The Center for Confident American English Communication

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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This week on the blog there have been a lot of you looking for information on American English intonation patterns. One of the best books for learning and practicing the rhythms and intonations of spoken American English is Ann Cook’s American Accent Training. American Accent Training includes a book plus 5 CDs that you can

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Are you a pronunciation teacher? Cambridge English Language Teaching offers some FREE downloadable books for teaching English pronunciation and listening skills. One of these free books is Judy Gilbert’s book: Teaching Pronunciation: Using the Prosody Pyramid. This is a great resource for teachers of American English pronunciation because it explains the importance of teaching students how

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When I was teaching one of my pronunciation classes this week I found out that my students did not know about the two different intonation patterns for questions in American English. Here they are: 1. Use rising intonation when the question can be answered with a “yes” or a “no”. 2. Use falling intonation when

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In spoken English intonation refers to the rise and fall of your pitch over the length of a thought group or sentence. Using the correct intonation is very important because the rise and fall of your pitch conveys meaning to your listeners. Many linguists say that spoken English has four levels of phonetic pitch: 1-low,

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