My English speaking

[adrs]

Hi all!

I've recorded myself reading a piece of a text called "Symplify your life", which you can read below.
It would be very grateful, if you, native english speakers, could just have a look at it, and tell me how I sound speaking in English.
Thanks so much.

Here's the link: http://www.goear.com/listen/f5b346d/adrs1-adrs1

And here goes the text:

Years ago, a cigarette commercial asked if you were smoking more, but enjoying it less. That describes the way many of us live today. We are doing more, but enjoying it less. And when that doesn't work, we compound the problem. In our frantic search for satisfaction, we try stuffing still more into our days, never realizing that we are taking the wrong approach.
The truth is simple, so simple it is hard to believe. Satisfaction lies with less, not with more. Yet, we pursue the myth that this thing, or that activity, will somehow provide the satisfaction we so desperately seek. C.B Piper, in this devastating book, "The Harried Leisure Class", described the futility of pursuing more. His research found that as income rose, people bought more things to occupy their leisure time. But, ironically, the more things they bought, the less they valued any of them. That was more than twenty years ago, and his prediction seems more accurate every year.

[Raymott]

I had some trouble understanding this without the text.
The most important thing to work on is your prosody - your intonation. Once you get this right, it will make a huge difference. A good way to do this is to listen to English news bulletins, etc. without concentrating too much on the content, but just listening to the cadences and phrasing.

Less important:
You've stressed some words wrongly: devastating, not devastating, pursue ...
Try to shorten the short 'i' even more in words like 'simple' and 'thing'. On the other hand, 'believe' requires a longer /i:/.
Some of your consonants are not very clear. The /d/ and /t/ need to be strong alveolar consonants, not the Spanish dental consonants.

Well, that's probably enough for you to start on.

[Editors4Writers]

How much of the text did you understand? I'd assess that you have an extensive vocabulary, but you're having a hard time with English phonetics. I understood about 50% of what you said in the recording. I must commend you on the execution of pauses and intonational patterns. Perhaps the problem is your lax vowels; I noticed this when you pronounced cigarettes. The production of those vowels involves bigger changes from a mid-central position in the mouth. Pay attention to how you articulate fricatives, affricates, glottal, and liquids. Practice, practice, practice. You're doing a good job so far.

[euncu]

satisfaction /ˌsætɪsˈfækʃən/.
Yours is like /ˌsɑːtɪsˈfʌkʃən/ or /ˌsʌtɪsˈfʌkʃən/.