Unlike books aimed at linguistics students or individual learners of English, Teaching American English Pronunciation specifically addresses the needs of ESL teachers. It provides the descriptive knowledge needed to teach pronunciation effectively. But it is also full of practical teaching ideas. The book is divided into three main parts: - Part One is an introduction to the English sound system. It covers
spelling and pronunciation, the individual sounds of English, English sounds in context, the shape of English words, word stress and vowel reduction, and connected speech. Throughout this part of the book, the
authors use examples of typical errors made by ESL students to illustrate the descriptions and concepts they describe. - Part Two describes the pronunciation problems that most ESL students have with English vowels, consonants, stress, rhythm, and intonation. It then goes on to look at the specific pronunciation problems of speakers of fifteen different languages: Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, French, German, Greek, Hindi and Punjabi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish,
Portuguese, Spanish, and Vietnamese. - Part Three consists of a set of articles about practical issues in pronunciation teaching. These are written by ten North American teachers and
language researchers with a wide range of experience of teaching in many different contexts. The topics covered include: pronunciation syllabus design, pronunciation-based listening activities, developing self-correcting and self-monitoring strategies, and drama techniques in the pronunciation class.