American English Pronunciation: It's No Good Unless You're Understood (Complete program - 2nd Edition)

When I first flipped through the pages of American English Pronunciation: It's no Good Unless You're Understood it struck me as another dull pronunciation manual with the same old minimal pairs, and pointless drill work. However, as I gave it a better look, I soon realized its strengths, namely the comprehensive listing of American idioms for each new vowel or consonant sound in catching, well-written sentences, and the in-depth analysis of English phonemes. Donna Hope, in her large experience as a speech therapist attending to speakers from various nationalities, is very sensitive to the slightest phonetic differences in the speech of native and non-native speakers of English, such as insufficient aspiration in plosives, devoicing in final voiced consonants, distortions in diphthongs, insufficient lip rounding in back vowels , early release of consonants in clusters, etc. The book also has an entire unit for the pronunciation of major US states, cities and sites - very useful for the non-native English teacher - as well as interesting cultural notes.I just wish the same care given to segments (vowels and consonants) had been given to suprasegments: while there is some work on liaisons (blendings) and reductions - indispensible for rhythm- - the book fails to address other aspects of prosody such as intonation and word stress.

This book is no ordinary pronunciation book. It's "the" Book. It goes beyond teaching vowel and consonant sounds. It's about the way americans speak. For the first time I've been working with sound transitions and blendings. It feels great to notice the changes in my pronunciation.At the same time, I improve my vocabulary and learn great idiomatic expressions, up-to-date ones. As the author points out the main problems each native speaker might have, it is easier for us, students, to identify our weak points and this way, dedicate more time and effort to improve them.

It's an excellent book for ESL teachers, students and speakers who want to improve their speech abilities, working with reduction of English accent. The section with useful expressions is really helpful. You practice the consonants and vowels and learn idiomatic expressions at the same time. Also, the author has an idea of the weak points that students from different languages may present. Knowing the sounds that are most difficult for Portuguese speakers helps a lot in my teaching and in my self-improvement.