《American Accent Training》Barrons's.American.Accent.Training.pdf_P11-P15

Word Groups and Phrasing......................................... 56 Chapter 2 Word Connections..................................... 59 Chapter 3 Cat? Caught? Cut? .................................... 71 Chapter 4 The American T ........................................ 77 Chapter 5 The El........................................................85 Voice Quality .............................................................. 94 Chapter 6 The American R ........................................ 95 Follow-up Diagnostic Analysis ................................ 100 Chapters 1-6 Review and Expansion .................... 101 Two-, Three- and Four-Word Phrases....................... 108 Chapter 7 Tee Aitch ................................................ 118 Chapter 8 More Reduced Sounds ........................... 121 Middle I List............................................................. 125 Intonation and Attitude ............................................. 128 Chapter 9 "V" as in Victory.................................... 129 Chapter 10 S or Z? ................................................. 131 Chapter 11 Tense and Lax Vowels ......................... 135 Grammar in a Bigger Nutshell.................................. 138 Chapter 12 Nasal Consonants ................................ 145 Chapter 13 Throaty Consonants............................. 147 Final Diagnostic Analysis......................................... 150 Chapters 1-13 Review and Expansion ................. 151 Nationality Guides.............................................. 172 Chinese ..................................................................... 173 Japanese.................................................................... 177 Spanish ..................................................................... 180 Indian........................................................................ 183 Russian ..................................................................... 186 French....................................................................... 188 German ..................................................................... 189 Korean ...................................................................... 191 Answer Key............................................................ 193 Index.......................................................................... 197 Read This First CD 1 Track 1 Welcome to American Accent Training. This book and CD set is designed to get you started on your American accent. We'll follow the book and go through the 13 lessons and all the exercises step by step. Everything is explained and a complete Answer Key may be found in the back of the text. What Is Accent? Accent is a combination of three main components: intonation (speech music), liaisons (word connections), and pronunciation (the spoken sounds of vowels, consonants, and combinations). As you go along, you'll notice that you're being asked to look at accent in a different way. You'll also realize that the grammar you studied before and this accent you're studying now are completely different. Part of the difference is that grammar and vocabulary are systematic and structured— the letter of the language. Accent, on the other hand, is free form, intuitive, and creative— more the spirit of the language. So, thinking of music, feeling, and flow, let your mouth relax into the American accent. Can I Learn a New Accent? Can a person actually learn a new accent? Many people feel that after a certain age, it's just not Стр. 12 из 185

CTp.133185 possible. Can classical musicians play jazz? If they practice, of course they can! For your American accent, it's just a matter of learning and practicing techniques this book and CD set will teach you. It is up to you to use them or not. How well you do depends mainly on how open and willing you are to sounding different from the way you have sounded all your life A very important thing you need to remember is that you can use your accent to say what you mean and how you mean it. Word stress conveys meaning through tone or feeling, which can be much more important than the actual words that you use. We ll cover the expression of these feelings through intonation in the first lesson You may have noticed that I talk fast and often run my words together. You've probably heard enough"English-teacher English"where. everything.is. pronounced without having to listen too carefully. That's why on the Cds we re going to talk just like the native speakers that we are, in a normal conversational tone Native speakers may often tell people who are learning English to "slow down"and to "speak clearly. " This is meant with the best of intentions, but it is exactly the opposite of what a student really needs to do. If you speak fairly quickly and with strong intonation, you will be understood more easily. To illustrate this point, you will hear a Vietnamese student first trying to speak slowly and carefully and then repeating the same words quickly and with strong intonation. Studying, this exercise took her only about two minutes to practice, but the difference makes her sound as if she had been in America for many years V Please listen. You will hear the same words twice. Hello, my name is Muoi. I'm taking American Accent Training You may have to listen to this Cd a couple of times to catch everything. To help you, every word on the Cd is also written in the book. By seeing and hearing simultaneously, you'll learn to reconcile the differences between the appearance of English(spelling and the sound of English (pronunciation and the other aspects of accent) The CD leaves a rather short pause for you to repeat into. The point of this is to get you responding quickly and without spending too much time thinking about your response Accent versus pronunciation Many people equate accent with pronunciation. I don't feel this to be true at all. America is a bi country, and while the pronunciation varies from the East Coast to the West Coast, from the southern to the northern states, two components that are uniquely American stay basically the same-the speech music, or intonation, and the word connections or liaisons. Throughout this program, we will focus on them. In the latter part of the book we will work on pronunciation concepts, such as Cat? Caught? Cut? and Betty Bought a Bit of Better Butter; we also will work our way through some of the difficult sounds, such as th, the american r, the l, v, and z wWhich Accent Is Correct? American Accent Training was created to help people"sound American "for lectures, interviews, teaching, business situations, and general daily communication. Although America has many regional pronunciation differences, the accent you will learn is that of standard American English as spoken and understood by the majority of educated native speakers in the United States. Don' t worry that you will sound slangy or too casual because you most definitely won,'t. 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 Why Is my accent so bad? Learners can be seriously hampered by a negative outlook, so I'll address this very important point early. First, your accent is not bad; it is nonstandard to the american ear. There is a joke that goes What do you call a person who can speak three languages? Trilingual. What do you call a person who can speak two languages? Bilingual. What do you call a person who can only speak one language? american Every language is equally valid or good, so every accent is good. The average American, however

