American Accent Training Review

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 trading includes five CDs,

so it is listening focused.

And is 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.

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