Accurate English: A Complete Course in Pronunciation

Rating:
Summary: Accurate English
Review: Accurate English is a text language consultants who work in pronunciation have been using for more than seven years now and it is still the best in its field for training adults to speak American English. Most of my colleagues use it and are pleased to report that the quality of the linguistic material, the clarity of presentation and the up-to-date dialogues on the accompanying cassette make this package not only useful but pleasant to work with. My clients agree.

Rating:
Summary: Not for the Amateur
Review: This is a terrific book for students of: linguistics, accent improvement (with a cerebral view) and speech modification coaches/teachers who are interested in the nitty gritty linguistic explanations of what goes on with pronunciation and intonation. I believe for most anyone who wants to teach pronunciation and intonation with excellence in mind, this book is a must for your reference library. I have used this book in accent achievement coaching in the educational setting,and I found it was too top-heavy with metalinguistics and had to supplement with functional self-made worksheets for students.

Rating:
Summary: Accurate English is a professionally engaging text
Review: This text is what Language Consultants who work in the area of accent reduction have been looking for. Aimed at adults, it contains both a diagnostic speech sample and a helpful "self analysis section". The use of the IPA is clearly and carefully done. The chapter divisions make it easy to move around in the text and focus on what an individual speaker needs. In addition, the audio tape has up-to-date dialogues with natural speech and idioms. Finally, the index and the accompanying teacher's manual make this a text not to be missed.

Rating:
Summary: Accurate English is a professionally engaging text
Review: This text is what Language Consultants who work in the area of accent reduction have been looking for. Aimed at adults, it contains both a diagnostic speech sample and a helpful "self analysis section". The use of the IPA is clearly and carefully done. The chapter divisions make it easy to move around in the text and focus on what an individual speaker needs. In addition, the audio tape has up-to-date dialogues with natural speech and idioms. Finally, the index and the accompanying teacher's manual make this a text not to be missed.

Rating:
Summary: Great resource for adults
Review: We have used Accurate English as a textbook in our pronunication and intonation classes at our university because it is a great technical resource for students who are trying to improve their pronunciation and simultaneously want to learn something about how sounds are produced. The book's approach is to help non-native speakers learn about and experiment with the principles of articulatory phonetics (the way the sounds of language are produced by the mouth, tongue and vocal tract). It explains many of the terms used in linguistics and speech pathology in a way that anyone can understand, and encourages students to become more aware of the ways that they produce speech sounds. This approach can be very very helpful, even with students whose non-native speech habits have become deeply entrenched.

The book covers all the essential components of a course in pronunciation: consonants, vowels, rhythm, stress, and intonation. It has lots of exercises to help students learn the sounds of American English and they way they are produced. It also has some of the best information I have seen on learning how the sounds of English correspond with orthography (spelling). It is a perfect book for one-on-one tutoring in accent reduction or pronunciation. If you are using it as a classroom text, it tends to be a little dry, but it does contain a lot of exercises. They just aren't as context-based as some of the others out there. It wouldn't be hard to supplement the exercises in this book to keep students interested, however. It can also be a resource for teachers to use to supplement an advanced class with meatier material.

If you are a student, you will need to find a native speaker to help you with some of the exercises and provide feedback. If you buy the tapes, you'll be able to listen to the exercises, but you'll still need to get someone to listen to you and help adjust your pronunciation. This is true for all pronunciation books, by the way; it's not unique to this book.

Great book!