possible. Can classical musicians play jazz? If they practice, of course they can! For your American accent, it's just a matter of learning and practicing techniques this book and CD set will teach you. It is up to you to use them or not. How well you do depends mainly on how open and willing you are to sounding different from the way you have sounded all your life. A very important thing you need to remember is that you can use your accent to say what you mean and how you mean it. Word stress conveys meaning through tone or feeling, which can be much more important than the actual words that you use. We'll cover the expression of these feelings through intonation in the first lesson. You may have noticed that I talk fast and often run my words together. You've probably heard enough "English-teacher English"—where ... everything ... is ... pronounced without having to listen too carefully. That's why on the CDs we're going to talk just like the native speakers that we are, in a normal conversational tone. Native speakers may often tell people who are learning English to "slow down" and to "speak clearly." This is meant with the best of intentions, but it is exactly the opposite of what a student really needs to do. If you speak fairly quickly and with strong intonation, you will be understood more easily. To illustrate this point, you will hear a Vietnamese student first trying to speak slowly and carefully and then repeating the same words quickly and with strong intonation. Studying, this exercise took her only about two minutes to practice, but the difference makes her sound as if she had been in America for many years. V Please listen. You will hear the same words twice. Hello, my name is Muoi. I'm taking American Accent Training. iv You may have to listen to this CD a couple of times to catch everything. To help you, every word on the CD is also written in the book. By seeing and hearing simultaneously, you'll learn to reconcile the differences between the appearance of English (spelling) and the sound of English (pronunciation and the other aspects of accent). The CD leaves a rather short pause for you to repeat into. The point of this is to get you responding quickly and without spending too much time thinking about your response. Accent versus Pronunciation Many people equate accent with pronunciation. I don't feel this to be true at all. America is a big country, and while the pronunciation varies from the East Coast to the West Coast, from the southern to the northern states, two components that are uniquely American stay basically the same—the speech music, or intonation, and the word connections or liaisons. Throughout this program, we will focus on them. In the latter part of the book we will work on pronunciation concepts, such as Cat? Caught? Cut? and Betty Bought a Bit of Better Butter; we also will work our way through some of the difficult sounds, such as TH, the American R, the L, V, and Z. "Which Accent Is Correct?" American Accent Training was created to help people "sound American" for lectures, interviews, teaching, business situations, and general daily communication. Although America has many regional pronunciation differences, the accent you will learn is that of standard American English as spoken and understood by the majority of educated native speakers in the United States. Don't worry that you will sound slangy or too casual because you most definitely won't. 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. "Why Is My Accent So Bad?" Learners can be seriously hampered by a negative outlook, so I'll address this very important point early. First, your accent is not bad; it is nonstandard to the American ear. There is a joke that goes: What do you call a person who can speak three languages? Trilingual. What do you call a person who can speak two languages? Bilingual. What do you call a person who can only speak one language? American. Every language is equally valid or good, so every accent is good. The average American, however, Стр. 13 из 185

