Expert English Pronunciation, Accent Reduction & Fluency
Read my Quora answer to “How can I improve my pronunciation and intonation?” And learn what causes accents in English for speakers of these languages on these pages: Arabic Chinese Japanese French Indo-Aryan (Hindi, Bengali, Nepali, Sinhala, Divehi) Korean Spanish Read More …
Pronunciation Made Easy, an e-dictionary that bridges the sounds of Portuguese to the sounds of English, is intuitive and learner-friendly. It’s targeted at beginners, but also works very well for intermediate learners. And it’s packed with a sound system strategy Read More …
Teaching English pronunciation and intonation is a challenging job. And learning it is even harder. Part of the problem is that we are born with our first language intonation already programmed; we know that babies, by 6 months in utero, Read More …
My Chinese friends say they notice that Westerners use lots of pleases (qi?ng) and thank yous (xiexie) when speaking Chinese. And actually, they say, we use way too many of them for Chinese taste. A Chinese linguist, Kaidi Zhan, says Read More …
In her 2011 TED talk, “The Linguistic Genius of Babies,” Doctor Kuhl discusses how babies under 8 months of age from different cultures can detect sounds in any language from around the world, but adults cannot do this. 6 So Read More …
Recent studies suggest that content delivered in heavily accented speech may be harder for listeners to remember. The same problem also occurs for listeners with hearing difficulties. It may be neurological, not cultural-bias or lack of exposure. Van Engen and her Read More …
3-SYLLABLE WORD RHYTHMS Words Ending in -TION, -SION, -CIAN Sharing one of the graphics that will be in Part 2 of English Pronunciation Guide for Japanese Speakers, in the Chapter about Word Rhythms. Source: (1) American English Pronunciation Coach Read More …
Judy Thompson’s interesting Venn diagram showing the mismatch between English’ Latin-based script system, and English’ phonetic sound system. Our poor students! [bctt tweet=”Vennglish! The mismatch between orthography and spoken English.”]
Teach Pronunciation? Dump the IPA! Get Judy Tompson’s truly ingenious, highly practical, totally student friendly EPA for teaching the sounds of English, free on her website.Click to Download Source: EPA Vowel Color Chart | Thompson Language Center [bctt tweet=”Dump the IPA! Make Read More …
One of the reasons it sounds different when you hear someone speaking a different language is because the actual sounds they use are different; they have a sound code that’s specific to that language Source: How bilinguals switch between languages Read More …