-TranscriptInterview with Sheri Summers about getting an American Accent

Daniel: Hi everyone. This is Daniel Cotton. Author of Fluency Squared: The Quantum English Lead Strategy and founder of The Fluency Academy, where we teach non-English speakers just like you how to raise your English communication skills and your confidence levels. Tonight were going to be talking with a very special friend of mine, Accent Specialist Sheri Summers. Sheri Summers is the editor of the book, A Complete Idiots Guide to the American Accent and creator of The American Accent Course. Through her workshops, her seminars, boot camps and programs, Sheri has helped literally thousands of people just like you to acquire an American Accent. What I encourage you to do is to listen to the way that Sheri talks. Sheri talks with a very clear, confident, neutral-sounding accent and this is what she teaches in her American Accent Course. And so, as we go through tonight and (were) discuss a little bit about what an American Accent is about how to take steps to acquire an American Accent, I want you to really pay attention to Sheris voice, because in all of my years of working in the English learning industry, I would say quite confidently that Sheris English is some of the nicest, smoothest and most pleasant-sounding English that I have ever Sheri: Wow! Thank you, Daniel. Thank you. Daniel: Youre welcome! So to start off with, Sheri, perhaps you can tell us a little bit about your history with accents and with accent training. Sheri: Probably about 15 years ago when people would ask me: How do you pronounce this? How do you say this? Why does this sound different? I would try to come up with a really good explanation and I couldnt always because I really didnt know what was going on in it in my own native language that would be useful for the other person or I would say, well, it it sounds like this, but you know they just sometimes wouldnt know how to do it; wouldnt know how to make the sound and I wasnt able to really tell them. And so, it was through my intense desire to be able to help my students and a lot of my friends who were asking these questions. Daniel: Nice, so after all of your studies you were able to kind of synthesize everything you learned into a program that actually teaches non-English speakers how to acquire an American Accent, is that correct? Sheri: Thats right. Daniel: Wow! Okay, interesting! Thats great! And so, so lets get into this a little bit and really dive in and talk about accents, you know. Can you tell us, Sheri, exactly what is an accent and what is accent training? Sheri: Well, an accent is something that everybody has, but nobody thinks they have it. Everybody has it in their own native language. Just to start with for example: me here in California and you in Canada, we have different accents. Not everybody recognizes it, but we do. Theres certain things that we grow up hearing, repeating and all of this becomes part of our accent, and all of this becomes part of our accent and accent changes. It changes over time; it changes in regions. Thats why the British Accent and the American Accent are different. Weve had time apart from one another and lots of influences here in the U.S. and in Canada from various language groups and so, with the time and the different people weve 1 www.AccentonSpeaking.com

acquired different accents. But we all have a different accent, and the really, really interesting thing to me is, we were so good at acquiring accents when we were children. When were little babies, we can recognize the difference between different accents. Scientists have done studies on babies and they can recognize their native language even though they cant speak yet. And they start recognizing the intonation of their native language when theyre really, really little. And when they start to talk, little babies 6, 7, 8, 9 months, they cant use words yet, but the way they say their, ga-ga you know, their ba-ba they sound different. So a French baby would sound different from a British baby who would sound different from a Chinese baby because theyre influenced by the sounds around them. So we acquire these sounds when were really little. And we grow up to be a little bit bigger and we acquire the pronunciation side of it. Weve learned intonation as tiny babies and by the time were 3-4-5 years old, were already using the pronunciation of our native language. So when we get a little bit older, were so used to our own language, were so used to the intonation the rhythm, the pronunciation, that when we learn another language as teenagers or adults, we automatically its natural, we use the sounds that were most familiar with and the rhythms that were most familiar with and just put different words to it. Daniel: What it is, I guess, is that were putting English words to the accent that we develop in our native language. Sheri: Exactly. Daniel: Yeah, and thats really interesting. Okay, Sheri. So you mentioned when you were talking about accents, you mentioned things like intonation and pronunciation and rhythm and I guess these are probably all pieces or components of what make up an accent. So I was wondering if you could perhaps talk about these pieces and maybe give us an example of what this piece sounds like when someone is actually speaking with an American Accent. Sheri: What a lot of people think about when they think about accent training or, you know, getting a new accent, they think really about pronunciation and pronunciation is a really important part of getting a new accent, but pronunciation is actually just the individual sound or maybe a combination of sounds. So what youre asking yourself is: Where do you put your tongue? How much do you open your mouth? Do you use your lips? Do you use your cheeks? Do you have any tension in your cheeks to make the sound? And these are really, really important its a really important part of accent to be able to pronounce things. So for example, most people who learn English have a difficulty with the TH the TH (unvoiced?) or the TH (voiced?) and thats only because its really rare outside of English. There are just a few dialects around the world that use the same sound so it feels really uncomfortable when youre first using it because youre not used to placing your tongue in this new place and making this sound, so usually what you will do is substitute a similar sound for it. So what youll do when you are working on an American Accent is first of all, youll need to learn the sound. How do you hold your mouth? What do you do? Sometimes, you cant hear the sound immediately because your ears really not in tune to it, so sometimes you have to feel the sound first. Thats a very important part of the American Accent, but as you mentioned, intonation, rhythm, and timing is a very big part. So like I said, when babies start learning their native language, they actually pick up intonation and rhythm and timing first, and thats one of the things that people who are studying American Accent dont realize that they really, really need because thats really where the key is. The pronunciation is very important, but the intonation is essential. So let me tell you a little bit about what its like. Daniel: Yeah. Please do, because Im always a little confused myself about the difference between intonation and rhythm and stress and timing, so if you could get into that a little bit I think that would help clear up a lot of questions that a lot of people have about accents.

