American Accent Training

今日はアメリカンアクセントについて。
サンフランシスコで出会う留学生達によく、発音について聞かれます。
「自分の発音があまり良くないので、ネイティブにすぐに分かってもらえない。何度も同じ単語を伝えないと行けない。」等々、悩みを打ち明けられます。

ある中国人学生は、道を聞いたら発音が違うと何度も練習させられたと不快そうに言っていました。
確かに、嫌な経験をすると話すとき恥ずかしさと不安が頭をよぎるようになりますよね．．．。
私も初めは「え？何？なんて？」って言われたら、よけいに声が小さくなっていました。（笑）

そこで、見つけたのが"American Accent Training"。さっとく本屋で買って聞いて勉強しました。とても分かりやすく、英語の教材はここ数年買った事がありませんが、これは良かった。
もし、発音が不安だと言う方にはオススメです！

余談ですが、中国語は発音が重要。１ヶ月はピンインを勉強し、その後も中国人教師が中国語を教える時に使う発音テープを何度も聞きました。今でも時々聞く事があります。
なので、中国人の人に発音がきれいだと言われます。音に慣れる。その音をまねる。とても重要ですよね。よく中国人と間違われるのは、複雑な心境ですが。

この発音の教材はEffortless English Blogでも紹介されているので、読んでみて下さい。


"American Accent Training" is a book and CD set by Ann Cook. You can buy it on Amazon.com. As the title suggests, this is a pronunciation-only system. It is designed for one thing-- to improve your English pronunciation and get you to speak more like an American.

This system has two major strengths. First, it focuses mostly on intonation rather than individual sounds.

Most pronunciation books and CDs focus on the sounds of difficult letters. For example, they spend a lot of time on pronouncing "r" and "l". The result is that students improve these sounds a little, but their overall pronunciation is still terrible.

For most students, INTONATION, not the sounds of letters, is their big problem. Poor intonation is the reason native speakers cannot understand you. Which is why I like American Accent Training-- the program focuses on the most important pronunciation skill.

The second strength of this program is that it is listening based. Surprisingly, many pronunciation programs focus on the EYES instead of the ears. I've seen a lot of books with complicated drawings of the mouth and tongue, for example. All these complicated drawings are useless.

American Accent Training includes 5 CDs, so it is listening focused. And as all Effortless English members know, you learn to speak by listening. You improve speaking with your ears, not your eyes. This is true for pronunciation, as well as fluency, grammar, and vocabulary.

American Accent Training, however, does have one big weakness. It is boring. There are a lot of word lists and sentences to practice, but not of them has any meaning. You spend your time practicing random words and sentences. So, the biggest challenge with this program is finishing it.

I recommend American Accent Training only for students who are advanced and who want to focus all of their energy on pronunciation. If you are very motivated to improve your pronunciation, and can endure some boredom, the program will help you.

For everyone else, I recommend using movies and my english conversation lessons to improve pronunciation. These are much more interesting to use. Simply listen carefully, pause after each sentence, and copy the speaker's pronunciation. Make it a game-- pretend you are an actor!

Good luck with your English learning :)



Listen To This Article at:
The Effortless English Podcast.