The Center for Confident American English Communication

One of the biggest pronunciation problems that my accent reduction coaching clients have is using word stress. They frequently use word stress incorrectly. Stressing the wrong word creates an accent and it contributes to breakdowns in communication. Learning to use word stress correctly will greatly enhance your spoken English skills. Here are two rules you

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Thanks to all the nice people from India who read my blog. I am very happy that you found this website and I hope you find it helpful. I recently came across a website that featured 10 Tips on English Pronunciation & Accent Improvement (for Indians). I think that the following tips on the website

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Most of my clients from India have advanced degrees in science, IT and engineering. They read and write English perfectly. Since they were educated in English their reading, writing and vocabulary indicate a high level of success. Unfortunately their spoken English is often not comprehensible to American English speakers. Here are 3 common American English

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Linguistic research indicates that the most common sound in spoken English is the schwa vowel sound. This is because native English speakers pronounce the vowels in most reduced syllables with the schwa sound. The phonetic symbol for schwa is /ə/. Here is an example. When I say my name, Susan, the first syllable is stressed so

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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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Those of you who read my blog frequently know that using syllable stress correctly is one of the very best ways to improve your comprehensibility when you speak English.  That said, here are a few syllable stress patterns for compound words that you may find useful. Compound nouns are stressed on the first word in

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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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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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In spoken American English the letter combination TH makes two different sounds. One of these sounds is voiced and the other is voiceless. The IPA symbol for the voiced th sound looks like this /ð/. The IPA symbol for the voiceless th sound looks like this /θ/. While both of these sounds cause problems for

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I have the pleasure of working with many wonderful students from South Asia in my classes. One problem that these students frequently have is pronouncing the /w/ sound. They often substitute the /v/ sound for the /w/ sound. This is confusing for American English listeners because Wednesday sounds like Vensday, will sounds like vill and

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