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Sheri: Weve got two things to consider. One thing is the intonation of words. The other thing is the intonation of sentences. So when were talking about words, what happens in English that doesnt necessarily happen in a lot of other languages is theres always one syllable in every major word, when Im talking about major words I mean the nouns and the verbs and the adjectives and the adverbs, not the little words like the or to Im talking about the ones that carry the real information, theres always a really strong stress in one of the syllables; so youll always hear something in those words that is higher, longer and has more stress to it. So youll always hear that and that is what native English speakers listen for. Listen for. Notice that? Im raising my voice. I make it longer and thats what people are listening for, theyre listening for those long, big chunks of sound. Most of the other sounds in English are very small, and the pitch is low and very tiny and this is the thing that a lot of people miss out on that they dont realize. Many times you dont even hear the vowel in it. Vowels are often kicked out of syllables and theyre replaced with a little uh sound. So if I were to say like, listen. Listen. You notice how short and weak that other that second sound is? Daniel: Yeah Sheri: Or listen to this one. America. America. Daniel: America. Sheri: Notice how the first one? Uh? It doesnt like a (letter a) it doesnt sound like ah it sounds like uh. Daniel: Uh. Sheri: The second syllable is long and strong. Meeeh! Daniel: Meeeh! Sheri: But the third and the fourth, those are really weak too. Ruh-ka. Daniel: Ruh-ka. Sheri: Ruh-ka. Yes, so you might think that you see this word A-M-E-R-I-C-A (letters spoken individually), Ah-meh-ree-ka, or something. You might think that it should be very pronounced, but the truth is its not. And so what that does is it totally changes the rhythm. You know, instead of having this, Da-Da-DaDa-Da-Da (monotone) this kind of sound. Youre getting things now like Da-daa-da-da, Dada-Daa-dada (same intonation for America) Daniel: America. America. Right, right! Okay! I see, I see! Sheri: Isnt that amazing? Daniel: It is. Sheri: And so, again, just like pronunciation, it takes time to recognize and it takes time to internalize and it takes time to use it and then they start using it and wow! What a difference. Daniel: Nice, nice! Okay, so that was intonation of individual words, right? America. And then you also mentioned that a whole sentence? Has an intonation to it as well? Sheri: Yeah. Now, every sentence has one word that is going to be the strongest. It might have a few words that are pretty strong, but usually hear a word thats the strongest. So that depends on really the speakers feeling. What is the most important word? So often, youll find that its a noun and it will usually be a noun towards the end of the sentence, but not always. It changes around and things change around depending on if youre opinionated about something or if youre contrasting something. So it gets a lot more sophisticated, but you might say, I really like it, or I really like it! So that really 3 www.AccentonSpeaking.com

