标准美语发音的13个秘诀 CD 3 Track 50

Telephone Tutoring 

Follow-up Diagnostic Analysis    CD 3 Track 50 

After three to six months, you're ready for the follow-up analysis. If you're studying on your own, please contact toll-free (800) 457-4255 or www.americanaccent.com for a referral to a qualified telephone analyst 1. The diagnostic analysis is designed toevaluate your current speech patterns to let you know where your accent is standard and nonstandard.

Think the United Auto 2 Workers can beat Caterpillar 3 Inc. in their bitter contract battle? Before placing your bets, talk to Paul Branan, who can't wait to cross the picket 4 line at Caterpillar's factory in East Peoria. Branan, recently laid off by a rubber-parts plant where he earned base pay of $6.30 an hour, lives one block from a heavily picketed 5 gate at the Cat complex. Now he's applying to replace one of 12,600 workers who have been on strike for the past five months. "Seventeen dollars an hour and they don't want to work?" asks Branan. "I don't want totake another guy's job,but I'm hurting, too."

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Chapters 1-6 Review and Expansion 

In the first six chapters of the American Accent Training program, we covered the concepts that form the basis of American speech—intonation, word groups, the staircase, and liaisons 6, or word connections. We also discussed some key sounds, such as [æ], [ä], and [ə] (Cat? Caught? Cut?), the El, the American T, and the American R. Let's briefly 7 review each item.

Intonation 

You've learned some of the reasons for changing the pitch (or saying a word louder or even streeetching it out) of some words in a sentence.

1. To introduce new information (nouns)

2. To offer an opinion

3. To contrast two or more elements

4. To indicate the use of the negative contraction 8 can't

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Miscellaneous Reminders 9 of Intonation 

When you have a verb/preposition combination, the stress usually goes on the preposition: pick up, put down, fall in, and so on. Otherwise, prepositions are placed in the valleys of your intonation. It's f'r you., They're fr'm LA.

When you have initials, the stress goes on the last letter: IBM, PO Box, ASAP, IOU, and so on.

Liaisons and Glides 

Through liaisons, you learned about voiced and unvoiced consonants—where they are located in the mouth and which sounds are likely to attach to a following one. You were also introduced to glides.

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The American T 

T is T, a clear popped sound, when it is at the top of the staircase.

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The El 

The El is closely connected with the schwa. Yourtongue drops down in back as if it were going to say uh, but the tip curls up and attaches to the top of the mouth, which requires a strong movement of the tip of the tongue. The air comes out around the sides of the tongue and the sound is held for slightly longer than you'd think.

The American R 

The main difference between a consonant 10 and a vowel 11 is that witha consonant there is contact at some point in your mouth. It might be the lips, P; the tongue tip, N; or the throat, G. Like a vowel, however, the R doesn't touch anywhere. It is similar to a schwa, but yourtongue curls back in a retroflex movement and produces a sound deep in the throat. The tongue doesn't touch the top of the mouth. Another way to approach it is toput your tongue in position for ee, and then slide straight back to eeer. Some people are more comfortable collapsing 12 their tongue back, like an accordion 13 instead of curling it. It doesn't make any difference in the sound, so do whichever you prefer.

Application Exercises 

Now you need to use the techniques you've learned so far and tomake the transference to your everyday speech. In the beginning, the process is very slow and analytical 14, but as you do it over and over again, it becomes natural and unconscious. The exercises presented here will show you how. For example, take any phrase that may catch your ear during a conversation—because it is unfamiliar, or for whatever other reason—and work it though the practice sequence used in Review Exercise 1.