American English pronunciation errors made by speakers native to India

Common
American English
Pronunciation Errors

Vowel Errors

India

Pronunciation will be improved dramatically by correcting 3 or 4 critical Vowel errors.

Problem:

Vowel length too short

i.e.

"said” sounds like “sad"

i.e.

“par” sounds like “paw”

i.e.

"seat" sounds like "sit"

i.e.

"fool" sounds like "full"

Solution:
AAP Vowel Tutorial

Techniques Taught :

- Tongue Position
- Lip Position
- Jaw Position
- Tongue Tension
- Vowel Length
- Compound Vowels

Targeted Exercises

- Vowel Reductions
- Vowel Sounds
- Vowel Pairs
- Vowel Length Drills

Consonant Errors

India

Pronunciation will also be improved by correcting a few critical Consonant errors.

Problem:

Sounds mispronounced:

the "r" sound is rolled

the unvoiced " t " and the voiced "d" are often mispronounced

i.e.

"time" may sound like "dime"

i.e.

"to" may sound like "do"

the voiced "th" sound is often pronounced
like "d"

i.e.

"the" may sound like "duh"

i.e.

"that" may sound like "dat"

Consonant clusters at the beginning and on end of words

i.e.

"straight" may sound like "istraight"

i.e.

"fly" may sound like "faly"

i.e.

"film" may sound like "filam"

Solution:
AAP Consonant Tutorial

Techniques Taught :

- Placement
- Airflow
- Voicing

Targeted Exercises

- Consonant Sounds

24 different sounds

- L Drills

Blends
Sound combinations

- R Drills

Beginning
Middle
Ending

Intonation Errors

India

Using the correct stress and rhythm will immediately improve your ability to be understood.

Problem:

Rate - Speech is very very fast - needs to be slowed considerably.

Pitch - Very flat - critical to learn the proper up and down pitch to create the correct "melody" of American English.

Rising inflection at the end of words.

Intonation - weak word stress - difficulty with irregular stress patterns.

i.e.

pho-to-graph vs. photo-graph

Indian speakers may be very fluent, but because stressing and intonation patterns are so very different, Americans have great difficulty understanding Indian speakers.

Solution:
AAP Intonation Tutorial

Techniques Taught :

- Stress
- Pitch
- Steps and Glides
- Duration

Targeted Exercises

- Intonation Patterns
- Compound Nouns
- Heteronyms
- Word Reductions
- Sentence Level Intonation
- Contrastive Intonation
- Response Drills
- Tag Questions