If you would like to sound more like an American, the best place to start is on intonation – the musical and rhythmic aspects of language including grouping and connecting words, emphasizing correct syllables and words, selecting the correct volume and projecting your voice appropriately, pausing in the correct places and varying the pitch of your voice so that you don’t sound monotonous like a robot. This is far more important than focusing on individual sounds in order to sound more natural and understandable.
It’s best to focus on the big picture first, and follow up with addressing problematic vowel and consonant sounds later. Without intonation, your speech will lack emotion and sound flat and mechanical or choppy. You will sound odd to the native speaker even if you are technically pronouncing the individual sounds properly.
Think of how Americans sound to you when they speak your language. Which differences stand out the most? This assessment will provide valuable clues to help you mimic the American sound. It will let you know what you need to change to sound like a native speaker of North America. You might notice that Americans don’t move lips like when they speak like the rest of the world. Most Americans sounds originate in the throat with active use of the tongue.
Speaking too fast, using the wrong stress patterns and not pausing often enough or in the correct places are some of the biggest barriers to sounding like a native speaker of American English, in addition to other pronunciation and grammatical errors. For many learners of English, slowing down is the key to sounding more intelligible in English.
Punctuation marks such as commas, periods and question marks tell us when to pause. As sentences become longer, however, Americans tend to speak in chunks or groups of several words (followed by a pause) emphasizing key words and almost swallowing less important words. You will also notice that the final word in each word group tends to receive the most stress.
The best way to learn to learn pausing and chunking while developing a natural rhythm is by listening and observing native speakers regularly, such as Barack Obama, who is very articulate and has good standard diction, as well as many interesting, recorded speeches such as this one:
Another way is to observe this in following songs on YouTube such as this one:
If you have questions or would like some individual coaching or instruction, feel free to contact me at www.amysindicic.com. I work 24/7 online to help you to reach your English language goals. ☺
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