Accent Reduction

Technical Questions

Miscellaneous Questions

I have trouble pronouncing the "TH" sound. Can Pronunciation Patterns help me?
There is no easy way to pronounce the "TH" sound. For the words containing the "TH" sound, you just have to make conscious efforts putting your tongue between the teeth when you pronounce the TH sound. Once your subconscious mind accepts the action, you will automatically pronounce the TH sound. Pronunciation Patterns list all the words containing the "TH" sound for you to practice with.

Please read what takes to perfect English pronunciation to understand why perfecting pronunciation is possible.

Does Pronunciation Patterns have video clips to show me how to pronounce each English sound?
Yes, Pronunciation Patterns Professional (Demo/Full) Version has the mouth video clips to help you learn how to pronounce each English sound free. Click here to download the demo now.

I have trouble speaking fluent English. Can Pronunciation Patterns help me? English is full of schwa sounds which make English a rhythmic language. If you know which letters are schwa sound letters, you will know where to stress. For example, get out of here. (Get Out(E)v Here); All of you (All(E)v U). However, you need to master the pronunciation of each word first because it helps you build the confidence you need to pronounce long sentences. Pronunciation Patterns colors schwa letters in blue to help you remember which letters are schwa letters.

How many English sounds does Pronunciation Patterns teach?
Pronunciation Patterns covers all 20 vowel sounds and 24 consonant sounds. It has both the standard IPA or the standard APA to help you learn the 44 English sounds. Download the demo to learn the long A, short A, and AR sounds now.

Does Pronunciation Patterns teach rules on phonics?
Pronunciation Patterns has twenty six alphabet rules, sixteen silent letter rules, fourteen double consonant rules, eighteen two vowel rules, and five ending rules. Download the demo now.

I find it difficult to pronounce English words, can Pronunciation Patterns help me?
This is very common to all English learners because our minds are hardwired to some sounds and we don't have the mouth muscularity to pronounce some sounds. It takes practice to reform some pronunciation habits.

I want to share with you an example of mine. I had a hard time saying the OW sound and the OR sound. Therefore, I had a really hard time saying the words such as house vs. horse, loud vs. lord, now vs. nor, etc. However, I could say how, or, sore, and bore with little trouble. I tried to connect how and house together so that I just need to say how+s to say house.

Very often, we don't have any trouble saying one sound alone but we have trouble saying two sounds together. Our mouth muscle exercise is designed with this in mind. It groups words such how, howl, house, etc together to help you get enough practice and help you use the words you have no trouble saying to learn the words you have trouble.  

I have trouble pronouncing the "R" sound. Can Pronunciation Patterns help me?
For the "R" sound, you have to practice to curve your tongue back to pronounce the sound. Pronunciation Patterns has hundreds of words containing the "R" sound to help you practice the words with the "R" sound.

Please read what takes to learn English pronunciation to understand why perfecting pronunciation is possible.

Do you think improving rhythm and intonation is more important than improving pronunciation?
It depends. If you have good pronunciation and you don't desire to have perfect pronunciation like Americans, I encourage you to improve rhythm and intonation by slowing down and stressing on the words you want to emphasize. You can do this with the professional version 4.0. Click here to learn how.

If you mispronounce many words or want to reduce accent, I encourage you to work on pronunciation first before working on rhythm and intonation.

If you use Pronunciation Patterns to improve English pronunciation, you will learn how I color the unstressed letters so that you understand which syllable to stress and when not to stress. Later on, you will know when to stress and when not to stress in sentences yourself. Learning rhythm and intonation is all about when you need to stress and when you need to un-stress in sentences.

When is the letter T pronounced as the D sound?
We have accent reduction and English pronunciation tips for questions like this one in our Pronunciation Patterns forum. However, you will have to download the demo to access the forum free. Click here to download now.

Does Pronunciation Patterns use International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to teach sounds?
Yes. We provide both International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and American Phonetic Alphabet (APA) to teach sounds. You just need to uncheck the Apply APA option in the Setting section to have the program to display IPA symbols in the program. Because we provide IPA and APA, we encourage you to learn APA because they are widely used by American dictionary and the phonics rules is based on APA.

