The Center for Confident American English Communication

Last week I had many visitors here on the blog from Singapore. Thanks for visiting, I’m happy that you’ve found my site! Keeping in mind that Singaporeans come from many language backgrounds, here are a few problems that Singaporean English speakers often have when they speak American English. Syllable Structure and Stress American English pronunciation

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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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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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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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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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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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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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This week I have been teaching many of my students how to improve their English pronunciation by using syllable stress. Here are two rules that you can use to apply syllable stress correctly. 1. Compound nouns are stressed on the first syllable (or part). Here are a few examples: CLASSroom LIVing room POST office PARKing

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While teaching an accent reduction class last week I noticed that my students were not pronouncing acronyms (or initialisms) correctly. This caused some communication confusion! In spoken English acronyms are stressed on the last syllable or letter. That means you must lengthen the last letter and pronounce it with a higher pitch. After the stress

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