truly does have a hard time understanding a nonstandard accent. George Bernard Shaw said that the English and Americans are two people divided by the same language Some students learn to overpronounce English because they naturally want to say the word as it is written. Too often an English teacher may allow this, perhaps thinking that colloquial American English is unsophisticated, unrefined, or even incorrect. Not so at all! Just as you don't say the t in listen, the TT in better is pronounced D, bedder. Any other pronunciation will sound foreign strange, wrong, or different to a native speaker Less Than It Appears. More Than It Appears As you will see in Exercise 1-21, Squeezed-Out Syllables, on page 18, some words appear to have three or more syllables, but all of them are not actually spoken. For example, business is not(bi/i/ness), but rather(birz/ness Just when you get used to eliminating whole syllables from words, you're going to come across other words that look as if they have only one syllable, but really need to be said with as many as three! In addition, the inserted syllables are filled with letters that are not in the written word I'll give you two examples of this strange phenomenon. Pool looks like a nice, one-syllable word, but if you say it this way, at best, it will sound like pull, and at worst will be unintelligible to your listener. For clear comprehension, you need to say three syllables(pu/wuh/luh). Where did that W come from? It's certainly not written down anywhere, but it is there just as definitely as the P is there. The second example is a word like feel. If you say just the letters that you see, it will sound more like fill. You need to say(fee/yuh/uh). Is that really a Y? Yes. These mysterious semivowels are explained under liaisons in Chapter 2. They can appear either inside a word as you have seen, or between words as you will learn Language Is Fluent and fluid Just like your own language, conversational English has a very smooth, fluid sound. Imagine that you are walking along a dry riverbed with your eyes closed. Every time you come to a rock, you trip over it, stop, continue, and trip over the next rock. This is how the average foreigner speaks English. It is slow, awkward, and even painful. Now imagine that you are a great river rushing through that same riverbed-rocks are no problem, are they? You just slide over and around them without ever breaking your smooth flow. It is this feeling that I want you to capture in English 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 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. Good luck with your new accent A Few Words On Pronunciation CD 1 Track 2 I'd like to introduce you to the pronunciation guide outlines in the following chart. There arent too many characters that are different from the standard alphabet, but just so you'll be familiar with them, look at the chart. It shows eight tense vowels and six lax vowels and semivowels Tense Vowels? lax vowels?

truly does have a hard time understanding a nonstandard accent. George Bernard Shaw said that the English and Americans are two people divided by the same language! Some students learn to overpronounce English because they naturally want to say the word as it is written. Too often an English teacher may allow this, perhaps thinking that colloquial American English is unsophisticated, unrefined, or even incorrect. Not so at all! Just as you don't say the T in listen, the TT in better is pronounced D, bedder. Any other pronunciation will sound foreign, strange, wrong, or different to a native speaker. v Less Than It Appears ... More Than It Appears As you will see in Exercise 1-21, Squeezed-Out Syllables, on page 18, some words appear to have three or more syllables, but all of them are not actually spoken. For example, business is not (bi/zi/ness), but rather (birz/ness). Just when you get used to eliminating whole syllables from words, you're going to come across other words that look as if they have only one syllable, but really need to be said with as many as three! In addition, the inserted syllables are filled with letters that are not in the written word. I'll give you two examples of this strange phenomenon. Pool looks like a nice, one-syllable word, but if you say it this way, at best, it will sound like pull, and at worst will be unintelligible to your listener. For clear comprehension, you need to say three syllables (pu/wuh/luh). Where did that W come from? It's certainly not written down anywhere, but it is there just as definitely as the P is there. The second example is a word like feel. If you say just the letters that you see, it will sound more like fill. You need to say (fee/yuh/luh). Is that really a Y? Yes. These mysterious semivowels are explained under Liaisons in Chapter 2. They can appear either inside a word as you have seen, or between words as you will learn. Language Is Fluent and Fluid Just like your own language, conversational English has a very smooth, fluid sound. Imagine that you are walking along a dry riverbed with your eyes closed. Every time you come to a rock, you trip over it, stop, continue, and trip over the next rock. This is how the average foreigner speaks English. It is slow, awkward, and even painful. Now imagine that you are a great river rushing through that same riverbed—rocks are no problem, are they? You just slide over and around them without ever breaking your smooth flow. It is this feeling that I want you to capture in English. 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. 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." Good luck with your new accent! vi A Few Words On Pronunciation CD 1 Track 2 I'd like to introduce you to the pronunciation guide outlines in the following chart. There aren't too many characters that are different from the standard alphabet, but just so you'll be familiar with them, look at the chart. It shows eight tense vowels and six lax vowels and semivowels. Tense Vowels? Lax Vowels? Стр. 14 из 185

