The Center for Confident American English Communication

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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In my recent poll on problematic situations for speaking English, voters ✔ said that SOCIALIZING was really difficult. Here is one great TIP that you can use to make your social language sound friendly and engaging. When making statements of agreement use rising falling intonation. Rise up and then fall down on the focus word (usually the

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Perhaps you have heard people say that intonation is the melody or the music ♬ of spoken American English. Spoken English sounds melodic because English speakers use different types of intonation or pitch patterns when saying phrases and sentences. These intonation patterns are extremely important to use because they convey meaning. ✔ If you are

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In the news recently, there have been some interesting articles about language and accent. In a recent article on goats and accents (YES, GOATs!), one study found that developing the right accent serves an important purpose for the goats. “These accents allow them (the goats) to recognize who’s from their group and who’s not from

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Do you ever feel like people misinterpret your meaning when you speak with them in American English? Have people commented that your speech sounds blunt, flat or even unfriendly? This type of miscommunication often happens to non native speakers. In order to change this, you need to learn how to use American English intonation patterns. So,

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North American English speakers speak in phrases. In pronunciation and accent reduction classes you will hear these phrases referred to as thought groups or intonation groups. Thought groups are sequences of words that have one prominent word. This is called a content word or a focus word. Thought groups are set off by short pauses

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In spoken English we stress the most important words in a sentence or phrase. Many pronunciation books refer to these as  content words and focus words. Content words are usually key nouns or verbs. Since they are important to the meaning of a sentence they are said a bit louder and longer than other words.

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Every day, people from around the world visit my American English pronunciation blog. Hello everyone! I’m very pleased to “see you” and I value your visits! ☼ Many of you blog readers email me to ask questions about spoken English. ….one topic you are very curious about is American English intonation patterns. GOOD QUESTION!! Let’s

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Lots of people stop by my blog each day to find information about American English intonation patterns. Here in the U.S. we use several types of intonation patterns when we speak. These include; rising-falling intonation, rising intonation, continuation rise, series intonation and tag question intonation. In order to use intonation patterns correctly, you need to:

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Intonation refers to the rise and fall of pitch in spoken language. Intonation patterns convey meaning and emotion so it’s important to use these correctly. If you are trying to improve your American English speaking and communication skills you must learn to use the correct types of intonation. The most common type of intonation in

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