The Center for Confident American English Communication

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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Spanish speakers frequently drop the consonant sounds at the ends of words. This can cause your speech to sound both accented and grammatically incorrect. If you are a  Spanish speaker, here is one technique you can use to reduce your accent. Words in Spanish do not typically end in a consonant clusters but English words

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The schwa + r sound /ɚ/ is frequently a confusing feature of American English pronunciation. In many situations when a vowel is followed by an /r/, only the /r/ sound is heard. The vowel sound isn’t really heard at all! This is called the schwa + r /ɚ/. The letter combinations or, er, ur &

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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 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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Several of my students tell me that they have trouble understanding the spoken English of native speakers. This is not at all unusual. One reason that native English speakers are difficult to understand is because they often use reduced speech. When native speakers use reduced speech the words seem to run together and this can

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Chinese speakers from some dialects tend to confuse word medial and word final /l/ & /n/ sounds when they are speaking English. This causes communication problems and contributes to your accent. The /n/ & /l/ sounds are articulated in almost the same manner as the tongue touches behind the tooth ridge. The tongue is a

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This week several of my students asked me if reduced speech was only appropriate in informal situations. I don’t believe that it is. Whenever people speak, they have a tendency to save energy by connecting sounds together. This connected or reduced speech is not necessarily sloppy or informal, it’s the way most Americans speak English

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Many American English pronunciation courses focus on how to articulate the individual vowel and consonant sounds in the language. Learning to articulate vowel and consonant sounds correctly can be very useful and will help you reduce your accent. However, learning to use American English stress and intonation patterns can really help you improve the way

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