Learn to Hear and Speak Authentic American Accent (CD)

Author: (Japan) Izumi Nozaka
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-03-01
Features: Unique phonetic rules and differentiation of American English, overcoming pronunciation difficulties in listening and speaking. Full demonstration of intonation in specific English contexts, where the same sentence can have vastly different meanings due to variations in phonetics and intonation. More fundamental methods for learning English phonetics and intonation, as well as differentiation of easily confused sounds. This book starts with simple changes and gradually increases in difficulty, first focusing on sound changes within a single word, then on sound changes across multiple words. The latter part develops into learning the unique prosody and intonation of English. The usage of this book is very simple:
1. Begin with a relaxed warm-up. At the start of each lesson, there is a TRY1 section, which introduces the sounds to be learned in that lesson and English words containing those sounds. Some of these are presented in the form of puzzles. Then follow the instructions to listen to the recording. After the warm-up in TRY1, proceed to LISTEN to specific dialogue examples.
2. Master the various changes of sounds. In the "Listening Points" section, various sound change phenomena introduced in Step 1 are explained. This section provides detailed explanations of unique sound changes in English and sounds that non-native speakers are particularly prone to mishearing.
3. Experience these sounds in actual dialogues. After understanding the rules in the "Listening Points" section, the next step is to experience authentic English pronunciation in the DIALOGUE section. Once the rules are grasped, listening becomes much clearer, and it becomes easy to distinguish the sounds, while the content of the dialogue naturally becomes more understandable as well.