American Accent Training: A Guide To Speaking A...
This book offers an array of pronunciation and intonation exercises to help students speak with a standard American accent. American Accent Training is perfect for study abroad students, business people, or students who are planning a trip to The US. The book also comes with supplementary materials such as: detailed nationality guides , online material, and referral to a qualified telephone analyst for a diagnostic speech analysis.
American Accent Training: A Guide to Speaking a...
For the language student who plans to travel or live in North America (The US or Canada), teachers who work with accent reduction, or even native speakers involved in theater, radio, or voice acting, this book is a definite must have. This highly acclaimed self-study book is an essential tool for the upper intermediate and advanced student who wants to perfect their English speaking skills.
American Accent Training is a step-by-step course book that will guide you or your students towards speaking in a standard American accent. This book is one of the most extensive and thorough guides I have personally ever come across; if you are a casual English student who is only interested in preparing themselves for a trip abroad or for a short vacation, this book is not for you. Those who will benefit the most from this book are students who want to take part in a self -study course and work towards perfecting their accent over a period of time.
Over all this is a great book for any serious ESL student or teacher. I highly recommend this book to anyone who does business with American clients, people who are planning to live in The US and even foreigners who are currently living there. With a bit of dedication and practice anyone can achieve a perfect American accent with the help of this book. If you want to start speaking and sounding like a native speaker American Accent Training has all the tools necessary to help you reach your goal.
Note that for many people for whom English is their second language, rhoticity is a common feature (often in learning languages we are guided by the spelling or orthography), but the type of R used will often be very different, and it depends very much on whether you have learned American English, or British English. If English is your second language you should definitely seek the guidance of a dialect coach who specialises in what is usually called foreign accent reduction or FAR.
The world's best selling accent and pronunciation book. This book starts at the most basic level -- the syllable -- and builds up to the complex intonation that is used in everyday English. This book will guide you to fluency in spoken American English. All aspects of the American accent are covered in detail -- intonation, liaisons and pronunciation.
American Accent Training also offers detailed nationality guides for ten languages and accent variations: Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Korean, Arabic, and the US Southern accent. Added features include access to comprehensive websites, and referral to a qualified telephone analyst for individual help. American Accent Training has been Americanizing the speaking habits of students and business people since 1991. Going where no accent book has gone before, AAT continues to set the standard for anyone learning or teaching the American accent.
Our students work through a scientifically proven learning program called the Auditory Immersion Technique. Designed by Esther Bruhl, a speech therapist with over 30 years of experience, the Speak More Clearly program leads students to clear and confident speaking in one of three accents.
Ready to learn more? Udemy offers a variety of English language courses and blog tutorials for beginners and advanced learners. If you need more help with American accent training, browse our course catalog or take a look at our 12-step guide to speaking English fluently.
Nonnative accents are sometimes heard in nonnative individuals who learn English as a second language (L2). These accents occur because the phonology/sound system and prosody of their first language (L1) influence pronunciation when speaking a new language. Groups of learners from the same L1 background have similar accents because they share L1 phonology. However, in postcolonial countries, the language interaction might operate differently. The origin of nonnative accents could also be a function of diglossia and/or other sociolinguistic phenomena.
In an ideal world, clients would not have to make modifications to educate and accommodate conversation partners. Practically speaking, however, clients may find it necessary to take specific approaches to educate others and to prepare themselves for potentially uncomfortable conversations. Approaches for counseling regarding the impact of speaking with an accent include the following:
But to truly understand English, become fluent, and learn the culture of the English speaking world, you need to learn English abroad. Explore hundreds of English language schools and courses below and tab through our helpful guide to learn more about studying English in the U.S., Canada, England, Ireland, Scotland, Malta, Wales, New Zealand, Australia, and more!
Non-native accented speech is typically less intelligible and less fluent than native speech, but it is unclear how these factors interact to influence perceived speech quality. To investigate this question, the speech of 20 non-native speakers of English varying in proficiency and native language was evaluated. Subjective measures of speech quality (listening effort, acceptability and intelligibility) were compared to objective measures of word recognition by native listeners, and to acoustic measures of fluency and of segmental and suprasegmental properties related to intelligibility. Results showed that subjective quality measures were highly related to one another and to word recognition, and were most strongly predicted by measures of fluency. Segmental and suprasegmental measures did not predict word recognition or subjective speech quality. There was also an interaction between the effects of proficiency and speaker's native language on word recognition, but this did not extend to subjective measures. Finally, listeners who first heard high-proficiency speakers gave overall lower subjective quality ratings but there was no interaction between proficiency and presentation order. Multivariate analyses suggest that factors related to speaking rate, including pause duration, have the greatest effect on measures of acceptability, intelligibility and listening effort.
The preliminary findings indicate that native English speakers may use different intonation patterns for different discourse situations: the five English NS of this study prefer to use level or rising contours in sentence final positions for leaving voicemails, whereas only falling contours are used to mark sentence endings for reading aloud. The Chinese ESL speakers, on the other hand, do not make use of intonation for different discourse functions: there is a prominent use of the level and falling contours for both reading aloud and leaving a telephone message. It is argued that Chinese learners of English tend to impose the prosodic patters of their L1 on their second language (L2) that results in the typical Chinese accent that can be characterized with a monosyllabic rhythm with constant high level and falling tones. The results of this study provide potential guidelines on how intonation may be systematically used as a descriptor for oral English proficiency. 041b061a72