Accent Training Podcast

#134 How to see FAST Progress learning the American Accent

September 16, 2022 Season 6 Episode 134
Accent Training Podcast
#134 How to see FAST Progress learning the American Accent
Show Notes Transcript

When you learn from others' experiences, you can save yourself a lot of time and hardship. Learn from my experience and teaching method today, as I give you clear direction for a better learning experience with the American accent.
My main tip is, it's not about starting on the most difficult sounds, but rather assessing what you already know, and building from there.
Learn how you can go about this yourself, and make some serious progress learning the American accent!

Join the Patreon and change the sound of your spoken English!
https://patreon.com/Accentraining

Be sure to check out the podcast episodes listed below, and make it all happen!
Episode #042 Learn and Practice Short O
Episode #085 Learn and Practice Au Digraphs
Episode #110 Learn and Practice I and E Sounds

Apply to work 1 on 1 with me through the link below:
https://qlh5kgslus7.typeform.com/accentrainapp

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the accent training podcast, a podcast where I teach you to develop the habit of speaking with an American accent. My name is pat and I am your accent coach. I'm here to coach you and see that you develop the habit of speaking with an American accent. You see, this is the difference between training the American accent and learning the American accent. You can learn about whatever you want by just Googling stuff, right? You can just look stuff up on Google, read about it. And now you've learned about the American accent. Congratulations might be valuable. Information might be a waste of time. That's up to you to decide training the American accent. However, is about applying the sounds and patterns of American English, speakers, habitually to your own speech. And that's where I come in. I teach you how to make that a habit, and I teach you how to make that habit stick around and become a natural part of your speech. Now, I talk about all sorts of things in this podcast. At the end of the day, the topic does always come down to speaking English skills and getting a better grasp on spoken English. When we're improving spoken English, we could be using stress better. As we've seen in some previous episodes, we could be connecting our sounds. We could be making particularly we could be correcting our positioning. We could be adjusting our positioning to make particular sounds, or we could be learning about idioms or words that come from other languages or focusing on business English or conversational English, or going to the airport, driving your car, all kinds of things. And when we wanna improve ourselves, this wide array of options can leave us confused. If you have too many things that you can work on, you'll end up getting nothing done. You'll feel like you've bit off, more than you could chew. And you'll just give up. It happens all the time. People give up on their goals because they don't have direction. Well, the direction that I'd like to give you today from my experience is that when you're improving your use of the American accent, it's extremely valuable to start with vowel sounds. Vowel sounds. You see vowel sounds are opened. Voiced sounds, vowel sounds do not need our tongue or lips blocking the air or voice as it passes through. Vowel letters include of course a E I O new. Now every word contains at least one vowel sound and notice I'm saying vowel sound and not vowel letters. Some words contain no vowel letters, but still make a vowel sound. Other words, contain vowel letters and have no vowel sound. We have tense vowels, and we have lax vowels. These are also called long and short vowels. And when developing the American accent, it's essential that we focus heavily on this area, especially when we're just getting started. Like I said, every word contains at least one vowel sound and subtle changes in the positioning or movement of a vowel sound can completely change a word's meaning or lead to a misunderstanding. Vowel sounds rise and fall in strength as we speak, depending on the context or the words use just as well, vowels allow us to make smooth connections between words to eliminate any choppiness. When speaking now, many of our podcast episodes have gone deep into vowel sounds because as mentioned, working on them improves your three main areas of the American accent. Making clear sounds, contrasting your stress and connecting your words. Now as your accent coach, I want you to see as much progress and as short amount of time is possible. And so when it comes to your speech, this means focusing on vowel sounds. Now, aside from the frequency of vowel sounds and how often we use them, these are extremely valuable to work on simply because you may already know some of them, some vowel sounds made in English might be made in your native language, or maybe there's a similar variation of this vowel sound in your native language. This is to say that when we look at vowel sounds where taking the path of least resistance we're building upon what you already know take, for example, the short O vowel sounds like, ah, this is the sound that