The Center for Confident American English Communication

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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The American English r is a very difficult sound for many non-native speakers to articulate correctly! The American English r sounds like /ɚ/. The sound is made by bunching the middle of the tongue high in the back of the mouth and rounding the lips. The tip of the tongue curls up a bit, but

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This week in class one of my students said that he needed to catch up on his work. Uh, oh…. When I showed him this picture he understood his mistake. In order to improve your American English pronunciation you must know how to use syllable stress and word stress. One pattern that you must follow

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Today in one of my classes I taught a short lesson on making polite requests. During the lesson I pointed our two pronunciation features to my students. 1. When a /d/ sound is followed by a /y/ sound, the sounds blend together to sound like /dʒ/. Here are a few examples: Did you sounds like

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Will you ever be able to totally eliminate your foreign accent when you speak American English? The truth is, probably not. However, you can improve the way you speak so that people will understand you. To do that you need to learn the accent reduction strategies that will help you and practice those strategies every

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A couple of days ago I explained that heteronyms are two words that are spelled identically. The way the words are stressed determines the meaning. One good example is the word: OBJECT. The way you use syllable stress say the word ‘object’ changes the meaning of the word. When the stress is on the first

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Lots of people will tell you to watch American television shows to hear authentic examples of American English. That’s an excellent idea but you can take it a step further to get some serious pronunciation practice. Instead of simply watching your show, choose a character to imitate. As soon as your character starts to speak, 

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There are many English words spelled with the letter o in  which the o is pronounced like /ɑ/ as in the word father. To make the /ɑ/ sound relax your lips and your tongue. Your tongue should be low in your mouth when you articulate this sound. Here is a list of words in which the

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In spoken English consonant and vowel sounds change depending on their location in a word or phrase. Learning some of the rules or patterns for these types of sound changes can make your pronunciation sound more natural. Here is one pattern. When a /d/ sound is followed by a /y/ sound the result is a

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If you are a frequent reader of my blog you know that one of the best ways to improve your American English pronunciation is to use syllable stress correctly. In spoken English words with multiple syllables, one syllable is always more prominent than the others. We call this the stressed syllable. Stressed syllables are pronounced:

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