American Accent Course. Awareness Journal

26 Pages·2016·0.33 MB·English

by  Summers Sheri.

Awareness Journal
By Sheri Summers and Mark Bev
www.AccentWorkshop.com
www.accentworkshop.com
Introduction
Notes:
Congratulations! You’ve taken the action necessary to
improving not only your pronunciation, but more
importantly your accent. Be proud of your first action
step! Now, let’s take the next step together.
This Awareness Journal accompanies the American
Accent Course Workbook. In the Workbook, each lesson
has a presentation of how native speakers produce the
language and a practice for you to put your newly
attained knowledge into valuable, practical everyday
use.
This Awareness Journal is another tool for you to use to
get the most out the course. Just as the title suggests,
we want you to become more aware of how you have
been speaking, and how you are trying to speak now
with your new knowledge from this course. We strongly
urge you to keep in touch with how you think and feel
about what the changes you are making to your accent.
Whether you keep an electronic journal or print out this
journal and put it in a binder, answering these questions
will help you to make the changes last.
Finally, if you’re not already a member of the American
Accent Workshop, we believe you will find enormous
benefit by joining.  You can sign up at
www.accentworkshop.com.  As a member of this online
community, you can come to Help Sessions and live
“There are some people who live
classes and get real time feedback from expert
in a dream world, and there are
instructors. Okay, let’s begin!
some who face reality, and then
there are those who turn one
into the other.”
Douglas Everett
The American Accent Course Introduction
© 2009 Accent on Speaking
All Rights Reserved
www.accentworkshop.com
Something that I learned from this first lesson
Lesson One
• Attitude
was: ______________________________________
• Spelling and Pronunciation
__________________________________________ • Four Parts of Accent
• Diagram Intonation
___________________________________________________________________________
When watching the online videos for voicing and facial movements, I noticed that:
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
When observing people speaking English around me or in movies, I:
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
I think the biggest difference between the way I speak English and the way native speakers
speak English is: ________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
Other observations and notes:
_______________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
The American Accent Course Lesson 1
© 2009 Accent on Speaking
All Rights Reserved
www.accentworkshop.com
The thing that surprised me most about this
Lesson Two
• Stress
lesson was:
• Basic Sentence Rhythm and Intonation
__________________________________________ • Emphatic and Contrastive Stress
• Word Connections
__________________________________________ • Questions
• Inflection
__________________________________________
I am starting to recognize some of the intonation patterns of native English speakers such
as:_________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
When I compare my intonation pattern with American English intonation patterns, I notice:
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
Other observations and notes:
_______________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
The American Accent Course Lesson 2
© 2009 Accent on Speaking
All Rights Reserved
www.accentworkshop.com
My initial feeling about the schwa is:
Lesson Three
• Examples of the Schwa
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
I think this sound is going to be easy/ difficult for me because:
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
I am starting to recognize the schwa in native English speakersʼ speech such as:
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
Some of the words I use everyday that contain this schwa are:
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
Other observations and notes:
_______________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
The American Accent Course Lesson 3
© 2009 Accent on Speaking
All Rights Reserved
www.accentworkshop.com
Before I learned all about the American T, I was:
Lesson Four
• The strong T
__________________________________________
• The “soft” T
__________________________________________ • The “held” T and glottal T
• The silent T
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
Now that I’ve learned all about the American T, I will:
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
Some words containing the T that surprise me are:
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
Other observations and notes:
_______________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
The American Accent Course Lesson 4
© 2009 Accent on Speaking
All Rights Reserved
www.accentworkshop.com
Something that is starting to make sense about
Lesson Five
• Learning about Intonation Patterns
word intonation is:
• Primary Stress
__________________________________________ • Secondary Stress
• Weak Stress
__________________________________________ • Words with 1 Syllable
• Words with 2 Syllables
__________________________________________
I’m beginning to notice the length of words ending in a primary stress such as:
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
Some two syllable words that donʼt occur under any of the patterns/ categories in this lesson
are:
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
Other observations and notes:
_______________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
The American Accent Course Lesson 5
© 2009 Accent on Speaking
All Rights Reserved
www.accentworkshop.com
Something I’m starting to notice about intonation
Lesson Six
• Learning about Intonation Patterns
patterns in English is:
• Words with 3 Syllables
__________________________________________ • Words with 4 Syllables
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
Some words that don’t fall under any of the categories we have learned so far are:
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
My awareness of the intonation patterns of native English speakers is:
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
Other observations and notes:
_______________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
The American Accent Course Lesson 6
© 2009 Accent on Speaking
All Rights Reserved
www.accentworkshop.com
Of the consonants and vowels I’ve worked on so
Lesson Seven
• Learning about Intonation Patterns
far, I’m still having problems or doubts about:
• Words that shift stress
__________________________________________ • Words with -ate
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
Since I’ve started learning more about the American accent, I’m beginning to realize that
North Americans:
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
Some other words Iʼve noticed that shift stress are:
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
Other observations and notes:
_______________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
The American Accent Course Lesson 7
© 2009 Accent on Speaking
All Rights Reserved
www.accentworkshop.com
It is easy/ difficult for me to drop a syllable in
Lesson Eight
• Learning about Intonation Patterns
certain words because:
• Words that Lose a Syllable
__________________________________________ • Words that are very different from their
spelling
__________________________________________
__________________________________________
I have noticed native English speakers dropping syllables in the following words:
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
Some other words Iʼm working on that end in –ed are:
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
Other observations and notes:
_______________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
The American Accent Course Lesson 8
© 2009 Accent on Speaking
All Rights Reserved