时间:2018-12-02 作者:英语课 分类:美语口音训练第一册


英语课
Welcome to American Accent Training. This book and CD set is designed to get you started on your

American accent. We'll follow the book and go through the 13 lessons and all the exercises step by

step. Everything is explained and a complete Answer Key may be found in the back of the text.

What Is Accent?

Accent is a combination of three main components 1: intonation 2 (speech music), liaisons 3 (word

connections), and pronunciation (the spoken sounds of vowels 4, consonants 5, and combinations). As

you go along, you'll notice that you're being asked to look at accent in a different way. You'll also

realize that the grammar you studied before and this accent you're studying now are completely

different.

Part of the difference is that grammar and vocabulary are systematic 6 and structured— the letter of

the language. Accent, on the other hand, is free form, intuitive, and creative— more the spirit of the

language. So, thinking of music, feeling, and flow, let your mouth relax into the American accent.

Can I Learn a New Accent?

Can a person actually learn a new accent? Many people feel that after a certain age, it's just not

possible. Can classical musicians play jazz? If they practice, of course they can! For your American

accent, it's just a matter of learning and practicing techniques this book and CD set will teach you. It

is up to you to use them or not. How well you do depends mainly on how open and willing you are

to sounding different from the way you have sounded all your life.

A very important thing you need to remember is that you can use your accent to say what you mean

and how you mean it. Word stress conveys meaning through tone or feeling, which can be much

more important than the actual words that you use. We'll cover the expression of these feelings

through intonation in the first lesson.

You may have noticed that I talk fast and often run my words together. You've probably heard

enough "English-teacher English"—where ... everything ... is ... pronounced without having to listen

too carefully. That's why on the CDs we're going to talk just like the native speakers that we are, in a

normal conversational 7 tone.

Native speakers may often tell people who are learning English to "slow down" and to "speak

clearly." This is meant with the best of intentions, but it is exactly the opposite of what a student

really needs to do. If you speak fairly quickly and with strong intonation, you will be understood

more easily. To illustrate 8 this point, you will hear a Vietnamese student first trying to speak slowly

and carefully and then repeating the same words quickly and with strong intonation. Studying, this

exercise took her only about two minutes to practice, but the difference makes her sound as if she

had been in America for many years.

V Please listen. You will hear the same words twice. Hello, my name is Muoi. I'm taking American

Accent Training.

You may have to listen to this CD a couple of times to catch everything. To help you, every word on

the CD is also written in the book. By seeing and hearing simultaneously 9, you'll learn to reconcile

the differences between the appearance of English (spelling) and the sound of English

(pronunciation and the other aspects of accent).

The CD leaves a rather short pause for you to repeat into. The point of this is to get you responding

quickly and without spending too much time thinking about your response.

Accent versus 10 Pronunciation

Many people equate 11 accent with pronunciation. I don't feel this to be true at all. America is a big

country, and while the pronunciation varies from the East Coast to the West Coast, from the southern

to the northern states, two components that are uniquely American stay basically the same—the

speech music, or intonation, and the word connections or liaisons. Throughout this program, we will

focus on them. In the latter part of the book we will work on pronunciation concepts, such as Cat?

Caught? Cut? and Betty Bought a Bit of Better Butter; we also will work our way through some of

the difficult sounds, such as TH, the American R, the L, V, and Z.

"Which Accent Is Correct?"

American Accent Training was created to help people "sound American" for lectures, interviews,

teaching, business situations, and general daily communication. Although America has many

regional pronunciation differences, the accent you will learn is that of standard American English as

spoken and understood by the majority of educated native speakers in the United States. Don't worry

that you will sound slangy or too casual because you most definitely won't. This is the way a

professor lectures to a class, the way a national newscaster broadcasts, the way that is most

comfortable and familiar to the majority of native speakers.

"Why Is My Accent So Bad?"

Learners can be seriously hampered 12 by a negative outlook, so I'll address this very important point

early. First, your accent is not bad; it is nonstandard to the American ear. There is a joke that goes:

What do you call a person who can speak three languages? Trilingual. What do you call a person

who can speak two languages? Bilingual. What do you call a person who can only speak one

language? American.

Every language is equally valid 13 or good, so every accent is good. The average American, however,

truly does have a hard time understanding a nonstandard accent. George Bernard Shaw said that the

English and Americans are two people divided by the same language!