How can I use Pronunciation Patterns to learn English Pronunciation?
Use our daily lessons to guide you to use Pronunciation Patterns to learn pronunciation.
1. Learn the tips in the Alphabet section to realize that English is not a phonetic language. Realizing that you can't just read words directly can help you avoid mispronouncing new words.
2. If you have trouble remembering IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) and recalling the phonetic transcripts for English words, I recommend you to learn APA (American Phonetic Alphabet) and phonics rules together instead. The silent E rule and the two vowels rule are the two major phonetic rules you need to learn first.
3. After being familiar with APA and phonetic rules, you can go back to each APA and practice words under each APA. When you practice words grouped by phonetic patterns, please apply the phonetic rule into it, and use patterns and rules to help you recall the correct pronunciation of the words.
4. If you have no trouble recalling IPA for each word and just have some accent, you can login the Mouth Muscle exercise and practice one vowel or consonant with the sample words each day.
5. If you don't know how to produce each sound, I would recommend you to purchase the professional version which offers video clips to help you position your mouth and tongue to produce correct sounds.
6. If you want to improve your listening, I would recommend you to purchase the professional version which offers a test exercise to test your listening.
7. Click here to learn more about how you can use Pronunciation Patterns help you improve your pronunciation.
8. Please learn just one tip a day and practice words for 15 to 30 minutes day. I can share with you that I stuttered for a while before I could get back to my normal speaking speed. Actually stuttering slowed down my speaking and made it more comprehensible. Click here to learn why learning pronunciation is like reading and skiing.

Which version of Pronunciation Patterns is best suited for me?
We have three different versions of Pronunciation Patterns, the educational version, the professional version 3.0 and the professional 4.0, designed for different needs.

If you just want to learn phonics to help you improve your English pronunciation and spelling, the educational version is a great price for you.

If you are enjoying some features of our demo 3.0 and just want to improve English pronunciation, the professional 3.0 is an awesome tool for you.

If you really want to improve your fluency and reduce accent, the professional version 4.0 is a truly good value version for you.

What method of payments are offered to purchase Pronunciation Patterns?
We offer both Google Checkout and 2Checkout services to accept major credit cards and e-check. If you don't have credit cards, please contact us for wire-transfer information.

Where do I get instructions on how to use Pronunciation Patterns?
When you login Pronunciation Patterns, we have quick tours and useful tips to help you learn how to use Pronunciation Patterns. If you like, please click here to start to learn how to use Pronunciation Patterns now.

I don't have a credit card. How can I order Pronunciation Patterns?
If you have a US checking account, please click here to use 2Checkout to order Pronunciation Patterns. Otherwise, please email to Sales@PronunciationPatterns.com for wire transfer information. Thank you.

Can Pronunciation Patterns teach adults how to read?
Yes, in fact, Pronunciation Patterns is one of the best tools to help adults learn how to read because it is based on phonics and it is designed for adult non-English speakers. The researchers in Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center have found that adults with dyslexia can improve with phonics-based instruction. To learn more about this research report, please click here.

Can Pronunciation Patterns help me improve my listening?
Yes. Learning correct pronunciation can help you improve listening. As the matter of fact, improving your English pronunciation is the best way to improve your listening. Let us assume that you know the word indict and you happen to mispronounce it as indikt (The correct pronunciation is indIt). Because you mispronounce the word, you will never hear it even though the word indict is on TV everyday. Moreover, you won't even get the repetition you need to learn the word in sentences.

Pronunciation Patterns actually colors it as indict so that you know the letter C is not pronounced and it shall be pronounced as indite (indite is not a word. Because of the silent E rule, you know how to pronounce indite). Moreover, the professional version finds all the similar words such as wool, eel, wheel, will, whale, while, wall, and well and randomly chooses one to test your listening. Click here to learn more about this feature.

Can Pronunciation Patterns help me improve my vocabulary?
Yes, Pronunciation Patterns can help you improve your vocabulary. We believe that English learners should use both phonics-based and the whole language learning methods to learn English. Therefore, Pronunciation Patterns offers phonics rules to help you improve your spelling and you can add new words from your readings into your learning list to help expand your vocabulary. In addition, we have online pictures and translations in multiple languages to help you learn the new words.

Does Pronunciation Patterns provide step-by-step lessons to help me learn Pronunciation?
Yes. We are working on the daily lessons which is designed to help you use the program step-by-step. These lessons are derived from my personal experiences and how I would use the pronunciation software to perfect my pronunciation in one year. However, these lessons are only available to our members. To use the lessons, you need to login to our member area, then choose the lesson you want to start with. Moreover, our new version reminds you which lessons you need to review according to Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve.

Can Pronunciation Patterns help me reduce my accent?
Let us understand the differences between accent and pronunciation first. If you have an accent other than American accent, it means either you stress words differently from or pronounce some sounds consistently differently from how Americans would. That is why British sound differently from Americans do. Therefore, to reduce your foreign accent, you have to improve your English pronunciation.