we hear in the words, stop coffee, sorry. Ah, this sound is very commonly used in the American accent because it's also the a that's used in the words like father F wa. And it's the exact same a sound used in words like LA haw, SA AU and Ady graphs. Ah, so this is to say that if you are looking for direction on what to do to improve your American accent, do a little research on some vowel sounds, identify which ones sound the most familiar to your native language and build upon those. If you adjust your positioning and you use that vowel more clearly and confidently as a start, then you'll have made a major first step in controlling the sounds and the stress of your spoken English and overall the confidence of your spoken English. That's of course, a major factor here. Your confidence now, without a doubt, learning vowel sounds may be a little bit awkward and forced at first, and they'll take time to adjust. However, they will only adjust if you actually use them. And if you listen for these sounds as often as possible, no matter how unnatural a vowel sound feels, it will never become natural or adapt well, unless we turn it into a habit that you repeat consistently. So now at this point, maybe you're looking for a bit of advice on just where to start, where you can look to create this habit. Well, you see it's different for everyone. Let me explain a little bit. If you live in Europe or Asia or Africa, it's highly likely that your vowels have adjusted closer to the British pronunciation. Whereas if you're from Latin America or well, Brazil comes to mind, big time, you've likely adapted a more American pronunciation. And so the precise point of exactly where to start with this changes for everyone, depending on a ton of different factors. However, if you are taking this on and you're trying to learn the American accent from home, as many people are these days, there are two places that I would recommend beginning with one is the shorto one that I've already told you about this. A sound used in the shorto in stop and got is used so widely in spoken English. That if you focus on that one area, you can see a lot of progress in a short amount of time. In fact, in the show notes, I'll add a link to my short O episode to let you get a grasp on this. So the short O that's the number one spot. The second vowel sound that I believe we can see the most impact with in the least amount of time is the tense E and the short eye comparison. This is between the sounds like E and eh, E eh, each it, these, this, the difference between these two sounds is subtle, but when you learn to control it, it gives you a better understanding of the difference between tense, vowels, E and lax vowels, eh, E eh, and this is really a subtle difference, which may not be so obvious to you. If these sounds aren't made in your native language. And so this brings us to the main point of this week's episode. Vowel sounds are imperative to your language development. Every word has vowel sounds, and we can see the most progress in the least amount of time. If we simply focus on the area of vowel sounds, learning, the American accent is not something that's going to happen overnight. In fact, it needs to happen during the daytime while you're awake, and you need to dedicate attention to your muscle movements and the repetition of these sounds. Now I'm sure many of you are also wondering how long is it gonna take if you're dedicated to learning the vowel sounds well, look with me. One on one classes dedicating at least three to five hours a week between class time and, and, you know, time that you're practicing, I'd say three months, three months, and you'd have the vowel sounds down quite confidently. It's quite a commitment. Keep that in mind, but that is what it takes. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it on your own at home. If you're using YouTube and trying to find all the free resources that you can, if you really dedicate yourself maybe a year, nine months to a year, and you'd have a fairly good grasp on the vowel sounds, I'm giving you a realistic number nine months to a year. I'd say of dedication strictly on vowel sounds. If you're well organized nine months, most likely if you're not that well organized maybe a year. And if you aren't dedicated, you'll see improvement. No doubt about it. You'll see improvement. Even if you aren't dedicated, because you'll start hearing English sounds better and you'll start repeating them better. But if you aren't dedicated, you'll never get it. It's just that way. It's that way with everything. If you aren't dedicated to brushing your teeth every night, your teeth are gonna fall out, right? Well, if you can't dedicate yourself to focusing strictly on vowel sounds for a few months, then you're not gonna learn all the vowel sounds. You will see improvement improvements inevitable, but without dedication, you won't see consistent change. You won't build the habits. So those are two ways to go about it. Of course, there are other accent coaches out there, but I'm, but I can't speak for their materials. I don't know what they produce. I know what my materials have produced. And that is serious results through how you develop an American accent in about three months. Now, at this