The Center for Confident American English Communication

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Chinese students seeking to study in the United States often have the money to do so. What they lack are spoken English skills. University bound students need advanced linguistic skills that will enable them to participate in discussions and seminar-type settings. Chinese speakers who want to speak English

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Chinese speakers of English often have difficulty pronouncing the /ng/ sound in words such as:  sing, wrong, evening, & going.  Many Chinese speakers substitute the /n/ sound for the /ng/ sound. The /ng/ sound is a voiced, nasal sound. To articulate this sound you must raise the back of your tongue to the soft palate

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Many non-native English speakers sound “choppy” when they speak American English. Choppy rhythm can create accented speech that is difficult for native speakers to listen to. One effective accent reduction technique you can use to correct choppy speech is to use linking. American English speakers link many words together, especially the smaller function words. Linking creates

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In my accent reduction coaching program I work with many South Asian or Indian language speakers. In the program I address the specific American English pronunciation problems of Indian language speakers. Course participants learn the following accent reduction techniques: How to use syllable stress correctly so that Americans will understand you How to pronounce the

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Many non-native English speakers including Chinese, Vietnamese & Spanish speakers have a tendency to drop word final consonants such as the S in words such as: boys, washes and stops. 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

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This week I’ve had many visits from Chinese speakers who are trying to improve their English pronunciation skills. There are many techniques one can use but with so many aspects of pronunciation to learn, what is the best place to start? Learning to use syllable stress is one of the most effective techniques that Chinese

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If you are a Chinese speaker you may have found that Americans don’t always understand your pronunciation. Here is one accent reduction tip you can use to help. Pronounce your voiced final consonant sounds more clearly. In American English some of the most common voiced consonant sounds are: /b/,/d/, /g/, /ð/,/z/, /r/, /m/, & /n/. You need

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Can you totally eliminate your native accent and speak like an “American”? The answer is probably not. However, you can modify your accent so that people can understand you much more easily. An accent reduction coach can teach you to modify the features of your current pronunciation that contribute most strongly to your accent. For

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One of my very observant students from India wrote to ask why the word “it” sounds different in a sentence than it does when you say it alone. Here is my response: When we say the word “it” in a sentence the sound of the T changes. The location of the T within a word

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When  American English speakers converse informally with friends and family they often use informal pronunciation patterns. Pronunciation and accent reduction books refer to this type of language as “reduced speech”. Reduced speech usually involves using the schwa vowel sound /ə/ for the vowels in reduced syllables. Here are a few examples: want to sounds like

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