When it comes to spoken English, all words are not equal. What I mean is this: some words are stressed or emphasized. Other words are not. Most English pronunciation textbooks refer to stressed words as content words. Content words are typically key nouns, verbs and adjectives. Unstressed words are referred to as function words. Function
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When Americans speak they divide longer sentences into sections called thought groups. In each thought group we emphasize the focus word and then briefly pause before the next thought group begins. Many non-native English speakers have never learned to use thought groups when they speak English. For some people this causes their speech too sound
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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 Americans speak they divide longer sentences into sections called thought groups. The words in a thought group receive different types of stress. The function words, such as articles and prepositions, are usually unstressed. The content words, usually nouns and verbs, are stressed. In each thought group there is also a very important word called
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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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One of the most notable features of spoken English is its rhythm. Native English speakers alternate between using stressed and unstressed syllables in words and sentences. They do not pronounce all words and syllables with the same emphasis. One way that non-native English speakers can improve their accent is to learn to use the rhythms
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Spoken American English has different types of stress. There is syllable stress which is the stress within a particular word. Then there is word stress which is the way content, focus and function words are stressed in a sentence or thought group. For both types of stress you need to be aware of pitch, vowel length
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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. Related posts When O is Pronounced With the /ɑ/ Sound (0) Using Nursery
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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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