American Accent Training – Improve your Accent in 20 Minutes!

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Keep reading to learn more about the main areas that you will need to address when trying to reduce your accent. This is only a start, but it will help you understand what you need to before you begin you accent reduction classes.

“Speaking with a standard, neutral American accent is not easy, but it can be done!“

Forget everything you have studied, and all of the enunciation lessons that your school teachers gave you. This article will help educate you about some of the main techniques that you can use to sound more like a native speaker.

Reducing your accent takes a bit of knowledge and a lot of practice.

Remember, everyone speaks a little differently so you’ll hear many different accents as you travel across the country. Today, I will introduce you to some of the speech patterns associated with different people in different geographic areas across the USA.

Accent reduction is not an exact science so keep an open-mind and, most importantly, keep your ears open to try to hear the patterns and techniques I will discuss today.

The “nitty-gritty” of the language

Before we begin, it’s important that you learn, or refresh, the necessary terms below. You probably learned these terms when you were very young, but it doesn’t hurt to refresh.

Vowel: a, e, i, o, u

Vowel Sound: an open sound, vocal tract open, no contact

Consonant: any letter that is not a vowel

Consonant Sound: a sound produced by contact, produced by a partial or complete obstruction of the air stream

Verb: an action or state

Noun: a person, place, thing or idea (a subject or an object)

Compound Noun: a noun that consists of two words

Adjective: a word that describes a noun

Pronoun: a word that is used in the place of a noun

Adverb: a word that describes a verb

Preposition: a word which shows a relationship between two words

Phrasal Verb: a combination of a VERB + PREPOSITION (Sometimes: Verb + Adverb) .

Syllable: a unit of pronunciation, has one vowel sound and may have consonant sounds

Let’s begin reducing your accent!

VOWELS & CONSONANTS – CORRECT PRONUNCIATION

When you study accent reduction you need to work a great deal on producing the correct vowel and consonant sounds. Speakers of different languages each have different problems when it comes to pronouncing the correct vowel and consonant sounds. Although producing the correct vowel and consonant sounds is VERY important and VERY difficult, I will not be spending too much time on them today. The reason is: each student has different trouble spots. It is very important to work with your accent reduction coach on this point as you may not even be able to hear the mistakes that you are making.

We have 15 vowel sounds in standard American English. Some of you may have as few as five vowel sounds in your languages. Below are all of the the vowel sounds in standard American English used in a short word.

me / in / may / get / mat / pot / the / all / go / look / blue / her / nine / cow / boy

YOU CANNOT SAY THESE CORRECTLY IF YOU DON’T OPEN YOUR MOUTH!

Focus on keeping your mouth open when saying most of these sounds. That is not to say that all of these sounds are open sounds, but I have noticed that many students are not opening their mouths wide enough to pronounce many English vowel sounds.

CONSONANTS

Producing the correct consonant sounds is equally as important as the vowel sounds. Some of the most difficult consonant sounds for non-native speakers are: T, TH, S, L, R, V, F, B, P.

It is important to learn the difference between voiced and voiceless consonants. Most students have problems with the voiced consonants, in particular at the end of the word. To show you what I mean I will give you a couple examples.

Listen to a native speaker pronounce the following words:

bag back
sad sat

You will notice that the native speaker probably doesn’t enunciate the ending consonant very strongly. You should also hear that bag and sad are noticeably longer than back and sat. This is because /g/ and /d/ are voiced consonant sounds. The vowel before a voiced consonant sound is generally slightly longer than those before a voiceless consonant sound. These are just a few of the voiced consonant sounds in English. Did you know that /s/ and /th/ can be both voiced and voiceless sounds.

There is a lot to learn, but in a few accent reduction classes you will have learned the basics and have a better ear to start picking up different sounds on your own.

Have you ever thought that your speech sounds choppy? This might be because you are not linking or connecting the words and sounds which a native English speaker would usually connect. Follow the rules related to linking words to speak more fluidly.

Consonant to Vowel Links

Typically, when a word finishes with a consonant sound and and is followed by a word that starts with a vowel sound, we can connect the two words by putting the consonant onto the vowel sound at the beginning of the next word.

English Language Teaching