Good listening skills are one of the first steps to changing your accent! One 
key step in improving your accent is learning to notice American English speech sounds and patterns.
For example: I typically find that my accent reduction clients are not aware of the schwa vowel sound. This is the reduced vowel sound found in many unstressed syllables.
However, once they learn about the schwa sound in their accent reduction lessons they begin to notice and hear the schwa sound everywhere. Once they hear how frequent the schwa sound is, they realize how important it is for achieving a more natural American English sound.
Accent improvement starts from focused listening for new sounds and patterns. Once you raise your consciousness of the way that American English sounds and patterns are different from the sounds of your own language, you will begin to listen in a whole new way.
One great book that you can use to listen to and learn American English sounds and patterns, including the schwa sound is called Pronunciation Pairs.
This book and CD set teaches you American English vowel and consonant sounds as well as syllable stress, sentence stress and intonation patterns. The book has some excellent activities for the schwa vowel sound!
You can take a peek inside the book by clicking on the link below.
Pronunciation Pairs Student’s Book with Audio CD
To read related posts on this topic click on the links below. The 0 means closed for comments.
Tags: Accent Reduction Techniques, American English Pronunciation, pronunciation pairs, schwa sound, Schwa Vowel Sound
