Today we have a special guest on the show! You’ll find out the 3 mistakes you are making with your American English vowel sounds and how to solve your problem today!
Jennifer Tarle from Tarle Speech and Language is here to show you 3 actions steps that you can take to immediately solve your problems with American English vowel sounds.
Jennifer believes that listening is key to pronunciation. It’s more important than learning phonetic symbols and studying a pronunciation chart.
You need to work on your listening and then put it into practice.
Here are 3 things you can do today to improve your American English vowel sounds:
- Long versus short vowel sounds (“Eat” versus “it”): Listen to the difference in vowel length. These sounds are used often in American English. Make the “eat” sound long and make the “it” short.
- Open vowels: Watch a TV program with the sound off in your native language and then watch a TV program in English with the sound off. Watch the person’s mouth, lips, and jaw. Americans move their mouths a lot when they speak compared with other languages. English has a lot of vowels. Consider the word “fantastic.” You have to open your mouth wide to say that word.
- Movement vowel: A lot of students keep their mouths closed and don’t move their mouth from one sound to another. You need to focus on moving your jaw and your lips. Don’t cut off the sounds and shorten them. Continue the sound.
Jennifer’s Bio:
Tarle Speech and Language was founded in 2005 by Jennifer Tarle in order to empower individuals at all stages of life through better communication skills. Jennifer is a Certified Speech Pathologist with over 19 years of experience in speech-related training and pathologies. Jennifer earned a BS degree and an MA degree in Speech Pathology from Kent State University. She is licensed in CA, IL, & OH, is certified with the State Boards of Education in IL and OH, is certified by the IL early intervention system, holds the Certificate of Clinical Competence from the American Speech Language Hearing Association (ASHA), and has earned several AHSA ACE Awards for continuing education.
Jennifer is a self-published author of accent workbooks, audio CDs, DVDs, and iBooks. Materials are designed to be easy and effective. Products are all downloadable so that you can practice on the go! She distributes her pronunciation materials solely through www.tarlespeech.com and iTunes. Introductory through advanced classes on foreign accents are taught throughout the city of Chicago, via video conferencing, and throughout the world. To help even more people, she launched a video podcast, The Minute of Speech, in 2007. It is available on iTunes, YouTube, and at www.tarlespeech.com. She implemented her Tarle Speech pronunciation and accent reduction program at the Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China and at E4TG in Tokyo, Japan. Contact her to schedule a consultation or class.
Jennifer strives to help individuals to improve their lives through better communication.