In some books, tense vowels are called long and lax vowels are called short. Since you will be learning how to lengthen vowels when they come before a voiced consonant, it would be confusing to say that hen has a long, short vowel. It is more descriptive to say that it has a lax vowel that is doubled or lengthened Tense Vowels Lax vowels Symbol Sound Spelling Example Symbol Sound SpellingExample take tak] E get IgEt e h t uh took [tuk some sem] ooh smooth[smut caught [kat Semivowels a+e cat aeo ae+o down [deon dull [] Although this may look like a lot of characters to learn, there are really only four new ones: ae a, a, and u. Under Tense Vowels, you'll notice that the vowels that say their own name simply have a line over them: a], Ie], [il, lo], Ja]. There are three other tense vowels. First, [al,is pronounced like the sound you make when the doctor wants to see your throat, or when you loosen a tight belt and sit down in a soft chair--aaaaaaaah! Next, you'll find [ae], a combination of the tense vowel [a] and the lax vowel [] It is similar to the noise that a goat or a lamb makes The last one is [aeo], a combination of [ae] and [o]. This is a very common sound, usually written as ow or ou in words like down or round A tense vowel requires you to use a lot of facial muscles to produce it. If you say le], you must stretch your lips back; for [G] you must round your lips forward; for [a] you drop your jaw down; for ae] you will drop your jaw far down and back; for [a] bring your lips back and drop your jaw [o] round the lips, drop the jaw and pull back up into[a]. An American l is really o,,and for a bit; for [i] drop your jaw for the ah part of the sound and pull it back up for the ee part; and for V Now you try it. Repeat after me. [e],[u]a] [ae] [a][,[8] A lax vowel, on the other hand, is very reduced. In fact, you don' t need to move your face at all You only need to move the back of your tongue and your throat. These sounds are very different from most other languages Under Lax Vowels, there are four reduced vowel sounds, starting with the Greek letter epsilon Ia], pronounced eh, [] pronounced ih, and [ul pronounced ii, which is a combination of ih and uh, and the schwa, La], pronounced uh--the softest, most reduced, most relaxed sound that we can produce. It is also the most common sound in English. The semivowels are the American R (pronounced er, which is the schwa plus R)and the american L(which is the schwa plus L) Vowels will be covered in greater detail in Chapters 3, 8, and 11 Voiced consonants? Unvoiced Consonants? A consonant is a sound that causes two points of your mouth to come into contact, in three locations--the lips, the tip of the tongue, and the throat. a consonant can either be unvoiced (whispered) or voiced(spoken), and it can appear at the beginning, middle, or end of a word You'll notice that for some categories, a particular sound doesn't exist in English Initial Media Final Unvoiced Voiced Unvoiced Voiced Unvoiced Voiced

In some books, tense vowels are called long and lax vowels are called short. Since you will be learning how to lengthen vowels when they come before a voiced consonant, it would be confusing to say that hen has a long, short vowel. It is more descriptive to say that it has a lax vowel that is doubled or lengthened. Although this may look like a lot of characters to learn, there are really only four new ones: æ, ä, ə, and ü. Under Tense Vowels, you'll notice that the vowels that say their own name simply have a line over them: [ā], [ē], [ī], [ō], [ū]. There are three other tense vowels. First, [ä], is pronounced like the sound you make when the doctor wants to see your throat, or when you loosen a tight belt and sit down in a soft chair—aaaaaaaah! Next, you'll find [æ], a combination of the tense vowel [ä] and the lax vowel [ε]. It is similar to the noise that a goat or a lamb makes. The last one is [æo], a combination of [æ] and [o]. This is a very common sound, usually written as ow or ou in words like down or round. A tense vowel requires you to use a lot of facial muscles to produce it. If you say [ē], you must stretch your lips back; for [ū] you must round your lips forward; for [ä] you drop your jaw down; for [æ] you will drop your jaw far down and back; for [ā] bring your lips back and drop your jaw a bit; for [ī] drop your jaw for the ah part of the sound and pull it back up for the ee part; and for [ō] round the lips, drop the jaw and pull back up into [ū]. An American [ō] is really [ōū]. V Now you try it. Repeat after me. [ē], [ū], [ā], [æ], [ä], [ī], [ō]. vii A lax vowel, on the other hand, is very reduced. In fact, you don't need to move your face at all. You only need to move the back of your tongue and your throat. These sounds are very different from most other languages. Under Lax Vowels, there are four reduced vowel sounds, starting with the Greek letter epsilon [ε], pronounced eh; [i] pronounced ih, and [ü] pronounced ü, which is a combination of ih and uh, and the schwa, [ə], pronounced uh—the softest, most reduced, most relaxed sound that we can produce. It is also the most common sound in English. The semivowels are the American R (pronounced er, which is the schwa plus R) and the American L (which is the schwa plus L). Vowels will be covered in greater detail in Chapters 3, 8, and 11. Voiced Consonants? Unvoiced Consonants? A consonant is a sound that causes two points of your mouth to come into contact, in three locations—the lips, the tip of the tongue, and the throat. A consonant can either be unvoiced (whispered) or voiced (spoken), and it can appear at the beginning, middle, or end of a word. You'll notice that for some categories, a particular sound doesn't exist in English. Tense Vowels Lax Vowels Symbol Sound Spelling Example Symbol Sound Spelling Example ā εi take [tak] ε eh get [gεt] ē ee eat [et] i ih it [it] ī äi ice [is] ü ih + uh took [tük] ō ou hope [hop] ə uh some [səm] ū ooh smooth [smuth] ä ah caught [kät] Semivowels æ ä + ε cat [kæt] ər er her [hər] æo æ + o down [dæon] əl ul dull [dəəl] Initial Medial Final Unvoiced Voiced Unvoiced Voiced Unvoiced Voiced Стр. 15 из 185