The Center for Confident American English Communication

If you are a Chinese speaker who is working to improve your American English pronunciation, you may have found that you’re having trouble with your /l/ & /n/ sounds. Don’t worry!! This is a very common problem & you can fix it. ✔ The /n/ & /l/ sounds are articulated in almost the same manner.

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Speaking English too quickly can contribute to your foreign accent!! Many of my accent reduction coaching clients have a habit of speaking English with a very fast pace. This is often true of Spanish speakers, Brazilian speakers and speakers of Indian languages. When I ask them why they speak so fast, many of them say,

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In my work as an accent reduction coach, I understand why many of you hesitate to use contractions when you speak. ☹ You were told that contractions are too informal. However….if you want your English to sound smoother and more American, you should definitely use contractions when you speak! ☝ Why should you use contractions

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Do you ever wonder why your accent is so difficult for Americans to understand? The people who I work with every week in my accent reduction coaching program know that their colleagues don’t always understand them. But they don’t know exactly WHY their spoken English is difficult for others to understand. Here is something that

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One of the most important English pronunciation skills that I teach my clients is how to use syllable stress. For those of you who are just beginning to improve your pronunciation, here are 3 easy rules that you can use to apply syllable stress correctly when you speak.   1. Compound nouns are stressed on

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This is Part 3 of my series that describes why you have an accent when you speak American English. In the past two posts I wrote about the importance of syllable stress and lengthening vowel sounds. You may want to go back and read those posts if you haven’t done that already. ☛ Today I’ll

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This week I am writing a series of posts that describe WHY you have an accent when you speak American English. Yesterday I wrote about syllable stress. You should read that post NOW if you missed it yesterday. Today I’ll talk about the importance of lengthening ⇒  certain vowel sounds. There are 2 rules I

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To start out the New Year, I’m going to write a series of 4 posts to answer the question: Why do I have an accent when I speak American English? There are a number of factors that contribute to accented speech. Over the next few days I’ll describe 5 factors that may be causing YOU

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In my accent reduction coaching course I work with international professionals from China, Turkey, France, India, New Zealand and Japan. Most of my clients have told me that they sometimes have a difficult time understanding the American accent. ✔ Do you ever have that problem? ☹ What does the American accent sound like to you?

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Many American English pronunciation courses teach you how to articulate the individual vowel & consonant sounds. Some of these are: /ɛ/, /ǝ/, /æ/ & /ð/. Learning to articulate vowel and consonant sounds correctly is very, very useful and will help you say words more clearly.✔ However, learning to use American English stress and intonation patterns

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