Two Tricks for improving your American English for Free

By Eugene O'Reilly, M.A., C.C.C.-SLP -
Speech Therapist, Accent Specialist and Voice Coach

There is an old saying in America which goes, "There is no such thing as a free lunch". With that said, I want to suggest a couple of free learning techniques for people from other countries who are striving to speak American English better. The only real expenditure is time and focused effort. It's all paid back when the goal is reached.

1. Get a Public Library card. The Public Library has all the materials any person could want to learn almost anything they would want to learn. A librarian can help you to find books and books on CD at your level of reading. Using a voice recorder of some kind, play the book on CD while reading one or two sentences. Stop the CD and imitate what you heard with the recorder running. Playback the recording and compare your speaking to the speech of the person reading the book.

2. Don't just watch TV, imitate TV. Many people from overseas have told me that they think they will be able to learn English from watching movies in English.

I have watched movies in numerous languages and I can't say that I am able to speak any of them as a result. Don't just watch the movie but imitate what is being said. You can do it the same way as the books on CD. Read the captions of the movie in English. Most captions are on the screen before the actor speaks.

While using a voice recorder, quickly pause the DVD and read the captions of the movie then let the actor speak. Once again compare your speaking to the pronunciation of the actor in the movie.

The Author, Eugene O'Reilly, M.A., C.C.C.-SLP, is a Speech-Language Pathologist, California License SP9363, Certified by the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association, that for more than 20 years has been assisting persons of all ages from more than 50 different countries with improving their speech, language and voice skills. You can read more about his work and services here