depends on the speaker. How does the speaker feel about it? So its getting a little bit more complicated, but there is a sentence stress as well. We also have to consider pausing. When do you slow down? When do you take a breath? And that does happen it happens quite a bit in some languages when they learn English or when they come into English-speaking environments, they may not pause as much, and honestly, that can cause confusion with native English speakers because they expect to get chunks they expect to hear things slow down every once in a while so they can catch up. Daniel: Nice. Okay! So then so thats the intonation intonation of individual words. A little bit about intonation of an entire sentence. And then you mentioned something called rhythm and I wonder if you could perhaps explain to us a little bit about what rhythm is in an accent. Sheri: Sure. Well, rhythm is really intertwined with intonation. So rhythm and timing, theyre basically the same thing, but its intertwined with this idea of, wheres the stress? and wheres the weak syllables? Because once you give something some stress, you also give it length. When you dont stress it, you make it very short. So that is what changes the rhythm and the timing. So instead of you know, going back to that word, America. Da-Da-Da-Da everythings equal. When you go back and you change it to short-long-short-short. America. America. Then you have a totally new feeling of rhythm and timing. Daniel: Nice. So thats pronunciation, intonation, rhythm and timing. Are there other pieces to an accent? Sheri: Well, theres actually another piece. I dont usually spend as much time on it. It depends on the person, but this is what we call voicing. This is really where your voice is coming from. Different languages use their bodies: their mouths, their necks, their throats to carry the language. American English is spoken more in the throat and in the chest and this is not everybody. Some people speak a little bit differently, but generally you hear, hello, how are you? You hear a deeper sound. Daniel: The chest! Its sso true, yes! Sheri: Yeah, Yeah. Now its not always easy to accomplish because people are so used to using the muscles in particular areas, but different languages use different parts of their body to produce the sounds. Daniel: Thats excellent. So then we have those four elements, can you repeat those four elements of an American Accent to us again? Sheri: Sure, theres the pronunciation. Thats the sound. How you move your mouth to make each sound or how you put the sounds together. Theres the intonation, which is really the pitch. Is it up? Is it down? Is it high? Is it low? Then theres the rhythm and the timing and that has to do with length. Is it long? Is it short? Because that changes the that just changes the feeling of it. And then theres the voicing. So the voicing is: where is the sound being produced? Is it a high-pitched sound? Is it a deeper sound? And together, these make up they make up the American Accent. Daniel: So now that weve talked about the different components or the different elements of an accent, I guess my next question for you Sheri is: How? I mean, what can non-English speakers do to start acquiring an American Accent? Is there can we really shrink this down to like a 3-step process lets say? Sheri: Yeah. For sure, the first thing that has to happen is you have to become aware of how youre currently saying things versus how native speakers are saying things and this is a huge thing. This is really huge because most of the time you dont know. We just dont know. Theres no way we can know. We honestly become deaf to certain things because theyre not in our current experience. The first thing that has to happen is you have to become aware. And now I think that this is my job, because you just 4 www.AccentonSpeaking.com

dont know. How can you know? So my job is to help people become aware of what theyre currently doing versus what native speakers are doing and thats a really big step. The second step is teaching them how to do it. Okay, so I know that theres this sound that Im missing or I know that theres this rhythm that Im missing how do I do it? So thats my step as well well, thats my step and your step. So Im going to show you what it is youre missing. Im gonna show you how to do it. And as I said before, just listening to something doesnt always help because you have that kind of deafness that youre not aware of something until somebody points it out. So this is how you do it. This is how you make the sound. This is how you make the rhythm. Now your step and this is a big step, you have got to practice it. Daniel: I wonder if you can maybe share a story about one of your clients. Sheri: I had one guy this one time, we hadnt even been working together for very long and we had been working on the American R and thats tough for everybody because the American R is just different from any other R in the world and so, we spent a little time working on the American R and he had a meeting the next day and he didnt tell anybody that hed been working on his accent, but he spoke up quite a bit in this meeting and then at the end he had several people tell him, somethings different. You sound better. Theres something different. And he didnt tell anybody what hed been doing, but I think he was very happy about even this little progress that hed made, so its quite wonderful. Daniel: Wow! Thats amazing. Okay, just working on one particular sound, the R sound, made a difference in his communication with others. Would you say that you must have a certain level of English or a certain background with English before you move into accent training? Sheri: In all honesty, I wish that when a student began his English program that he had some kind of pronunciation and accent training so he wouldnt have to build bad habits in the first place. I wish that were going on, but its not necessarily happening in all the classes. In the case of the American Accent Course, yes, a person would have to have some English background simply because the entire course is taught in English. So, generally, I say a high intermediate level of English if somebodys still studying English, but I sometimes have people with more of an intermediate level, but they have to be able to understand English fairly well. If somebodys listening to this right now and can understand 80% of what you and I are talking about, they should be just fine. The classes are actually a little bit slower and I spend a little more time talking about details. Daniel: Okay, so youve touched now several times on this on your new American Accent Course, I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about this? What makes this course different in all of the other accent reduction or pronunciation courses that are out there? Sheri: One of the things that I find that has been missing from other programs that obviously, because Ive talked about it a lot of times, I think is very important, and thats the intonation, rhythm and timing. Very few programs out there are focusing on this. A lot of people are focusing on how to pronounce sounds, which is cool, but its not enough. So, my new American Accent Course is actually a combination of a few courses that Ive created in the past. One is the American Accent Audio Course. This course focuses entirely on intonation, rhythm and timing and so, this definitely has to be a part of my new course because I think its so important. My course also goes over pronunciation; pronunciation of each sound of English. Now the other thing that I think is different from some of the things that are already out there is, when I teach pronunciation, I wanna tell you why, I wanna tell you how, I wanna tell you how it feels. As I said, Im really not a believer of listen to me and repeat after me because you listen to what you think you hear and repeat what you think you should say. I dont think its enough. You have to able to feel what youre doing. Where do you put your tongue? How much do you open your mouth? These are all really, really important. So I spend a lot of time on pronunciation explaining how it should be done, how it feels, how it looks and of course, how it sounds. 5 www.AccentonSpeaking.com

