In today's lesson, we reviewed many of the pronunciation and intonation lessons we learned over the last 30 days, and worked on applying them to the sentence:

It's the last day of the thirty day accent challenge, and I sound really great!

You can view the entire 30 day Accent Challenge materials, view our video playlists, and get even more free practice materials to continue to improve your American Accent using SMART American Accent Training from Speech Modification.

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In today's lesson, we looked at the ways to correctly pronounce "ng" /ŋ/, and how to overcome common error patterns for this sound.
Common error patterns for ng are to use an n sound instead, or to add an extra g or k sound.  Ng is just one sound, /ŋ/ in most words in English.

Today we looked at advanced practice for American R.   For more basic help, go to day 6 of the challenge, or see our American R playlist (below)

if you’ve learned to make the American back R, you might still have some contexts where it’s more difficult to use correctly, like words with “or,” words with both the r and l sounds, or words with both the th and r sounds.

For words with r in the middle or at the end, make sure you’re using the correct vowel.  Some words just have "er" /ə˞/, others have an r diphthong sliding from another vowel to "er," like "air, ear, ire, or, are, etc."

You can’t rely on spelling to know whether to say just "er" or an r diphthong.
For example,
er: /ə˞/ is often spelled er, as in her, or were, but it can also be spelled as ir, or, ur, or ear, as in :  bird, work, sure, learn

In addition, the letters "er" can say "air" or "ear" as in the words there, here.

Use an online dictionary to check for the symbol to know what vowel sounds to use.  I like Merriem Webster's Learner's Dictionary

and theOxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary.

You may find it difficult to produce words with both the r and l sounds, like :
girl
world
really
learn
rule

For those ending  in rl, be sure to use a schwa between the r and the l. For example, girl sounds like grr-uhl /g ə˞ ə l/.
World sounds like /w ə˞ ə l d/

Check out the videos in the playlist below for help with words like "really."

You may also need practice on words that have both the th and r sounds.  You can find video help for these in our American R playlist (below).

In today's lesson, we talked about how to use YouTube and other media to improve your American Accent.
The best way to improve your American accent is to be surrounded as much as possible with American English, and to speak with native speakers.  This isn't possible for those of you who don't live in North America, and even people who do don't always have a lot of opportunities to interact or the confidence to try out their American accent when speaking with Americans.  In that case, using YouTube, tv and movies to supplement the pronunciation and intonation practice you're doing will help.

For pronunciation, here are some things to try.

First, turn on close-captioning or subtitles in English for whatever you are watching.   Research shows that pronunciation actually improves when people follow the written words as they are listening.  This is partly because you can see all of the words, which can help you notice the details of how they are being pronounced.

Next, choose a listening target.  If you've been working on your z sound on the ends of words, listen to the media with that in mind.  Can you hear the z's?  This will help you be more aware of when you should use the pattern in your own speech.  Or perhaps you are working on the TH sound. Listen for the words with TH and focus on watching the speaker's face.  Can you see the tongue placement between the teeth?  Or, select a vowel sound you are working on, and try to notice every time you hear a word with that vowel.  You can have a list of words with the vowel in front of you as you watch to help you with this.

Lastly, you can slow down the playback speed of YouTube videos.  I recommend listening at 75% playback speed, because it's not so slow that it sounds really unnatural, but it's slow enough to hear pronunciation details that you may miss when listening at full speed.  (See my video below for instructions on how to slow down a YouTube video.)

You can also use media for Intonation practice.  Choose a character to imitate.  Pause the video after each line they say, and try to use the same intonation pattern they did.  Are you able to use pitch and vowel length on the stressed word?  Did you convey emotion with your intonation pattern?

Use my Real Talk Videos (playlist below) to help you listen for intonation patterns as well as linking and reductions in fluent speech.

When we add s to make a plural, the voicing of the s (whether it says "s" or "z") depends on the voicing of the word.  If the word ends with a voiceless sound (p, t, k, f), the s will be voiceless /s/.  If the word ends with a voiced sound (b, d, g, v, r, w,  m, n ng. l, vowels), the s will be voiced /z/.  When the word ends with an s, z, sh, ch or j sound, we add the letters -es and pronounce an extra syllable "-ez"/əz/.   Below you will find plurals for the most common nouns, sorted by voiced and voiceless sounds.

Words ending in voiceless sounds p, t, k, f.  For these plurals, pronounce /s/.