Some students learn to overpronounce English because they naturally want to say the word as it is

written. Too often an English teacher may allow this, perhaps thinking that colloquial 14 American

English is unsophisticated, unrefined, or even incorrect. Not so at all! Just as you don't say the T in

listen, the TT in better is pronounced D, bedder. Any other pronunciation will sound foreign,

strange, wrong, or different to a native speaker.

Less Than It Appears ... More Than It Appears

As you will see in Exercise 1-21, Squeezed-Out Syllables 16, on page 18, some words appear to

have three or more syllables, but all of them are not actually spoken. For example, business is

not (bi/zi/ness), but rather (birz/ness).

Just when you get used to eliminating whole syllables from words, you're going to come across

other words that look as if they have only one syllable 15, but really need to be said with as many as

three! In addition, the inserted syllables are filled with letters that are not in the written word. I'll

give you two examples of this strange phenomenon. Pool looks like a nice, one-syllable word,

but if you say it this way, at best, it will sound like pull, and at worst will be unintelligible 17 to

your listener. For clear comprehension, you need to say three syllables (pu/wuh/luh). Where did

that W come from? It's certainly not written down anywhere, but it is there just as definitely as

the P is there. The second example is a word like feel. If you say just the letters that you see, it

will sound more like fill. You need to say (fee/yuh/luh). Is that really a Y? Yes. These

mysterious semivowels are explained under Liaisons in Chapter 2. They can appear either inside

a word as you have seen, or between words as you will learn.

Language Is Fluent and Fluid

Just like your own language, conversational English has a very smooth, fluid sound. Imagine that

you are walking along a dry riverbed with your eyes closed. Every time you come to a rock, you

trip over it, stop, continue, and trip over the next rock. This is how the average foreigner speaks

English. It is slow, awkward, and even painful. Now imagine that you are a great river rushing

through that same riverbed—rocks are no problem, are they? You just slide over and around

them without ever breaking your smooth flow. It is this feeling that I want you to capture in

English.

Changing your old speech habits is very similar to changing from a stick shift to an automatic

transmission. Yes, you continue to reach for the gearshift for a while and your foot still tries to

find the clutch pedal, but this soon phases itself out. In the same way, you may still say

"telephone call" (kohl) instead of (kahl) for a while, but this too will soon pass.

You will also have to think about your speech more than you do now. In the same way that you

were very aware and self-conscious when you first learned to drive, you will eventually relax

and deal with the various components simultaneously.

A new accent is an adventure. Be bold! Exaggerate wildly! You may worry that Americans will

laugh at you for putting on an accent, but I guarantee you, they won't even notice. They'll just

think that you've finally learned to "talk right." Good luck with your new accent!

