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3:57 PM
5 step process: (don't skip over steps, this has to be done in the sequence)
Step1: practice the exercises with the book or videos.
Step2: Get away from the book/video and read something real-life, random paragraph reading and
highlight the sound youre learning.
Find the sound and underline the sounds…read those line at least 10 times.
Step3: Speak to yourself in that sound, your thoughts in english and pay attention to that sound, if you
make a mistake, correct it and say it again a few times. You need no one to speak to, speaking to
yourself is the best practice.
Step4: Record yourself speaking naturally, and listen back for mistakes. If you think you made a mistake,
repeat the sound a few times.
Step5: Speak with people, you don't have to worry about how you're speaking. Be relaxed, but
occasionaly keep reminding yourself about that sound, that you have to pronounce it correcrtly. But
don't stress yourself too much.
Speak slowly, reduce words, use contractions,..don't speak fast to make up for reductions/contractions.
Speak in a relaxed manner, reduce, contract, intonate and stress important words.
Schwa replaces unstressed vowels.
For difficult words always break them down to the basic sounds and practise the basic sounds and
merge them slowly one after other.
Sometimes the tongue doesn’t have enough time to go to the ideal position, use the position tongue
naturally goes in that situation..eg cut the, apart from.
Focus on word stress and syllable stress.. Unstressed words and syllables are always shortened by
replacing the vowels by a schwa.
Statements always end with fading out pitched, questions mostly end with an up fading in and
increasing pitch…start with did..do..have…did you pick up the grocerieS..
Yes no questions go up in pitch..but other questions don’t go up in pitch in the end..the question that
don't have a straight yes or no answer, these are more open ended questions.
Words at the end should finish with lower in pitch in all the statements.
Main verbs are stressed, content verbs and nouns are stressed and not reduced in sentences.
For lists..the pitch increases and lowers at the last word in the list.
Eg. I'm driving you, cindy, Manny and Jemma to the party.
I SAW her at the MEETING…. Saw and meeting are important here, that convey the message, her can be
reduced to err sound. I SAW err ada Meeting
I GOT it for YOU.. Ferrr…
Sometimes words are just stressed for importance and draw attention to them
Important note on pronunciation of noun/verbs: nouns get first sylabble stressed, verbs get the second
normally. Eg (N)CONtrast , ConTRast(V). PREsent, PreSent..Estimate..EsimatE..UPGRADe, upGRADE..
In acronyms, the last letter is stressed… ibM, usA, tnT, cnN,
In most cases, there is a simple rule to help you.
Word stress, intonation, speech break, word connection, linking,rythm and reduction are the most
important things in your communication. They're even more important than your accent or
pronuciation. You won't be understood by others if you lack word stress and correct rhythm.
You don't have to slow down a lot, if you speak fairly quickly with the correct intonation and word
stress. You would be understood better.
Changing your old speech habits is very similar to changing from a stick shift to an automatic
transmission. Yes, you continue to reach for the gearshift for a while and your foot still tries to
find the clutch pedal, but this soon phases itself out. In the same way, you may still say
"telephone call" (kohl) instead of (kahl) for a while, but this too will soon pass.
You will also have to think about your speech more than you do now. In the same way that you
were very aware and self-conscious when you first learned to drive, you will eventually relax
and deal with the various components simultaneously.
Also like when you change your windows password, you keep entreing the old password for the first few
weeks and the systems reminds you of your mistake, then you correct and pass through.
It should be similar with your pronunciation mistakes, you have to keep reminding yourself in your head
of the mistakes you made, repeat and pronounce it the correct way.
A new accent is an adventure. Be bold! Exaggerate wildly! You may worry that Americans will
laugh at you for putting on an accent, but I guarantee you, they won't even notice. They'll just
think that you've finally learned to "talk right."
One of the main differences between the way an American talks and the way the rest of the world
talks is that we don't really move our lips
We create most of our sounds in the throat, using our tongue very actively. If you
hold your fingers over your lips or clench your jaws when you practice speaking American English,
you will find yourself much closer to native-sounding speech than if you try to pronounce every ...
single ... sound ... very ... carefully.
The sound of an American speaking a foreign language is very distinctive, because we double
sounds that should be single. For example, in Japanese or Spanish, the word no is, to our ear,
clipped or abbreviated.
No
///////// ou
Intonation or pitch change is primarily used to introduce new information. This means that when
you are making a statement for the first time, you will stress the nouns.
When you replace the nouns with pronouns (i.e., old information), stress the verb.
As we have seen, nouns are new information; pronouns are old information. In a nutshell,
these are the two basic intonation patterns:
2. Opinion
It sounds like rain, but I don't think it is.
It feels
like... It tastes like... These examples all give the impression that you mean the opposite of what your
senses tell you.
V Practice the intonation difference between new information and opinion:
It sounds like rain. (It's rain.) It sounds like rain, (but it's not.)
3. Contrast
He likes rain, but he hates snow.
Like and hate are contrasted and are the stronger words in the sentence.
4. Can't
It can't rain when there're no clouds.
Contractions (shouldn't, wouldn't) and negatives (no, not, never) are important words since they
totally negate the meaning of a sentence, but they are not usually stressed. Can't is the exception.
Native speakers make a clear distinction between pretty easily (easily) and pretty easily (a little
difficult). Repeat the answers after me paying close attention to your stress.
Question: How did you like the movie? Answer:
1. It was pretty good. (She liked it.)
2. It was pretty good. (She didn't like it much.)
stress will always fall naturally on the noun. In the absence of a noun, you will stress the
adjective, but as soon as a noun appears on the scene, it takes immediate precedence—and should be
stressed.
Exercise
Use your throat..completly get rid of the nasal style..just use your nose in the sounds that actually
involve nasal voice…get deeper vocal cord engagment.
Use yer jaw more..open yer mouth more..but in a relaxed way..
Pronpunce the important sounds like errr..ae..aa..etc
Packed, watched, erased, talked, washed, baked, flipped,missed, finsihed, locked, escaped,
accomplished, adopted ….t sound
D sound… called, rained, lived, robbed, stayed,saved, leaned, believed, turned, carried, bummed, shied
Id sound..wicked, waited, needed, landed, ended, punted, rested.
Stop, strain, tram, connect, soft, lilt, slept, first, Tap, top, telephone, test, attend, time, until, hotel,
reptile, erectile, stupid, tinder, terrible, toothache, stare, stair, fourteen, fifteen.
Between vowels…
Water, mutter, letter, butter, what about me, auto, matter, party, alerted, article, charter, mortified,
sorted, vertical, part of, sort of, expert in, airport on, a lot of, heater..
Yet another funny thing Americans do with the T sound! In this American Accent lesson
you'll learn all about the Glottal Stop, or the Glottal T, which you hear when native
speakers pronounce words like certain, mountain and button.
Key Takeaways:
1) The Glottal Stop/Glottal T is pronounced in the throat, by bringing the vocal cords
together to stop the air flow.
2) The Glottal Stop occurs in words where a syllable ends in /t/ and the next syllable is a
syllabic N.
3) Using a True T instead of a Glottal Stop/T does not impact your clarity. Practicing the
Glottal Stop can be helpful if your goal is to sound more native.