I especially like the series titled Words and Their Stories. This series has stories with idioms, phrasal verbs and stories that describe American culture.

Keep this in mind though: the narrators who read the audio tend to speak a bit slowly. You won’t always hear the linking and reduced sounds that you would in conversational American English.

To read related information on American English pronunciation click on the links below. The 0 means closed for comments.

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 practice.

Once you know what features of American English are important for you to learn and practice, audio courses are helpful.

I have links to two audio courses in the Resources section on this page. The second one listed, Best Accent Training, has a combination of lessons on consonant sounds, vowel sounds, stress, liking and basic intonation patterns.

The American Accent Audio course focuses on more advanced intonation patterns.

Both come with downloadable text files that you can use to follow along (don’t do that in your car though).

To read related posts on this topic click on the links below. The 0 means closed for comments.

The hard copies of the chart are really nice; colorful and laminated with color words and IPA symbols. There are teaching activities you can use on the back of the chart.

The online version has audio. I use both the hard copies and the online version with my accent reduction clients. The chart helps them articulate and remember their problem vowel sounds.

The Color Vowel Chart

American English pronunciation teachers can order the poster to hang in their office or classroom.

To read related posts on this topic click on the links below. The 0 means closed for comments.

The archive contains 1,500 recordings of people from around the world reading the same paragraph in English. There are recordings of both native English speakers and non native English speakers along with their age, gender and country of origin.

I started using the tool when I taught English pronunciation in Washington, DC. It helped me to learn more about the accents of my students.

These days, the tool is used around the world by pronunciation and accent teachers, linguists and others.

Click here to listen an English language audio story about the Speech Accent Archive from the VOA.

To read related posts on this topic click on the links below. The 0 means closed for comments.

• HOMEwork
• WEEKend
• AIRport
• PASSport
• PRINTout (noun)

This is an easy rule to follow. Most of my accent reduction students are able to pronounce compound nouns correctly they learn the rule and get a bit of practice.

One thing that they don’t always do though, is raise the pitch on the first syllable. It’s important to do that. You must increase both the volume and the pitch in order to get that “American” sound.

Here’s a great audio story from the VOA on pronouncing compound words in American English.

To read related information on American English pronunciation click on the links below. The 0 means closed for comments.

Examples of commonly used phrasal verbs include:

• break up
• take off
• turn it on
• work out

Here is a great audio story on American English phrasal verbs from the Voice of America.

Pronouncing phrasal verbs

To read related posts on this topic click on the links below. The 0 means closed for comments.

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 the time. He says that it’s a great way to listen to American English pronunciation and learn world news at the same time.

If you are really serious about improving your American English accent you should investigate options for accent reduction coaching. This service is provided via Skype video and it’s the most personal and effective way to reduce your accent.

To read related posts on this topic click on the links below. The 0 means closed for comments.

This dictionary even has dialogs that you can listen to. That means that you hear each idiom used by American English speakers in context.

American Idiom Dictionary with Audio

Listening to dialogs is a great way to practice your awareness of American English sounds and patterns!

The speakers speak rather slowly though. Don’t expect American English speakers to speak at this pace!

Here is a link to the site-http://englishspeak.com/

It you are serious about improving your vocabulary you may want to check out Rocet Vocabulary. This course is especially good for TOEFL and IELTS practice.

The Rocet Vocabulary video classes are funny and entertaining. This helps students to clearly remember the vocabulary.

You will learn English vocabulary from the list of 5000 most common words and expressions!