The Center for Confident American English Communication

As an accent reduction coach who works with many international professionals, I understand that one of the most confusing aspects of spoken English is not always the ability to say a sound…. …it’s often the lack of uniformity between spelling and sounds. This is especially true for American vowel sounds. When I work with my clients,

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When it comes to American English pronunciation, one common problem is the letter A. Why is the letter A so problematic? Well…. When you are speaking American English, the letter A has three sounds; /ae/ as in black, /ey/ as in  grey and /ə/ as in mustard. In my work teaching the American accent to international

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Here is an accent reduction tip for Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese speakers. American English has about 15 vowel sounds. These 15  sounds include several pairs of vowels which are pronounced with your lips and tongue in approximately the same position, but where one vowel sound is considered “tense” and the other is “lax”. For tense

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The Merriam-Webster Learner’s Dictionary online has a great interactive component titled Perfect Pronunciation. This section has lots of American English pronunciation exercises that you can use to learn and practice your spoken American English. There are exercises on contrasting vowel sounds, syllable stress, homophones and sentence stress. There’s even a short exercise on the syllabic

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The Color Vowel Chart is an excellent visual tool that you can use to learn or TEACH the 15 vowels sounds in North American English. 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

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If you are a Korean speaker who is trying to reduce your accent, here are 2 TIPS for you. These tips have to do with American vowel sounds. American English has 15 different vowel sounds. Some of these vowel sounds are particularly difficult for Koreans to pronounce. Difficult sounds for Koreans include: the /ı/ sound

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I work with many Spanish speakers in my accent reduction coaching course. A common word that they have trouble pronouncing is the word problem. The reason is this. The O in the the word problem does not sound like the O as in no or go. This O sounds like the A in the word

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The Roman alphabet has five vowel letters;  a, e, i, o, & u… ….but in spoken American English there are approximately 15 vowel sounds. Linguists and many pronunciation teachers use phonetic symbols to represent these 15 sounds. Dictionaries and pronunciation books do not all use the same phonetic symbols. However, each will have a symbol key that explains the

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Let’s talk about the schwa + r sound. Here is the symbol → /ɚ/ Schwa + /r/ is very common sound in spoken American English! The letter combinations or, er, ur & ir often have the /ɚ/ sound. Here are some common words that end with this sound. doctor future water computer dollar honor Although

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During my accent reduction tutoring sessions I frequently see students hesitate when they come across  words that are spelled with ough. And no wonder! This letter combination has many different sounds in spoken American English. Here are * examples of the most frequent sounds of ough. /u:/ as in through (sounds like blue) /ɔːt/ as

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