ACCENT TRAINING

English Communication Training

WHAT IS ACCENT?
Accent is a combination of three components: intonation
(speech music), liaisons (word connections), and
pronunciation (spoken sounds of vowels, consonants, and
combinations).

ACCENT VS. GRAMMAR

Grammar and vocabulary are systematic and structured
(the letter of the language).
Accent is free form, intuitive and creative (the spirit of
the language).

ACCENT VS. PRONUNCIATION

In America, the pronunciation of sounds differs from East
Coast to West Coast, from southern to northern states,
but two components that are uniquely American stay
basically the same thats SPEECH MUSIC or INTONATION,
and the WORD CONNECTIONS, OR LIAISONS.

WHY PRONUNCIATION IS IMPORTANT

Pronunciation is definitely the biggest thing that people
notice when you are speaking in English.
Your pronunciation creates the first impression you
make.

GOOD PRONUNCIATION IS NOT PERFECT

AMERICAN ACCENT
There are many regional kinds of English. In America,
people from New York City, California, and Texas each
have their own pronunciation. So its no problem if you
have your own accent. BUT your accent must be close to
the standards of American English.
THE RULE IS: If you are close to the standard, you can
always communicate, and your English will be pleasant.
If you are far from the standard, sometimes you wont
communicate successfully.

About Standard American English

Standard American English has pronunciation that is
widely used and understood by good speakers of
American English. American dictionaries adopt the
pronunciations used by most national radio and television
broadcasters often referred to as Broadcast News
Standard (BNS). It usually becomes the basis of Standard
American English.

The Three Regional Accents in the U.S.

1. Northern Accent people tend to speak faster
(Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York, Vermont,
Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
Connecticut, and North and South Dakota: eastern)
2. Southern Accent people tend to speak slower (eastern
Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia,
North and South Carolina, northern Florida, eastern
Virginia, Maryland, and southern Arkansas)
3. Midland Accent people tend to speak at the normal
rate of 180 words per minute (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa,
Kansas, Missouri, and Pennsylvania)

CAN YOU LEARN A NEW LANGUAGE?

If you practice, definitely YES, you can! Its just a
matter of learning and practicing techniques. Its
all up to you. How well you do, depends mostly on
how open and willing you are to sounding different
from the way youve sounded all your life. A very
important thing you need to remember is that you
can use accent to say what you mean and how you
mean it.
Word stress conveys meaning through tone or
feeling which could be much more important than
the actual words that you use.

WHY UNDERGO ACCENT NEUTRALIZATION

TRAINING?
This training is aimed at helping you sound American, not just for lectures,
interviews, teaching or daily communication, but more so for business
communications.

Americans may have many regional differences, but their accent basically
remains distinctly AMERICAN. Thus, you need to learn and use the accent of
standard American English, spoken and understood by the majority of educated,
native speakers in the United States. Dont worry that youll sound slangy or
too casual because you definitely wont. This is the way a professor lectures to
a class, the way a national newscaster broadcasts, the way that is most
comfortable and familiar to the majority of native speakers.

REMEMBER:
1. For American Accent Training, you need to
speak fairly quickly and with strong intonation. If
you do, youll be understood more easily.
2. Dont say the word as it is written. For
example, you dont sound the t in listen. The tt in
better is spoken as a soft d as in beder. Any other
pronunciation will sound foreign, strange, wrong
or different to a native speaker.

REMEMBER:
3. Language is fluent and fluid. (Conversational
English has a very smooth, fluid sound)
4. You need to change your old speech habits. You
have to think about your speech more than you do
now.
5. A new accent is an adventure. Be bold! Dont
worry that Americans will laugh at you for putting
on an accent, they surely wont! Theyll just think
that youve finally learned to talk right.