The Center for Confident American English Communication

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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Linking happens in every English sentence. We connect two words together when the first word ends in a vowel sound and the next word begins with the same vowel sound. that table sounds like thattable next time sounds like nexttime We also connect words when the first word ends with a consonant sound and the

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If you are an advanced student of American English pronunciation you have probably learned about linking (or liaisons). Linking refers to the connections between words. Ann Cook, author of American Accent Training, says that these connections “allow us to speak in sound groups” instead of word by word. Spoken English has linking between words and

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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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Several of the students that I work with in my accent reduction coaching program have trouble hearing the ed that comes at the end of past tense verbs. One reason why they are having this problems is that ed does not always sound like /ed/. Sometimes ed sounds like /d/ and sometimes it sounds like

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American English speakers use linking to join words toegether so that they are easy to say and flow together smoothly. It often sounds like people are saying one long word since they are no spaces between words. Here are 2 common types of linking in American spoken English. Consonant to vowel linking When words that

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BBC Learning English is a fantastic multimedia site that you can use to learn English pronunciation. Of course the accents in the audio and video samples are British but many of the rules for spoken English such as the schwa sound, voicing, linking and consonant clusters apply to American spoken English as well. Related posts Why

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