The Center for Confident American English Communication

Last week, I was working on vowel sound articulation with one of my accent reduction coaching students. We were working on the tense /iy/ sound in the words feet & leave and the lax /I/ sound in the words fit & live. My student, a project manager at an international communications company, said “but Susan,

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When Americans speak they divide longer sentences into sections called thought groups. In each thought group we emphasize the focus word and then briefly pause before the next thought group begins. Many non-native English speakers have never learned to use thought groups when they speak English. For some people this causes their speech too sound

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Last week I had many visitors here on the blog from Singapore. Thanks for visiting, I’m happy that you’ve found my site! Keeping in mind that Singaporeans come from many language backgrounds, here are a few problems that Singaporean English speakers often have when they speak American English. Syllable Structure and Stress American English pronunciation

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When Americans speak they divide longer sentences into phrases called “thought groups”. Within each thought group we emphasize the content words, giving special stress to the focus word. After the focus word we pause briefly before the next thought group begins. Many non-native English speakers fail to use thought groups when they speak English. For

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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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Using songs is an effective and fun way to improve your spoken English. This is a fun and energizing way to improve both listening and pronunciation. One thing that I like to do in my American English pronunciation classes is sing popular songs with the students. This helps them with English rhythm, linking and intonation.

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I would like to give a special welcome to all the Filipinos who visit my blog every day in order to find tips and techniques that will help them improve their American English pronunciation. I know that you are highly motivated to learn! Here are four common pronunciation problems for Filipinos: 1. Vowels need to

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I get a lot of questions from people about the reduced speech forms that they hear when they listen to American English conversations. Examples include: gonna, wanna and hafta. Here is a link to Nina Weinstein’s Voice of America episode on reduced speech. Nina is the author of the book Whaddaya Say. You can see

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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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Those of you who read my blog frequently know that using syllable stress correctly is one of the very best ways to improve your comprehensibility when you speak English.  That said, here are a few syllable stress patterns for compound words that you may find useful. Compound nouns are stressed on the first word in

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