In spoken American English the schwa (see the image above right) is the relaxed vowel sound that is frequently used for vowel sounds in unstressed syllables.

The schwa sound is made with your tongue in a relaxed position in the center of your mouth. It sounds like “uh”. Now the next part here is very important!

Any vowel can sound like a schwa when it occurs in an unstressed syllable.

Here a a few words that begin with the schwa vowel sound. Since the first syllable in these words is unstressed, the vowel sound is a schwa or ‘uh’.

allow
ahead
around
evaluate
object
offend
unlock
understand

The schwa sound is the most common vowel sound in English. Pronouncing this vowel correctly will help you improve the way you communicate with American English listeners because it will improve the rhythm of your speech.

I teach you how to use the schwa vowel sound so that you can speak English more effectively in my Skype accent reduction course.

Or, if you want to learn from a book check out these excellent and affordable American English pronunciation books.

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

In order to pronounce these correctly, it’s important that you insert a schwa vowel sound before the /r/ sound. This will give your vowel sound enough length and it will make your R sound very clear.

This site on American English phonics features a nice page on R colored vowels including; or, ar, er & ier.

Check it out here-American English phonics

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

What?

It’s true. The reason is this- in American English there is not a one-on-one relationship between letters in the alphabet and spoken sounds.

Think about it…do you find yourself wondering why…

• the letter S often soundz like a /z/?
• the letter T often soundz like a /d/?
• the letter O often soundz like an /ɑ/?

You aren’t crazy! Many American English words are not pronounced the way you think they should based on spelling.

Some of the key concepts that I teach my accent reduction coaching clients are the rules for the various pronunciations of the letters S, T & O. Knowing these rules helps them to reduce their accents and communicate more clearly.

For example: I typically find that my accent reduction clients are not aware of the schwa vowel sound. This is the reduced vowel sound found in many unstressed syllables.

However, once they learn about the schwa sound in their accent reduction lessons they begin to notice and hear the schwa sound everywhere. Once they hear how frequent the schwa sound is, they realize how important it is for achieving a more natural American English sound.

Accent improvement starts from focused listening for new sounds and patterns. Once you raise your consciousness of the way that American English sounds and patterns are different from the sounds of your own language, you will begin to listen in a whole new way.

One great book that you can use to listen to and learn American English sounds and patterns, including the schwa sound  is called Pronunciation Pairs.

This book and CD set teaches you American English vowel and consonant sounds as well as syllable stress, sentence stress and intonation patterns. The book has some excellent activities for the schwa vowel sound!

You can take a peek inside the book by clicking on the link below.
Pronunciation Pairs Student’s Book with Audio CD

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

You can use the exercises in Perfect Pronunciation to practice difficult vowel sounds and consonant sounds.

You can also use it to practice syllable stress and sentence stress.

Merriam-Webster’s Perfect Pronunciation

Dropping word final sounds both contributes to your accent and creates grammatical errors that will confuse American listeners.

Keep in mind that word final S has 3 sounds in spoken English. In the word boys the S has a voiced /z/ sound. In the word washes the S has a voiced /ez/ sound. In the word stops the S has a voiceless /s/ sound.

Voicing is important in American English because vowels that occur before a voiced sound get extra length when you are speaking.

In my accent reduction coaching sessions I have found that my Chinese and Spanish speaking clients often have these type of pronunciation problems.

There are several great accent reduction books that you can use to learn these techniques. My favorite book for self study is called Mastering the American Accent.

In the past two posts I wrote about syllable stress and the duration of vowel sounds. Today I will write about voiced and voiceless consonant sounds.

Using voiceless consonant sounds instead of voiced consonant sounds at the end of words will contribute to your accent. Here is what happens-

Non native English speakers frequently pronounce the word final /g/ as a /k/ so that the word dog sound like dock. Or they pronounce the word final /z/ as /s/ so that the word peas sounds like peace.

Learning to used voiced consonants at the end of words (and lengthening the vowel sounds that come before these) will help you avoid these types of mistakes and reduce your accent.

Tomorrow I will finish this series by talking about sound substitution.

When you are speaking English you must lengthen the vowel sounds that occur in stressed syllables. You must also lengthen vowels that occur before voiced consonant sounds such as /z/ and /d/.

Many non native speakers say the vowel sounds in stressed syllables and before voiced consonants in a short manner. Doing  that it will make your speech sound choppy to American listeners.

You can read more about vowel length on my post titled: Voiced & Voiceless Sounds in American English.

There are a number of factors that contribute to accented speech. In my posts over the next few days I am going to describe five factors that may be causing you to have an accent when you speak American English.

Today I will talk about syllable stress and intonation.

People typically use the stress and intonation patterns from their native language when they speak American English. Since your native language uses stress and intonation differently than we do in English this will be one of most important factors that contribute to your accent.

Using the wrong intonation and syllable stress patterns  make your speech may sound too choppy, too fast or too flat. Learning how to speak using American English syllable stress and intonation patterns will really help you to reduce your accent sound more American.

Professor Marianne Celce Murcia, co author of Teaching Pronunciation, found that students studying American English need a balance of both sound lessons and stress and intonation lessons in order to increase their comprehensibility.

You must learn the consonant and vowel sounds. But, you must also learn the rhythm of the American English if you want to communicate more clearly and effectively.

Here is a link to the online pronunciation activities. These are great and free. Enjoy!