Welcome back! Have you checked out my Accent Reduction classes yet? One of my students this week had a breakthrough moment when she realized that American English speakers do not pronounce every word clearly and distinctly and that using relaxed speech or “weak forms” is absolutely OK!
In this text and audio from Voice of America [...]
Posts Tagged ‘american accent’
Improve Your American Accent with Relaxed Speech
American English Pronunciation-The Schwa Vowel Sound
Many of you have been asking me about the schwa vowel sound. Here is a brief description.
The schwa sound is the most common vowel sound in North American English. The schwa sounds like “uh”. It is pronounced with the mouth very relaxed. The IPA symbol for schwa is /ə/.
Below are some common words that have [...]
3 Success Strategies for Mastering American English Pronunciation
Take a look at my 3 strategies for improving your American English Pronunciation. This is short but sweet!
American English Pronunciation & Accent Reduction Books
My new favorite accent reduction book for intermediate to advanced students is called Mastering the American Accent, by Lisa Mojsin. I really like the organization of topics and the American English pronunciation exercises in this book.
One of my favorite American English pronunciation books for teachers are Teaching American English Pronunciation, by Peter Avery and Susan Ehrlich. You can read my [...]
American English Pronunciation Videos
I found some interesting American English pronunciation videos developed by Sozo Exchange. These are pronunciation videos of individual English words. First they model the articulation of the word and then they use the word in a sentence.
At this time only a few of the videos that I watched use the IPA to indicate stressed syllables and [...]
Pronunciation Glossary
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 that [...]
Accent Reduction Tip-The Dropped T Sound
English is not always pronounced the same way that it’s written and that is the cause of many pronunciation problems. One sound that American English speakers frequently drop is the /t/ sound.
The /t/ sound is often dropped after the /n/ sound in spoken American English. This is very natural and it helps speakers to pronounce clusters [...]
American English Pronunciation-How to Pronounce S & Z
The sounds of the letters S & Z are often confusing for students of American English pronunciation. Here are a few tips for pronouncing these sounds correctly.
Tongue position
The /s/ and /z/ sounds are made with the same tongue position. The tip of the tongue is behind your upper gum ridge. The tongue is pointed and [...]
American English Sentence Stress
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 important word
Content [...]