moment in September of 2022, I charge$2,000 for that course to get the job done in three months. And what gets the job done so much faster is the one on one support, the constant corrections, the constant guidance, the regular assessments to see exactly what point a looks like and where we wanna get to point B and then a whole ton of structure and kind of language tools to help you form that into a habit that you're constantly listening for, recognizing and repeating. That's what classes with me entail. And I'm quite proud of the results I've been able to produce in people. But now I don't want you to feel put out. I don't want money to come in the way of your education. I want you to use the structure and the methods that I've developed over the years. And this is where my Patreon page comes into play. My friend, you see, I'm currently creating a video course, all about vowel sounds. And as I create my material and my video course for vowel sounds, I'd like to allow you the opportunity to test out my methods and see for yourself how it works. This video course is focused a hundred percent on vowel sounds, vowel, sound, positioning, vowel, sound stress. Using vowel sounds to connect our words together. And every week I will produce one video course lesson, which I will publish on Patreon. At this moment. Speaking, I've already got five made, and I'm gonna start it out with a handful there. So you start out right away with a great foundation to learn the American accent. And so using Patreon, I will provide you with my genius guide to learning the American accent, a new video lesson every week with new tasks every week and new content using my methods to produce results in your English. Now, like I said, taking classes with me alone is, is not enough to get the job done in three months. However, frequent assessments is what it will take to see those changes. Now, some of you listening may be thinking, what are you talking about? Frequent assessments to see the changes. Here's what I'm saying. An assessment is not only an exam. I use assessments as roadmaps to guide us towards success at a higher tier of patronage. I will provide you with regular assessments along with specific and clear guidance on what steps you should take next to change the sound of your spoken English. And so Patreon will bridge that gap. Patreon will give you early access to my video course materials. We're gonna test out our materials together and you will see as my materials evolve and your own speech skills will adapt along with me. Now, this Patreon page, I've been working hard at it for about six weeks now, writing, developing materials, recording, editing, learning how to use all these softwares, just getting started on this has been an adventure itself. And I am happy to announce that my Patreon page will be ready to launch on October. First on the 1st of October, 2022, accent training will be moving to Patreon and I have an offer to everybody listening right now, any accent training pod fan that joins my Patreon in the first week of October, 2022. So this is between the dates of Saturday, October 1st and Saturday, October 8th, anybody who gets in there in that first week will receive a free welcome assessment from me personally, I will send you assessment material along with an email address for you to send that reading to I'll identify some common denominators of your accent, which you could easily use to change your pronunciation along with some specific areas of difficulty so that you have a clear understanding of what you've already accomplished and what we need to take care of now, and the direction that you wanna take things to see some serious change in your spoken English. So once more, my Patreon page will be launching October 1st and anybody who gets in in that first week will receive a welcome assessment along with a crystal clear roadmap on how to move forward and materials to make that possible. All right, now you've let me get my plug plugin. Plenty. I appreciate your time today. When we're talking about changing your spoken English skills, learning vowel sounds has to be a part of that conversation. We see the most progress in the least amount of time, and we quickly begin understanding and repeating the sounds of spoken English with confidence. You can learn vowel sounds with a coach who will give you direction and advice on how to see improvement. You could work on vowel sounds, watching YouTube videos at home. Although it's gonna take you a much longer time and it'll take a lot more dedication and commitment, or if you want clear focused resources to teach you the American vowel sounds along with tasks and guidance to create American vowel sounds into a spoken English habit. You can check out my Patriot on October 1st and take a major step on controlling your spoken English skills. And that's what I've got for you today. My friends make sure that you are subscribed to this podcast so that you're notified as soon as new episodes are published to the world to learn from. And if you're looking to see some progress controlling your spoken English right away, check out the links in the description and get a better grasp on the short O and short eye sound. Thank you for your time and have a good one folks.