Yes, Pronunciation Patterns can help you reduce accent because it groups over 4,000 words with the same vowel or consonant sound together for you to practice with to help you reduce accent. For example, if you realize that you pronounce the long A sound differently from Americans, you would practice all the words under the long A sound to help you improve your accent. Also, Pronunciation Patterns offers tips on American accent in the Pronunciation Patterns forum.

Does Pronunciation Patterns support other accents such as British accent besides American accent?
No, we don't support the British accent for two main reasons. First, Pronunciation Patterns is based on American phonics. Second, we believe that teaching one pronunciation for one word is much more effective than teaching multiple pronunciations for one word and it helps reduces the confusion. Nevertheless, if you are interested in teaching British accent to your students, you can simply record audio files in British accent and redirect the sound path to where you store the audio files.

Can Pronunciation Patterns help English speakers who need to reduce their strong regional accents such as southern and New York accent?
Pronunciation Patterns is designed for non-English speakers to learn English pronunciation through phonics, and help them perfect their English pronunciation and reduce accent. I strongly believe that improving your pronunciation can help you reduce accent. As I recommend to everyone of my prospective customers, I suggest you to download our demo first to see if the program can help you reduce accent before making the purchase.

When I ran the program, I received a "Class not Registered" error message. What should I do?
This is because you need to have Real Player, which Pronunciation Patterns uses in the professional 4.0 edition, installed on your computer. Please click here to download a free copy of Real Player from Google and install to your computer before you run Pronunciation Patterns Professional 4.0.

When I ran the program, I received an "Access violation at address 7C9EAF74 in module 'SHELL32.dll'" error message. What should I do?
This is because your Internet Explorer is corrupted. To solve this problem, you need to reinstall IE6.

Do I need to change any of my settings to run Pronunciation Patterns online?
No, but please make sure that you set your Firewall to allow Pronunciation Patterns to access the internet.

What separates Pronunciation Patterns from its competitors?
1. I have personally used this product and the product has helped me improve my pronunciation. Now I have obtained my MBA from Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, one of the top US MBA programs by Wall Street Journal and Business Week.
2. The methods in Pronunciation Patterns are derived from the Between the Lions program which can be seen on PBS. Our users can watch the TV program to learn phonics and phonetic patterns and use Pronunciation Patterns as an exercise tool to practice after the TV program.
3. We guarantee a satisfactory result if our customers devote 15 minutes to using Pronunciation Patterns a day for a year.
4. Now teachers can use our pronunciation curriculum editor to create their own different materials to teach instead of using one curriculum for all students.

Can Pronunciation Patterns help me find out whether I pronounce the word correctly?
From my own experience, adult English learners have a hard time distinguishing two sounds no matter how many times a teacher or tutor tries to correct them. If you don't believe me, try to teach Americans to say your name in your native tongue. Pronunciation Patterns offers patterns and rules to help our users to remember the correct pronunciation of English words so that they can reproduce accordingly.  

Why is improving pronunciation important?
I think that many of you already agreed with me that improving pronunciation is important.
Here is why I think it is so important:
1. Improving pronunciation will help you improve listening skills and improving your listening skills will help you learn faster because you will actually hear words on TV.
2. Verbal communication is such an important skill and bad pronunciation only can hamper the verbal communication. Click here to find out how top MBA schools think of communication skills.
3. People judge you by your pronunciation not by your accent. If you have excellent pronunciation, your colleagues will respect you because it is very difficult to achieve it. 

Why is Pronunciation Patterns perfect for ESL programs?
Pronunciation always has been a difficult task for ESL teachers to teach. Even the experienced teachers will just ask students repeat a list of words which have similar patterns. Since there are many students in a class, the teachers will not be able to correct each student and the students don't have enough time to practice English pronunciation.
With Pronunciation Patterns, now teachers can assign students to work on each group of words individually. After a week of practice, then teachers can double check the pronunciation of the students.

How can Pronunciation Patterns help me improve my English pronunciation?
Pronunciation Patterns is designed to help ESL students to learn English pronunciation. It not only offers hundred useful phonics rules to help you learn English pronunciation, but also groups words by the patterns to practice English pronunciation. For example, I had a hard time pronouncing the word "folder" but not the words "hold" and "old". By grouping the words "folder", "hold", "old" together, I can easily recall that the "folder" shall be pronounced as f-old-er. Learn more about how Pronunciation Patterns can help you improve your English pronunciation.

Can Pronunciation Patterns help me remember the correct pronunciation of the words?
Pronunciation Patterns offers over one hundred pronunciation tips and phonics rules to help you understand the phonetic patterns existing in English words. Since English is a lingua franca, a mixture of many languages, there are exceptions to the rules. Nevertheless, the tips and rules offered in Pronunciation Patterns can help you remember the correct pronunciation of 80% of English words without using IPA.

