If you are from another country and struggle with a heavy accent, you may wonder why. Some of the main reasons are these: you learned the British style of English, you learned from a teacher with an accent or you simply became busy once you were here and never did the final, polishing work on pronunciation.

   What steps should you take to reduce your accent? That depends on what you need. Some key sounds, like R or Th, can affect your speech greatly. You may need to focus on a sound first. Make sure you are making the sound correctly, then practice every day--just like a professional speaker or singer. You have to build the muscles that make that sound and also teach your mind to lose the old habit of pronouncing in an incorrect way.

   Anothe key step is to put concentrated practice into vowel sounds. All the vowel spellings have multiple sounds, and there are quite a few exceptions. By really studying the vowels, you can learn to listen for sounds and become more confident about sound/spelling relationships. In the long run, this will help you master the vowel sounds and that polishes your speech.

   One final key method is to understand American rhythm. Americans speak in phrases. You need to study the reduced sounds, blended sounds and stressed sounds in sentences or phrases to fully understand American rhythm.

   You can read more about some of these techniques and the accent generally at www.speakmethod.com.