Do you think that spoken English should be learned word by word? Or do you think that it’s better to learn speaking using chunks or phrases? I like to teach individual words according to their syllable stress patterns and primary vowel sounds. That helps my students and clients be better understood right away. However, I also like to teach chunks
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This article from the journal, Scientific American, describes some current research on how the human brain reacts when it hears a foreign accent. The research may have implications on how accented speech is perceived and judged. Does having an accent that is difficult to understand, reduce one’s credibility in the eyes and ears of native
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The Color Vowel Chart is an excellent visual tool that you can use to learn or TEACH the 15 vowels sounds in North American English. The hard copies of the chart are really nice; colorful and laminated with color words and IPA symbols. There are teaching activities you can use on the back of the
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Back in 1999, linguistics professor Steven Weinberger at George Mason University created a cool tool called the Speech Accent Archive The archive contains 1,500 recordings of people from around the world reading the same paragraph in English. There are recordings of both native English speakers and non native English speakers along with their age, gender
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Several of my accent reduction coaching clients leave me their voice recordings for feedback using the Voice memo app on their i-Phones. This works really well because they can record their pronunciation practice assignments and email the mp3 audio file to me with a couple of clicks. When the audio files arrive in my Gmail
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Many highly educated international professionals read and write English extremely well. However, when they speak English they have an accent that causes communication problems. There are a number of factors that contribute to accented speech. In my posts over the next few days I am going to describe five factors that may be causing you
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This is for all of you English pronunciation teachers who are looking for activities to teach pronunciation. One book that I’ve found very helpful is Beverly Beisbier’s Sounds Great. Each chapter ends with several fully developed activities for pair practice. These pair practice activities are excellent for getting your students to practice what they learned
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An article published today in USA Today reports that more people are taking lessons and classes on how to improve their American English pronunciation. Accent reduction can be controversial because one’s accent is part of their identity. We all know that there is nothing wrong with an accent because we all have one. However, for
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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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Are you looking for ways to make your pronunciation teaching more interactive? Pronunciation Games is a resource and activity book that instructors can use to teach and practice English pronunciation concepts in their classrooms. Each unit consists of a pronunciation game that is designed to raise students awareness of key English pronunciation features. Concepts include
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