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.

Fourth Recording

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This week, I paid more attention to my body posture as I practiced and I noticed that allowing more flexibility for my articulators helped me get closer to my archetype's pronunciation. Faster jaw movement, lip spreading and tongue movement played a big role in improving my pronunciation. I read the article on "vowels of North American English" and this was such a useful resource for me this week because it clearly described the postures for lax and tense vowels.

I practiced repeatedly and recorded myself many times, listening to each recording and noticing problem sections, then trying to fix them. I also practiced the shadowing technique, where I recorded myself over my archetype practicing to keep up with her rate of speech. I found this helpful because then I could move my articulators faster.

Listening to my latest recording gives me much hope that I can actually improve my pronunciation. Practicing consistently and repeatedly while paying attention to single words or phrases turned out to be so helpful. Deliberate practice indeed works! I am convinced I will improve more over time.

Third Recording

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This week has been a continuation of last week's practice on Voice quality settings. After noticing the areas where my pronunciation varies most from my archetype's, I started focusing on one feature at a time. I have practiced openness/lip spreading when pronouncing back vowels and retroflexion when pronouncing /r/. I hope one can notice a slight improvement in pronunciation of the words "prom", "job" and "over"

Generally, reductions and producing the rhotic "r" are the greatest challenge I have. I feel that reductions are so random and that makes difficult for me to pay attention to all of them.

Second recording

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I have been working on voice quality settings this week. First, I reviewed an article on voice quality settings to learn what this meant and to find guidelines for practice.

I practiced keeping my jaws and lips more open when pronouncing the vowel "o" as in job, prom and gonna. I practiced omitting word final sounds where necessary, such as in /t/ in "date" and not releasing /t/ in interview and important. Also, I practiced retroflexion whereby I tried to curl my tongue tip backwards when pronouncing prom and  product.

While some of these voice quality features are easier to produce (e.g. retroflex "r" and a more open "o"), some features are quite difficult to learn and require more practice especially omission of sounds. In my current recording, I feel that my pronunciation f the retroflex "r" and open "o" have improved.

In the coming week, I will practice more on voice quality features as  I focus more attention to consonant deletion or modification in pronunciation.

My first recording

My first recording

Most noticeable differences between the archetype and my own pronunciation.

The intonation of my archetype is more pronounced than mine both in questions and statements. I will work on my intonation as I continue practicing to ensure that I sound close to my archetype. Also, her pronunciation of both vowels and consonants is noticeably different. I do pronounce some of the sounds she omits, such the /t/ in “date”. While some of her vowels are more open e.g. /o/ in “prom”, mine are more closed. Her speech is more connected and rapid while mine is slower. I realize that I do pronounce distinct words when speaking English, so I may have to work on speech rate as well. Lastly, her stress patterns on particular words or syllables in a word are noticeable and make it easy to understand her speech. I will practice several times before achieving that stress pattern. These are some of the areas that I should work on sufficiently to sound close to my archetype.

This week, I will work on my voice quality. I hope to improve on my tone and perhaps intonation as well. I will also focus on the rate of my speech because I think it is important to keep up or get close to the speed of my archetype.

My archetype

Why I chose this video...

I chose this video because the girl in it is a native American English speaker. This video consists of continuous speech that is well paced and that I can follow comfortably for my practice. More importantly, this short video has a range of features that I intend to examine, such as intonation, rhythm, stress and pronunciation of vowels and consonants among other features. This girl asks questions, utters statements and changes her voice quality in a typical American English manner, thus providing me with the best archetype for practice in my phonology course.