Thinking About Speaking : The Adastra Approach to Mastering the American English Accent

This book is a guide to understanding what defines an accent and how to make changes to increase speech clarity. It is for people who speak English with the influence of another language who want to communicate clearly in American English as well as teachers of English to non-native speakers. It includes definitions and descriptions of accents and examples of who chooses to keep making improvements to their speech after they have already learned and use English in their daily lives. This book analyzes why traditional teaching methods don’t take English as a second language (ESL) speakers to the highest level of speaking skills possible. The description of the author’s approach to increasing spoken communication skills goes beyond pronunciation of sounds and involves more cognitive processes than physical behaviors. The method includes techniques to make changes to speech to increase the effectiveness of speaking English as a non-native language.