Daniel: So included in your new American Accent Course we have first of all, your American Accent Audio Course that you had created several years ago. Sheri: Yes, included is the audio course, my pronunciation video course and Ive also added quite a few new things. One thing is a number of exercises to really help you practice what youve been learning and Ive included quizzes to make sure that you have learned what you need to know. And finally, I think probably the most important thing is, Ive included my weekly Q&A help sessions which Ill be having at a few different times during the week because I know weve got people around the world on different time zones. What this is, is I have special times where people can call in online or use a telephone call in and talk to me and say, Sheri, Im working on this. Ive been practicing this. How do I sound? Am I doing this correctly? Am I doing this wrong? And I will give you personal feedback, personal advice. Yeah, this sounds good or I think that you need to work on this. It sounds like you need to put your tongue in this place instead of this place. So youll get personal feedback on how youre doing and this I think is so important because you can go out and buy a book. You could go out and buy a CD or some software and its not gonna tell you if youre doing it right or wrong, but I will. Im going to tell you how youre doing. Daniel: And thats so important isnt it? - To get the actual feedback. Am I making this sound correctly? How is my intonation? Is my rhythm and timing correct? I mean, really the only way to find that out is to speak it and have someone assess it, isnt it? Sheri: Thats right and you can ask your friends, you can ask people who are native English speakers, but sometimes they wont know how to help you just like I was many years ago. I really didnt know what to tell people and I think thats one of the problems and sometimes honestly, the other problem is, sometimes people are so nice theyll say, oh no, no, you sound fine. And you know that theres something wrong and you dont know what it is and youre friends are telling you: No, no you sound fine. Well, its really nice. Its very complimentary and of course I will never be mean to anybody and say, No! You sound terrible! But I will be honest so a little bit, this one could be a little better. This one sounds good. And so I think thats whats so important about having these live help sessions is to get honest, reliable feedback and then Im gonna show you how to make changes to it. Daniel: Yeah, thats unbelievable! I mean to be able to get some personal attention with Sheri Summers, The Pronunciation Queen, right its a what an absolutely fabulous component youve added to this American Accent Course because its so true. Weve talked about the different components of the American Accent Course and Im wondering if theres anything else youd like to tell us about The American Accent Course, Sheri. Sheri: Yeah sure, first of all, I just wanna let you know that it is a program thats entirely online. I do that for a reason. I want to be able to help anybody anywhere in the world who has the internet. And so, I have put all of the audios, Ive put the videos online. Even when somebody calls in to the online classes, you know. They would get online. Wherever you have internet, you can join this program. The other thing is, I have spread the course out over a period of 6 months. Now for some people that might seem like a long time, but its actually a really nice amount of time to go step by step through everything from beginning to end because we dont wanna rush things too much. We dont wanna get too fast. Daniel: Theres no need. Okay, Sheri, my next question for you then is: how do participants get enrolled in the new American Accent Course? Where should they go and what should they do right now to get themselves signed up for this? Sheri: Great! Well, its pretty easy. You go to http://americanaccentcourse.com, okay? http://americanaccentcourse.com. So, if you know the name of the course, you know the name of the website. So you go to http://americanaccentcourse.comand you get signed up there. So what Ive done is, first of all, I want people to be able to have a 10-day trial. I wanna make sure that theyre going to feel 6 www.AccentonSpeaking.com

really comfortable in the course. I want people to be able to see how it works. What the videos are like. What the audios are like. What the quizzes are like. And even be able to attend some live online help sessions. Daniel: Okay, so for anyone who wants to get enrolled or have a look at the American Accent Course, simply go to http://americanaccentcourse.com on the website, Sheris put a great video together for you. It explains all the pieces of the American Accent Course. How its delivered, everything thats involved and right now, Sheri is offering you the chance to test-drive the American Accent Course for a price that she wont even let me tell you about because its so good. So, head on over right now to http://americanaccentcourse.com; get yourselves started with your American Accent Training. Finally, the time has come to take some action, to learn what you need to learn, to acquire an American Accent, to get to work practicing with the Pronunciation Queen, Sheri Summers, and I wanna thank you so much, Sheri for spending time with us today, for sharing so much about the American Accent and Im excited about your new course. Im gonna be in this course with everybody who enrolls because this is something that even I, too, would love to know more about and be able to do myself is to speak more with an American Accent. Sheri: Ha ha ha! Great, Daniel. Thank you! Daniel: Youre welcome. So until next time, everyone this is Daniel Cotton. Remember always: Speak English with clarity and confidence. Bye for now!

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