The Center for Confident American English Communication

One tricky word that many of my accent reduction clients have trouble pronouncing is the word ‘machine’. The first syllable is reduced and the ‘a’ has a schwa vowel sound. The second syllable is stressed and the ‘i’ has an /iy/ sound as in ‘green’. Here it is in a sentence. Stressed syllables are capitalized-

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I have been publishing a nice series of American English pronunciation articles at EzineAritcles. These articles explain some of the most common problems that people have with spoken English and they have been very popular with Ezine readers! You can read all of my fourteen articles on American English pronunciation or subscribe to receive them

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Cincinnati Children’s Hospital has developed an on site accent reduction program. That way employees don’t have to go off-campus or pay expensive tuition at local universities or private schools for such training. Participation is voluntary, however participants must pay about $2,300 to cover materials, software and equipment.  The most common issue for participants is that they’re imposing

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Yoko Matsuka, a veteran English instructor from Japan who specializes in phonics for younger learners says that it’s waste of time to pursue “perfect English pronunciation,” a goal that has long distracted parents in Korea. “There is no such thing as perfect English accent,” she said. Even native English speakers have a wide range of

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Nashville, Tennessee councilman Eric Crafton hopes to make Nashville the largest city in the United States to prohibit the government from using languages other than English, (exceptions would be allowed for health and safety issues).  The proposal has drawn criticism from the Mayor, civil rights groups, business leaders, ministers, university professors and immigration experts. Leaders say that the

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Actors are often called to use an American accent in their roles on stage and film and this can be very difficult. Tanera Marshall, assistant professor of performing arts at the University of Illinois, has been a dialect coach for actors from a variety of countries. In this article she gives specific advice on how actors

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Immigrant professionals are taking classes at the University of Minnesota to improve their accents and communication skills. The director of the program says, ”We as Americans tend to make some judgments and assumptions about people’s credibility, their expertise and their education based on how we perceive them communicating,”  Participants understand that as adult learners they will

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