Rating: 
Summary: Great program!
Review: Ann Cook has put together the clearest, most insightful program for acquiring an American accent that I have found. You get 5 very useful CD's all cued to the manual, a small mirror, markers, and an excellent manual. Quite a value! She understands the American accent perfectly and masterfully explains the ingredients that make up that accent. I am a native speaker/speech therapist and I learned a good deal from this package. I do have one small reservation: a few of her examples of American speech which she considers standard (spoken by educated speakers) sound, to my ears, like mumbling and non-standard speech (ex: "didee" for "did he", "wooden knee" for "wouldn't he"). I prefer a bit more clarity where consonants are concerned. Dropping consonants has always been a sign of low socio-economic American speech, not standard American speech. This is a minor complaint about an otherwise excellent package. If you use this program, you will sound like "one of us". Enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: my style
Review: Before you start this training, you need to record and hear your own voice. Record your voice every week you use the training to see the transformation in your accent. The book told me to call someone but it was expensive.
Rating:
Summary: american accent training
Review: Excellent start for anybody who wants to correct their foreign accent. If you, already, have a pretty good understanding of english, and want to find a way to correct your accent, this book is a great start. Written in plain english, points out every common mistake you, as a foreign speaker, can make, and explains the cause; makes you go "ah-ha so that's what it was(!)" Get it. worth the money to say the least.
Rating:
Summary: This Book finally gave me the help I was looking for!!!
Review: hello people! I live in the USA for many years and could not find the help I needed for my strong accent. With the help of this book, American Accent Training, I finally did. Plus the instructor was really useful. Thank you, Ann Cook!!!
Rating:
Summary: I've got this book and it seems helpful for ESL estudents.
Review: Hi everybody.
I've got this book in amazon. It was delivered last week in perfect conditions, no scratches in CDs by the way, and I've begun with the practices this week.
I am from Mexico City, and in this city it's quite difficult to get a good english pronunciation. The most important and famous schools here focus in grammar, a little in listening and barely in pronunciation. Then you can here anybody who learned English speaks with several mistakes of pronunciation.
I don't wanna be one of those whose accent causes native people get bored or annoyed.
The practices seem to be great and the author catches the most important mistakes in every nationality she mentioned. I think she showed me in her book some mistakes that I hardly noticed.
It was a good purchase.
P.S. Sorry if I had grammar mistakes.
Rating:
Summary: Strongly recommended.
Review: I am an ESL teacher and have had a great deal of success with this book. I have found that those students who make the techniques taught in this book into habits, and honestly put forth the effort to implement them into their everyday speech, are able to almost completely eliminate their accents over time. The techniques truly work. I had a whole library full of books at my disposal, but this is the one I have stuck with!!! It is not a one-time-read miracle book, but rather a handbook that, if reviewed often, can help a student get rid of their accent.
Rating:
Summary: The greatest accent training book ever!!!
Review: I am an ESL teacher and have had a great deal of success with this book. I have found that those students who make the techniques taught in this book into habits, and honestly put forth the effort to implement them into their everyday speech, are able to almost completely eliminate their accents over time. The techniques truly work. I had a whole library full of books at my disposal, but this is the one I have stuck with!!! It is not a one-time-read miracle book, but rather a handbook that, if reviewed often, can help a student get rid of their accent.
Rating:
Summary: Excelent book and practical teaching system
Review: I am very glad that I found the first edition of "American Accent Training" book in a library a couple years ago. I looked at three or four similar books at the time and American Accent Training was the most practical and comprehensive book I was able to find. I purchased the book and ended taking lessons via phone with Ann who helped me greatly to improve my American English accent. I found her approach to accent training very practical, easy to apply and practice every day at work or in public. The book and audio CDs are also very helpful for "do it yourself approach". But make no mistake - to purchase the book is the easiest step, the hardest thing is to practice your new skills every day. Regarding myself, everytime I open Ann's book I notice and learn new things about my accent again and again.
Rating:
Summary: Excelent book and practical teaching system
Review: I am very glad that I found the first edition of "American Accent Training" book in a library a couple years ago. I looked at three or four similar books at the time and American Accent Training was the most practical and comprehensive book I was able to find. I purchased the book and ended taking lessons via phone with Ann who helped me greatly to improve my American English accent. I found her approach to accent training very practical, easy to apply and practice every day at work or in public. The book and audio CDs are also very helpful for "do it yourself approach". But make no mistake - to purchase the book is the easiest step, the hardest thing is to practice your new skills every day. Regarding myself, everytime I open Ann's book I notice and learn new things about my accent again and again.
Rating:
Summary: very good; get a computer program to record yourself
Review: I do agree with the other reviewers that it is an excellent book written by a professional with extensive experience. It comes with 6 CD and almost 200-page book with detailed explanations of intonation patterns and sounds. Additionally, in the appendix Ann Cook discusses in detail what are the typical accents of native speakers of common languages, and what specifically the native speakers of these languages should work on.
The chief difficulty with working with a course like this is that the learner should not only repeat after the speaker, but should also be able to hear his/her own words to make the necessary corrections. If you keep on repeating the same mistake, but do not hear it and cannot correct yourself - what's the point of practicing? My solution is to practice with a computer. I tried a simple sound recorder on a computer as well as a tape recorder, and it did not work - too complicated, invoves too much button pressing. You need a program which plays a phrase, then records you repeating it, then repeats the native speaker, then plays your recording, and does it all over again in a loop until you are satisfied. It turned out that it is not easy to find a program like this; after a long search, I found a shareware program called FollowMe, its trial version can be downloaded from tarsoft's site or shareware servers (perhaps there are other programs like this which I did not come across, I am talking about the learning concept here). For me personally working with a computer and using a program like described above made a tremendous difference, I really feel that I am getting the most from this book. I can hear my mistakes and I feel that I am correcting them.
While with a course like this the price is much less important than the result and productivity of learning, this book (in my opinion) satisfies both, good quality and reasonable price. Recommended.
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