Mastering the American Accent with Audio CDs: This combination book and audio instructional program is designed to diminish the accents of men and women who speak English as their second language. It all depends upon how you move your jaw muscles, lips and tongue.Ģ. Play it back and listen to yourself: can you understand what the hell you’re talking about? Hang in there! You have to straighten this language barrier out sooner or later if you’re serious about it. Record Your Own Voice:If you don’t already have a smartphone with a voice notes feature, buy a cheap MP3 player with a voice recorder. Read articles out loud out to yourself from an online newspaper or anything else you can get your hands and record your voice. There are immigrants I met who have been for ten years or so and they still speak like they just got off the plane because they have never taken it seriously.ġ. There is no time-frame for learning English. There is no royal road when it comes to learning English. When you work hard, there is no way you won’t be able to learn English. So I decided to compile a list of tips for folks new to this country trying to improve their English. Others would say “this guy is not from here.” It embarrassed me. “Oh, okay! You mean blah blah,” some folks would respond. Most folks just couldn’t understand the way my learned British accent commingled with my native Pashtun accent. I sighed and thought: “What am I gonna do about it? I thought I was pretty good in English.”īut I soon realized I had a Victorian way of speaking, rife with synonyms, antonyms and idioms. I heard “pissed off’, “drive me nuts”, “heck”, “laugh my face off” and countless other words and phrases that were totally unfamiliar. The slangs just were flying over my head and everybody talked so fast. I had studied English for fifteen years, but suddenly I knew I was in trouble. When I moved to Seattle from the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan to study journalism through the State Department’s Northwest Community College Initiative, the biggest surprise was the language barrier. The author and English language learning friends on a visit to the Pacific Science Center

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