5 American Accent Tips and Tricks Everyone Should Know
5 American Accent Tips and Tricks Everyone Should Know
Here are 5 American accent tips that everyone born outside North America should know if you want to communicate effectively.
1. Speak in phrases, not word by word
In order speak with a pace that Americans will easily understand speak in short phrases.
Pause briefly after each phrase to allow your listeners to process what you said.
Try to avoid fast, word, word, word style speech.
Fast word, word, word style speech creates a speaking pace and melody that Americans find challenging to understand.
Speak in phrases and insert short pauses to make your speaking pace easy and pleasant for American listeners.
2. Stress the correct syllable in each word
Here’s a rule about American English that you never learned in your home country.
In words with two or more syllables, one syllable receives stress or emphasis. Vowels in stressed syllables are articulated with extra length→ and a slight rise in pitch.
Hearing the correct syllable stress is very, very important to the American listener.
If you say words without the correct syllable stress, American born people will struggle to understand you.
You don’t want that to happen.
If you say each word WITH the correct syllable stress, Americans will almost always understand you.
3. Use the American T sounds
This may surprise you, but American born people don’t articulate every T.
Instead we use three other T sounds.
These are the silent T, the held T and the tapped T.
Using the American T sounds will make your English sound smoother and more natural. That’s why I recommend that you learn to use them.
4. Articulate word final S
Really try to articulate the sounds of word final S when you speak!
Failure to articulate word final S will make your speech sound ungrammatical.
If you work in a professional capacity you need to speak like a professional, so pronouncing word final S is critical.
5. Learn the 15 American English vowel sounds
American English has 5 vowel letters. Everyone knows that.
What most people DON’T know is that these 5 vowel letters make 15 different sounds. That’s right, 15 sounds!
In order to speak clear American English, you need to use these 15 sounds correctly. I use the Color Vowel Methodology to teach the American English vowel sounds and all my clients love it.
5 American accent tips and tricks
Even when you know what features of American Accent you need to work on, it’s challenging to organize lessons on your own.
That’s why I created online training programs that you can use to improve your American accent.
Each of my American accent training programs teach you the rules for:
- speaking with the right pace using phrases and pauses *
- stressing words on the correct syllable
- using the American T sounds
- articulating word final S*
- using the 15 American English vowel sounds
My training programs will teach you how speak American English in a way that your colleagues will respect and understand! The international professionals who I work with tell me that all the time.
* extra practice on this feature in the American Accent Master Class
*extra practice on this feature in the American Accent Training for IT Professionals, American Accent Training for MBA Grads, the Data Science Master List, the Finance Master List and the Cyber Security Master List.
I can show you how
Sure, you can find hundreds of American accent tips and tricks on YouTube. Many of these are excellent.
But learning tips and tricks in isolation won’t make you a better speaker. In order to make significant, noticeable progress to the way you speak, you’ll need to enroll in a program.
And that’s how I can help!
If you’re serious about making positive changes to the way you speak, let me guide you by taking one of my American accent training programs.
Click on the link above to see what I have to offer. I would be honored to help you improve your American accent.
About the author
My name is Susan Ryan and I’m an American English communication and accent reduction coach.
Contact me with your questions about clear American speech.
