The Center for Confident American English Communication

Everyone knows that speaking skills are one of the most important things that you need in the workplace. That applies to native and non native English speakers! Many people contact me for accent reduction coaching when they are preparing for a performance review (or often after a performance review). They want to improve their spoken

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It’s been awhile since I mentioned the Kelly brothers’ fantastic website for learning English called manythings.org. The site contains many audio lessons on English vocabulary, pronunciation, idioms and grammar. There are also some short video lessons here. Here is a link to the online pronunciation activities. These are great and free. Enjoy! Related posts Pronunciation

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Most non-native speakers of American English have problems articulating the two ‘th’ sounds that we use so frequently in spoken American English. Most of my clients including Spanish, Chinese and Indian language speakers pronounce the voiceless th as a /t/ sound and the voiced th as a /d/ sound. Since the ‘th’ sounds are used

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Students who are really motivated to improve the way they speak English should invest in some training. One way to do this is to buy an accent reduction book. There are several accent reduction books with CD’s that are very affordable. Here are some of the most popular choices: 1. For people who have never

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Two of the American English vowel sounds that non-native speakers frequently mispronounce are the /iy/ sound in the word sheep and the /I/ sound in the word ship. When non-native speakers (especially Spanish & Portuguese speakers) say the word cheap, it often sounds like chip. When they say the word seat, it sounds like sit.

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This week on the blog there have been a lot of you looking for information on American English intonation patterns. One of the best books for learning and practicing the rhythms and intonations of spoken American English is Ann Cook’s American Accent Training. American Accent Training includes a book plus 5 CDs that you can

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Here are two common idioms that you will hear when you are listening to people speak American English. Bring Home the Bacon In American English a person who brings home the bacon is the person who earns the money for the family to live on. For example, if my father works hard to support my

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Continuing on my theme of American English vowels I’m going to write briefly on the pronunciation of the vowel combination ou. This vowel combination can be pronounced 3 ways in American English. Here are some examples. ou can be pronounced like /oʊ/ shoulder soul though doughnut although ou can be pronounced like schwa /ə/ cousin

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Several of my students tell me that they have trouble understanding the spoken English of native speakers. This is not at all unusual. One reason that native English speakers are difficult to understand is because they often use reduced speech. When native speakers use reduced speech the words seem to run together and this can

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One fun and effective way to learn the rhythm of spoken English is to sing songs. In my pronunciation classes last year I used this website called KaraokeParty to teach American English songs to the students and they found that this was very helpful way to practice phrasing, linking and vowel lengthening. To find the

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