonation patterns and

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Accent reduction instructors like to say that “T is for Trouble”. That’s because the letter T has several different sounds when you are speaking American English. The American T is one consonant that most of my accent reduction coaching clients need help with. Listen to this great story on Voice of America’s Special English to

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People often send me email messages in the middle of the night. Why is this? It’s because they had a communication problem at work. This communication problem is bothering them so much that they can’t sleep. So they are up in the middle of the night, searching the internet for a solution. They know that

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Since the Korean language does not use syllable stress or word stress within sentences, most Korean speakers have a tendency to speak English with a flat or monotone sound. This makes it difficult for native English speakers to understand what they are saying. Native English speakers expect to hear prominent syllables and words when they

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After five years of living and teaching pronunciation and accent reduction in Washington, DC, I am now located in beautiful Delray Beach in South Florida. Many of my clients from the DC area continue to work with me via Skype video lessons. So, if you live in South Florida or the Washington, DC metro area,

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I always tell my accent reduction coaching clients that they must listen to American English if they want to improve their accents. Focused listening is a key part of accent improvement! One way to listen is to use the Voice of America’s Special English Broadcast. One of my clients from Madagascar uses the VOA all

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Chinese speakers of English often have difficulty pronouncing the /ng/ sound in words such as:  sing, wrong, evening, & going.  Many Chinese speakers substitute the /n/ sound for the /ng/ sound. The /ng/ sound is a voiced, nasal sound. To articulate this sound you must raise the back of your tongue to the soft palate

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