Eleventh Recording

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This is the final week of my blog posts. It has been eleven weeks since I started this deliberate practice on American English accent. I have tried my best to be consistent in my practice although a few times I did not fulfill the required number of practice  sessions per week. Indeed deliberate practice is a sure way to acquire a foreign accent. The challenge though is that I kept reverting to my usual accent in my usual interaction with people.
This recording is another review of all the features I have been practicing on since week one. I used combined resources such as YouTube videos of native speakers, as well as my archetype video to practice on these features.

Tenth Recording

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This week, I continued practicing on rhythm, stress, prominence and intonation. These features are closely related, so I worked on all of them together. I found great help from the reading on prominence and intonation that our class professor provided. Also, since my group is preparing a workshop on the same topics- prominence and intonation, I have had practice on these features even more. I also watched more of "Rachel's English" YouTube videos on these topics and those were very useful resources.

I realized that my speech rate has really improved, and that I take the same amount of time as my archetype when I repeat her speech. I am pleased by that because in my first recordings in this blog, my speech is much slower. Deliberate practice has enabled me to improve my articulation so much.

Ninth Recording

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This week, I have worked on integrating all features of my archetype's accent to my speech. I had already practiced by focusing attention to specific features such as prominence, intonation, connectedness, openness and reductions in my former blog posts. This week, I practiced all of them, and I listened to each recording I made to find out what features I had missed.

I have mastered the whole speech of my archetype now, and I can record myself to the end with no pauses. However, I played my archetype's voice alongside my recordings and I worked on specific words at first. Then, I practiced on single sentences. Practicing one sentence at a time helped acquire the right intonation and prominence. After that, I worked on connectedness of my speech.

The greatest tool I have used for practice all through is my archetype. Since I had a video recording of her, it was easy to observe her posture, lip movement and gestures as she spoke. Besides this, I used YouTube videos from "Rachel's English."

I feel that the improvement of my speech has stagnated lately. As much as I practice, I find all my recordings sounding similar from around week 7. I don't know if this true and I would love to receive feedback from a different listener.

Eighth Recording

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This recording is a continuation of practice on stress patterns and intonation. I must admit that blending all features that I have practiced so far (reduction, connectedness of speech, openness of vowels, intonation, stress, etc.) is a challenge. I have to pay great attention to observe all these. When I listen to my practice recordings, I discover specific errors that I made and I try to work on them separately.
My archetype is one resource that I use most of the time. I play it repeatedly as I practice. In addition, I listened to this You-tube video on intonation and it was really helpful.

Seventh recording

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I am still working on connected speech but this week, I tried to focus my practice on suprasegmentals. My intonation and stress patterns at word or sentence level are usually weak and unnoticeable. That is because my first languages, Ateso and Swahili, are both spoken in monotone. My archetype's intonation and stress patterns are pronounced, just like those of other American English speakers. To reach that level has been my goal this week. I will probably practice these features for one more week before moving on to the next feature.

Sixth recording

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This week I concentrated on three things; vowels, consonants and connected speech. since I have been working on vowels and consonants for some time, I focused more on ensuring that my speech flows and that I do not stammer in between words.
To do this, I transcribed my archetype's speech. Then, I played the audio and read along for practice. The transcript allowed me to record myself continuously without having to revisit the archetype.

Fifth Recording

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This week I have practiced the same segment of my archetype's audio but with an additional sentence at the end. I decided to focus on my intonation and reduction of vowel and consonant sounds. Reduction proved particularly difficult for me. Pronouncing words such as interview, important and family required me to be attentive enough to remember that I had to omit a particular sound. Otherwise, such as in my natural speech, I caught myself pronouncing all sounds in these words.