Get Rid of Your Accent: The English Pronunciation and Speech Training Manual [Audiobook] [Perfect Paperback]

I found this book by chance on Amazon in early 2007. I was searching for a practical and effective "hands-on" book, since I was disappointed with the academic style of "English Pronunciation in Use". To be fair "Pronunciation in Use" is an excellent book, full of information for the students who want to progress in the study of English phonetics and phonology, but it's even too rich in details for most of non-native speakers of English who are still struggling with their pronunciation and are searching for something "practical" that can give "quick results". Many people (who would otherwise benefit from studying pronunciation) cannot simply be bothered to study the phonetic symbols, and they just think that good pronunciation is all about that: plainly wrong, because it can be much easier and fun!

This book is compact and easy to use with its 42 short lessons, each devoted to a single phoneme.
For each phoneme, a list of words containing the target sound, a list of sentences, a few verses, a few tongue-twisters and some articulation exercises. You can concentrate directly on the phonemes which pose problems you may experience as a native speaker of a particular language, and a reference in this sense is provided in the appendix.

Very simply, download the lessons onto your mp3 player, and listen to them (one part of the lesson at time!) again and again: five minutes in the morning, five minutes in the evening, for a couple of days or more.
The more you listen to, the better your pronunciation becomes, because you "get a feeling" of how words should be pronounced. After the listening phase, try to repeat after the tape as many times as you can: again, practice makes perfect! A bit every day is much better that a lot only once a week, so try to be constant and all your efforts will be repaid. You'll soon see that "the right pronunciation" will come perfectly natural to you.
Of course, I've just described the way I used the book: the authors recommend a more thorough approach, but I think that all depends on how already "good" your pronunciation already is! Typical is the case when you CAN already pronounce a difficult word - or series of words - containing a difficult phoneme when "isolated", but you CAN'T when you speak at normal speed: in this case, you'll see that your rate of progress will be much quicker.

The plus points are that you can study pronunciation whenever and wherever you are (during your commuting time, for example). Another very nice feature is that the verses and tongue-twisters are a bit silly and very amusing, so you won't get bored!

This book has been criticised for offering too little theory, and for not dedicating time to intonation exercises.
Bearing in mind that this is what I would call a very practical "exercise" book, I can say out of my personal experience that, along the pronunciation features, you will absorb also many intonation patterns, because of the many longer examples that are present. Anyway, you would want to work on your intonation only after your pronunciation of single phonemes has been sorted out! So maybe a "Get rid of your accent - Part2" with a focus on more advanced features of pronunciation would be welcomed by more advanced and experienced learners.

Since English is the official language in international business, it's especially important to develop a clear pronunciation: the aim should not be being able to "talk like the Queen", of course, but to be easily understood by other non-native speakers talking business. Everybody who often needs to take part in meetings and above all make frequent use of the phone will surely agree. An idea would be writing a book similar to this one but with a vocabulary focused on the vocabulary of business: "Get rid of your accent in business" or something similar.

I think that this book offers exactly what the authors say in the presentation: a practical, intensive approach to developing an RP accent. If the (non-native English) student is dedicated enough, it can take three months to reduce their accent with excellent results (to the point that you might still sound non-native but your accent is not a giveaway of your nationality anymore!), but of course it all depends on your starting level.
I recommend this book to any student of English who is at least at upper-intermediate level.

I am half-Russian, half-German speaker of English and I am working hard to reduce my accent. I fully agree with one of the reviewers who said that the book is disappointing in the sense that it is basically your regular beginner's pronunciation course, like Sheep or Ship, Three or Tree, served under a different title (to boost sales???).

It does NOT offer any advice on how words are linked in speech and how it affects their pronunciation, neither does it say anything on intonation, sentence stress depending on the type of sentence etc., i.e. information that is vital for advanced speakers.

There are proper accent training books for actors, such as the one published by Penny Dyer who provides speech training for actors and actresses. You can tell immediately that those are the books designed for professional actors as a larger portion of the material is dedicated to longer speeches that allow one to practice complex intonation, varying pace, enunciation and sentence stress.

Also, I found English Pronunciation in Use Advanced by Martin Hewings A LOT more helpful and thorough. After all, most intermediate and advanced speakers might be able to pronounce individual words well enough, but it is often tempo, intonation and word linkages in flowing speech that may give them away as non-native speakers.

The stated purpose of this book is to help people develop a Received Pronunciation (RP, popularly known as BBC English or the Queen's English). There has been a shift in recent years towards more tolerance in variation and RP is no longer held to be a golden standard, but those who really want to master this accent could do worse than this little book.

The substantive part of the book consists of 42 two-page chapters, each focusing on one particular sound or cluster of vowels. Each chapter begins with an illustration of how speech organs should be positioned, which I found quite helpful. After that there is a progression of examples supported by good-quality recordings: first the sound in isolation, then the sound in individual words, next in sentences and finally in small poems. According to the introductory notes, readers are expected to first listen to the sounds, then listen and repeat, and then record themselves, although it is not clear how these activities correspond to the examples in the book.

Language teachers will probably recognise the principles of the audiolingual method (ALM) which underpin the book. Despite the negative reflexes that this realisation might trigger, in my opinion this approach is not inappropriate to the limited task of developing a native-like accent: after all, the one area where the ALM seemed to work most effectively was in pronunciation training. On the negative side, such practice is better suited to the most dedicated learners, as others might lose interest fast.

A second, perhaps more valid, objection to the book is that is focuses too much on individual sounds, at the expense of longer stretches of sound. It seems that this book could be usefully supplemented by sections dealing with supra-segmental elements of pronunciation, such as stress, intonation (the rising and falling of pitch), connected speech, rate of delivery etc. This limitation is partially addressed by the provision for sentences and verses which the reader will probably have to repeat carefully, but I suspect that many users will need more help than that in order to sound natural.

In summary, I believe that this is a useful book and it is obvious that it was carefully written. As a self-study resource, it might prove very useful to experienced language learners, or well-motivated native speakers who want to address specific problems in their pronunciation. In all other cases, it would probably function better as a textbook in a pronunciation course, where an experienced teacher would be available to address some of its limitations.