Sometimes my accent reduction clients ask me how actors learn to speak with an American accent. In order to answer that question, let’s listen to a professional actor.☝ Here’s what the actor Matthew Rhys says about mastering an American accent: “you can nail the sound, but sometimes I think you can tell a British actor when
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Do you ever wonder why your accent is so difficult for Americans to understand? The people who I work with every week in my accent reduction coaching program know that their colleagues don’t always understand them. But they don’t know exactly WHY their spoken English is difficult for others to understand. Here is something that
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When it comes to spoken English, all words are not equal.☝ What I mean is this: In spoken American English some words are stressed or emphasized. ✔ Other words are not!! That’s why we say that spoken American English is Stress Timed. Pronunciation textbooks refer to stressed words as content words & focus words. These
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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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Nursery rhymes can be fun and effective way to teach American English pronunciation patterns. That’s because nursery rhymes can be used to model the syllable stress, sentence stress and intonation patterns of spoken English. The repetitive nature of rhymes can help adults learn the rhythm of the language that is so important for a natural sounding
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One great way to improve your American accent is to learn how we use sentence stress in American English through the use of CONTENT, FOCUS and function words. Click on the link above to read my complete article on how Americans use sentence stress. ×
One accent reduction technique that I recommend to the students in my accent reduction classes is to listen for the syllable stress, sentence stress and intonation patterns used by American English speakers. You must practice listening to these patterns in order to use them like American English speakers do. Learning to use syllable stress, sentence
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When Americans talk they stress the CONTENT and FOCUS words in a sentence. That’s because these words are the most important for sentence meaning. English speakers will reduce the function words in a sentence because these words are not key to meaning. In spoken American English each sentence or phrase contains: A Focus word-the most
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English Club has some of the best explanations on how to improve your American English pronunciation using word stress and sentence stress. The explanations they provide for these key pronunciation areas are very clear and most of them include some audio. I frequently recommend English Club to my students who like to do extra pronunciation
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