Customer Reviews

The American Accent Guide, Second Edition: A Complete and Comprehensive Course on the Pronunciation and Speaking Style of American English for Individuals of All Language Backgrounds / book and 8 CDs

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book & CDs are use to build a solid fundamental for American English speaking, and I put the CDs at the car and listen while I drive.
Most content in the book are include in the CD, it's all simple English so if you study the book once you know what words they're speaking for. Why I said this because many single words in the CDs share same / similiar pronunciation, if you don't read the book first you can't distinguish it.
The CD voices are articulate / high quality. I found it especially good for Asian because most learn British English under their education systems.
Don't expect you will improve your English level by finish this book. As the title suggest, it'll only improve your speaking style. You still need to watch TV, listen to radio, do more reading, and talk as much as you can.
Thank you for all previous reviewers' opinions because I don't have time and money to try every products in the market.

As an ESL tutor, working primarily in accent reduction, I have found this book and its accompanying CD's to be perfect for working with business professionals trying to "Americanize" their accents. It supplies me with short, ready-made lessons, and I can leave the CD's with the clients so they can practice on their own. Someone had written a review stating the book was incomprehensible; I think they must be talking about a different book. The American Accent Guide is no more difficult than a phonics book or a speller, and is organized much the same way. You do need to have a cursory knowledge of linguistics and the IPA, but anyone teaching or studying another language should know these things. I've done extensive research on ESL resources, and this book and its CD's are better than anything I've found on the web. I highly recommend it. ~TC

My writing and vocabulary skills are quite developed, however, native speakers can sense the trace of an accent when I speak.
It gets worse on the phone as the listener can neither see your hands nor your facial expression and is totally dependent on your pronunciation and intonation to make sense of what you are saying.

The guide does a good job of helping you become aware of common speech patterns in conversational english and which syllable to stress depending on what you want to convey. The guide is great to carry along esp. if you have a 6 disc CD changer in your car and you drive alone most of the time. The best way to test your progress is to record your conversations on a quality portable digital recorder. Hearing your own voice over and over again will make you painfully aware of how bad your accent sounds to others and which words need more work. Furthermore, speak with native speakers as much as possible.

Despite what anyone might say, speaking like a native is essential to fit in the business and corporate world here where communication skills are far more important than in Asian cultures.

I'm from Germany and I bought this book to reduce my accent. Even when I only speak a few words, everybody hears from my accent that I'm not a native American speaker. I hate this "where are you from?" question. This book together with the CDs teach me the "music" meaning the pitch inflections and the speaking rhythm that are necessary to make a speaker sound American. If you just say the words right but don't use the proper pitch inflections and rhythm ("the music"), it sounds strange to the Americans and they can easily tell you are from abroad. I don't expect to reduce my accent to 0%, but I want to improve as much as I can. I think this book will help me a lot. I keep practising.

This book and CD program provides a systematic and intuitive approach for ESL learners who wish to improve their English at their own pace. Good investment for the price.

First, my native language is Chinese. I have been in the US for six years; and have had no intensive training in English. I consider myself an average, or slightly above average, ESL learner. Like many native speakers of syllabic languages, I had a tendency to apply the stress and intonation patterns of my first language when speaking English. In addition, I used certain vowels interchangeably. Listening to radio or hiring a tutor did not help much because I still couldn't figure out what to listen for and how I should sound. I always felt uncertain when speaking English.

The American Accent Guide has definitely been a big help and is the most insightful material I have used. The lessons can work as individual modules, but if you go through them in order a few times you will see that the organization is integral to gradually raising your awareness of how the speech factors work together to form the American accent.

The American Accent Guide also does a great job in conveying the ideas through integrating visual and audio aids. The Rhythm section is a good example: the practice sentences come with markings to show the stress in sentences, and the CD walks you through sets of sentences that have the same rhythm structure, which brilliantly demonstrate the idea of how to use stress and rhythm to improve the flow of speaking. It's really a very intuitive and effective approach that helps with both speaking and listening comprehension.

