标准美语发音的13个秘诀 CD 1 Track 1

Read This First                                            CD 1 Track 1 

Welcome to American Accent Training. This book and CD set is desi gned to get you started on yourAmerican accent. We'll follow the book and go thr ough the 13 lessons and all the exercises step bystep. Everything is explained and a complete Answ er 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  (wor d 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 diff erent way. You'll alsorealize that the grammar you studied before and this accent you're studying now are completelydifferent.  

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? Man y  peo ple feel that after a certain a ge, it's  j ust not possible. Can classical musicians pl ay 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 ofte n 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 intona tion, you will be understood more easily. To illustrate 8 this point, you will hear a Vi etnamese student first trying to speak slowly and carefully and then repeating the same word s quickly and with strong intonation. Studying, this exercise took her only about two minutes to practi ce, 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 onthe CD is also written in the book. By seeing a nd 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 paus e for you to repeat int o. 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 va ries from the East Co ast 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 sp eakers in the United States. Don't worry that you will sound slangy or too casual because yo u most definitely won't. This is the way a professor lectures to a class,  the way a national news caster broadcasts, th e way that is most comfortable and familiar to the majority of native speakers.  

"Why Is My Accent So Bad?" 

Learners can be seriously hamper 12 ed by a negative outlook, so I'll a ddress 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 lan gua ge is equally valid 13 or  good, so ever y 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 incorre ct. 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 tohave three or more syllables,  but all of them are not ac tually spoken. For example,  business  is not ( bi/zi/ness), but rather (birz /ness).  

Just when you get used to elimin ating 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 in serted 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 sy llables (pu/wuh/luh). Where did that W come from? It's certainl y 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 y ou come to a rock, you trip over it, stop, continue, and tr ip 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 prob lem, 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 automatictransmission. Yes, you continue to reach for the gearsh ift for a while and your foot still tries to find the clutch pedal, but this soon phases  itself out. In the sa me way, you may still say "telephone  call" (kohl) instead of (kahl) for a wh ile, 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 firs t learned to drive, y ou 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 fina lly learned to "talk right." Good luck with your new accent!