1 components
(机器、设备等的)构成要素,零件,成分; 成分( component的名词复数 ); [物理化学]组分; [数学]分量; (混合物的)组成部分
  • the components of a machine 机器部件
  • Our chemistry teacher often reduces a compound to its components in lab. 在实验室中化学老师常把化合物分解为各种成分。
2 intonation
n.语调,声调;发声
  • The teacher checks for pronunciation and intonation.老师在检查发音和语调。
  • Questions are spoken with a rising intonation.疑问句是以升调说出来的。
3 liaisons
n.联络( liaison的名词复数 );联络人;(尤指一方或双方已婚的)私通;组织单位间的交流与合作
  • She embarked on a series of sexual liaisons with society figures. 她开始接二连三地与社会名流有染。 来自辞典例句
  • One of Wentworth's favorite movies is Dangerous Liaisons. went最喜欢的电影之一是《危险关系》。 来自互联网
4 vowels
n.元音,元音字母( vowel的名词复数 )
  • Vowels possess greater sonority than consonants. 元音比辅音响亮。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
  • Note the various sounds of vowels followed by r. 注意r跟随的各种元音的发音。 来自超越目标英语 第3册
5 consonants
n.辅音,子音( consonant的名词复数 );辅音字母
  • Consonants are frequently assimilated to neighboring consonants. 辅音往往被其邻近的辅音同化。 来自《简明英汉词典》
  • Vowels possess greater sonority than consonants. 元音比辅音响亮。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
6 systematic
adj.有系统的,有计划的,有方法的
  • The way he works isn't very systematic.他的工作不是很有条理。
  • The teacher made a systematic work of teaching.这个教师进行系统的教学工作。
7 conversational
adj.对话的,会话的
  • The article is written in a conversational style.该文是以对话的形式写成的。
  • She values herself on her conversational powers.她常夸耀自己的能言善辩。
8 illustrate
v.举例说明,阐明;图解,加插图
  • The company's bank statements illustrate its success.这家公司的银行报表说明了它的成功。
  • This diagram will illustrate what I mean.这个图表可说明我的意思。
9 simultaneously
adv.同时发生地,同时进行地
  • The radar beam can track a number of targets almost simultaneously.雷达波几乎可以同时追着多个目标。
  • The Windows allow a computer user to execute multiple programs simultaneously.Windows允许计算机用户同时运行多个程序。
10 versus
prep.以…为对手,对;与…相比之下
  • The big match tonight is England versus Spain.今晚的大赛是英格兰对西班牙。
  • The most exciting game was Harvard versus Yale.最富紧张刺激的球赛是哈佛队对耶鲁队。
11 equate
v.同等看待,使相等
  • You can't equate passing examination and being intelligent.你不能把考试及格看成是聪明。
  • You cannot equate his poems with his plays.你不可以把他的诗歌和他的剧本相提并论。
12 hampered
妨碍,束缚,限制( hamper的过去式和过去分词 )
  • The search was hampered by appalling weather conditions. 恶劣的天气妨碍了搜寻工作。
  • So thought every harassed, hampered, respectable boy in St. Petersburg. 圣彼德堡镇的那些受折磨、受拘束的体面孩子们个个都是这么想的。
13 valid
adj.有确实根据的;有效的;正当的,合法的
  • His claim to own the house is valid.他主张对此屋的所有权有效。
  • Do you have valid reasons for your absence?你的缺席有正当理由吗?
14 colloquial
adj.口语的,会话的
  • It's hard to understand the colloquial idioms of a foreign language.外语里的口头习语很难懂。
  • They have little acquaintance with colloquial English. 他们对英语会话几乎一窍不通。
15 syllable
n.音节;vt.分音节
  • You put too much emphasis on the last syllable.你把最后一个音节读得太重。
  • The stress on the last syllable is light.最后一个音节是轻音节。
16 syllables
n.音节( syllable的名词复数 )
  • a word with two syllables 双音节单词
  • 'No. But I'll swear it was a name of two syllables.' “想不起。不过我可以发誓,它有两个音节。” 来自英汉文学 - 双城记
17 unintelligible
adj.无法了解的,难解的,莫明其妙的
  • If a computer is given unintelligible data, it returns unintelligible results.如果计算机得到的是难以理解的数据,它给出的也将是难以理解的结果。
  • The terms were unintelligible to ordinary folk.这些术语一般人是不懂的。
学英语单词
absorption reaction rate
abuse of law
acrobatic show
Aleksandrinka
Allo-PBSCT
application workspace
arbitrally
blinking method of stereoscopic viewing
brass watch case blank
Chilean tinamous
cixiid
clap-hand
common laburnum
compartment hot well
compartmentalised
conductivity
contra-cyclical measures
Coquimbo owl
cross platform
cyclotheric sedimentation
dc data set
determinable freeholds
diacetylurea
dicumarols
elasto-aerodynamics
erosional vacuity
erotematic
final thermomechanicaltreatment
Gamu
general most favoured nation clause
glory of the snow
green goodss
gyroso-
hally
haylee
hofners
hydrated stock
hyperthite
idiologism
in the jug
incidental cost
ioduretted
items sample
keep on trucking
kindjals
koevoets
laminated clay
Lasianthus formosensis
leveling off
macro-observation
magmatic circulation
marine windscreen
mGal, mgal
moisture measurer for sand and stone
muscle scars
N.C.
nbcc
nobeliums
nuclenoic
NuLab
on-state characteristic
peritoneal tap
phthioic acid
plate mangle
prends
prevention of collision
prolmon tablet
pyramidal cells
raw mast
reactor coolant system cold leg isolation valve
Regranex
relative-entropy
reliability index of generating system
risto
Rubus chiliadenus
sit down to
solti
standard reference materials
starch ester
static stability margin
stochastic procss
strict secrecy
stupiditarian
superior characters
switching pulse
symbiotic action
synedra undulata
synthetic nitrogenous fertilizer
systematic production of substitution lines
thuggish
total corneal transplantation
total variation decreasing scheme
Tuamarina
twin-screw conveyor
TWTA
ultraviolet radiations
unintentional nonlinearity
unquietous
wassily chair
wax string
y.m