Another strength of the material is that the practice sentences are quite useful in daily life, unlike many ESL textbooks with phrases that have little practical use and get boring after a few repetitions.

In short, the American Accent Guide is a well thought-out and executed study guide for ESL students of all levels One can listen to it again and again and each time learn something new to work on. In terms of bang-per-buck, I think one will be hard-pressed to find a better investment.

I have found great success using The American Accent Guide in my speech pathology practice. This excellent sequential program of verbal exercises is complete as well as fun. The American Accent Guide,as a resource provides my clients with wonderful practice activities which target all of the nuances of American English. I highly recommend this program to non-native individuals who desire improvement in their communicative effectiveness.Toby L. Langstaff, M.A. CCC.

My name is Francois and I am a full-time student at the University of
Calgary, Alberta. I bought the American Accent Guide, 2nd Edition, after
reading some of the reviews, like you, at Amazon.com.

The American Accent Guide, 2nd Edition, is an excellent book; and I have
learned quite a bit while going through it. I was really impressed by
every aspect of it but particularly the word stressing, intonation, as
well as rhythm parts; I thought these parts were very useful for me. I am
much more aware of native people's way of pronouncing and stressing words
and I pay a lot more attention than I used to. Simple things used to sound
so similar but are in fact fundamentally different.

I think this book gives you all the tools necessary to keep working
effectively on your own. I think I have discovered which areas I need to
work on, namely, word stress, rhythm and intonation.

I thought the CD's were very clear and I could pick up easily on the
stresses and pronunciation in the sentences. There is more than one person
talking, which I think is an important key; it allows you to compare and
contrast different voices. The people talking were super and very
articulate. The examples were numerous and really good.

The book allows beginners as well as more advanced learners to improve on
their speech and attain a higher level of confidence while speaking. As
for me, I have learned to correct some key aspects of my speech pattern
even though I would consider myself a more advanced learner.

I have had some exposure on accent reduction technique and this book comes
first on my list of recommendations. This book has definitely met my
expectations.
Thank you very much, Beverly!!

Francois Tremblay

I bought this book because although I can pronounce words perfectly in English, I still have some problems with intonation. I have used Ann Cook's American Accent Training but there were still things not really covered in her book. The American Accent Guide has only two chapters on the subject but the last chapter on Intonation is covered in a way that I had never seen and goes beyond Cooks' book. It's really good. I highly recommend it but if your main interest is on intonation, you should also buy the American Accent Training since the latter has more exercises on intonation. However, if you also have problems with the sounds of English, The American Accent Guide is the perfect book for you. Maybe the only one you will ever neeed. My wife who is a U.S. born American is not happy with the book because I'm really losing my Brazilian accent which she thinks is very sexy. She says I sound too much American now. Well, if you're like me, that's not a bad thing, is it? We can always work on the sexy part some other way.

I received a copy of The American Accent Guide (2nd Edition) along with its 8 CDs a couple of months ago, and I have to say that I really like this program.
The accent you will hear and learn throughout this program is standard American Accent - all the male and female voices on the CDs sound like radio voice actors and actresses for commercials, etc.
The book and the CDs are incredibly well-done. If you're looking forward to modify your accent, whether it's foreign or regional, look no further. This program is so well-done. It explains how to pronounce all the consonants and vowels, intonation, etc. of American English.
I guess you could choose other programs out there, but I truly believe this IS how standard American English really should sound like.

This is a complete and well rounded work. Eventhough I have been living in the US for over 17 years and earned an AS and a BS, I found myself having difficulties in the pronunciation of the english words. I have gotten a lot of helps from my kids, however after applying the American Accent Guide to my daily routines for a couple months, I have been feeling a lot more confident to express myself. The digital media is professionally prepared and the speakers are pleasant and very well articulated. I used the cds in my car and also ripped them into my mp3 player to listen to when I am excercising and riding with someone.
The Accent guide has helped me to be more aware of the subtle nature of the English Language. If you would like to speak the American Idiom better and more fluently this is a great resource to have. It works!!!!