Ann Cook – American Accent Training

The second edition of the highly acclaimed American Accent Training, now on 5 audio CDs, is for foreign-born students and business people working, traveling or studying in the United States and Canada. Through extensive intonation and pronunciation exercises, students learn how to speak with a standard American Accent. At the same time, listening comprehension improves dramatically. Supplementary materials included detailed nationality guides for eight languages (Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Spanish, French, German, Russian and Korean), access to a comprehensive website, and referral to a qualified telephone analyst for an individual diagnostic speech analysis.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 at 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.