Here is one typical example:
AI --When the letter A and the letter I are together, the letter I is silent as in the words MAIN, NAIL, AIL, etc.
AIR -- When the letter A, letter I and letter R are together, those letters create a diphthong in the words HAIR, AIR, LAIR, etc.
You can learn this tip under the AI rule in the Rules section of Pronunciation Patterns for free. Download the demo now.

Can Pronunciation Patterns help me correct some of the pronunciation habits I have already formed?

What is the best way to improve my English Pronunciation?
There is no one best way to improve English pronunciation. Some people are extremely talented in learning languages and I am not one of them. Here, I share with you how I improved my English pronunciation.

1. I had to practice the simple and most commonly used words and relied on patterns to help me recall the correct word pronunciation.
2. Even with the simple words, I could not pronounce them correctly because I had formed many bad habits and many sounds don't exist in my native language. So I had to acknowledge that there are differences between different sounds.
3. I had to repeat those words which consist of a same sound until I finally could recognize the sound.
4. I started reading short sentences everyday and made conscious efforts to correct myself when I heard myself mispronouncing words.
5. Of course, watching English movies or listening how native speakers speak are important. However, personally, I don't believe that you can learn much from the movies unless you already know the correct pronunciation of the words.

Believe it or not. Having the confidence in pronouncing each word correctly is the key in learning pronunciation and Pronunciation Patterns can help you achieve it.

Can I use Pronunciation Patterns to teach phonics?
Absolutely. Pronunciation Patterns has all the phonics rules and under each phonics rule are there hundreds of words to help you understand phonics.

Can I use Pronunciation Patterns to teach children how to read?
Yes, you can use Pronunciation Patterns to teach children how to read because Pronunciation Patterns is an excellent complementary tool to the PBS's Between the Lions, an award winning children's TV program use phonics to teach children how to read.

As the matter of fact, you can create different lists of words to teach for different levels of students. You just need to go to the Find section and select the words you want the children to learn and selected the option underneath. Also, Pronunciation Patterns color the letters to show the letters whether they are pattern letters or silent letters.

What is Pronunciation Patterns based on?
Pronunciation Patterns is based on phonics, a scientific method used by American educators to help American children to learn how to read, to help you improve English pronunciation and spelling. With the feedback from my clients and teachers, the latest professional version 4.0 is improved to not only offer pronunciation solution, but also a complete English learning solution. You can learn more about the professional version of Pronunciation Patterns at our methodology page.

How can I participate in the referral program?
After you've purchased Pronunciation Patterns and register with us, you will automatically become a member of the Pronunciation Patterns community and can participate in the referral program.

We only want you to refer our program to your friends when you sincerely believe that the program has helped you improve your English pronunciation or that it can help your friends improve their pronunciation as well. You friends will receive 10% off on their purchases and you will receive 10% commission.

Can I use Pronunciation Patterns on my own or do I need a teacher?
Pronunciation Patterns is designed to be used either by students themselves or with teachers’ help. If they can get assistance from a teacher, it will be even great because they can help you identify your error and record your mistakes in the system to help you improve your pronunciation even faster.

Can I get rid of my foreign accent within 28 days as some products claim?
I am sorry to say that it is nearly impossible to lose your accent within 28 days unless you are an excellent imitator. Many ESL teachers told me that having accent is reasonably acceptable as long as you can communicate your ideas through and getting rid of accent may take several years and there is a chance that you will never get rid of your accent completely.

When I tried to install Pronunciation Patterns, I received a "The system file is not suitable for running MS-DOS & Microsoft windows applications" error message. What should I do?
This is a common error caused by the Windows XP Service Pack 2. Click here to learn how to fix the problem.

Does my computer need to be connected to the internet to run Pronunciation Patterns?
If you are running the demo version of Pronunciation Patterns, you need to be connected to the internet. If you are running the full version of Pronunciation Patterns, you don't need to have an internet connection. However, if you want to access the online resources, you have to connect online.

When I start up Windows, Pronunciation Patterns also starts up. How can I stop this?
At the Login window, there is a check box stating Remind me to use Pronunciation Patterns when Windows starts. Once you uncheck the option, Pronunciation Patterns will not start when Windows starts.

Conclusion

From my own experience, mispronunciation can cause more difficulties to be understood than accent in communication. Therefore, I strongly encourage everyone of you to improve English pronunciation first and your accent will be reduced afterward.