ACTING WITH AN ACCENT–Caribbean and African

$17.95

Learn Placements, Rhythms & Pronunciations of
CARIBBEAN & AFRICAN ACCENTS
(several styles & intensities)

in David Alan Stern’s Acting with an Accent series.

This program in David Alan Stern’s Acting with an Accent series teaches the placement, inflections, & pronunciation of several styles and intensities of Caribbean and African accents.

Description

Learning Caribbean and African Accents

WHAT WILL YOU DOWNLOAD?

The download contains sixty-four (64) minutes of systematic instruction in MP3 sound files. You’ll also get a printable PDF of the instruction manual. It contains summaries of the audio lessons and full transcripts of the drill words, phrases, and passages.

WHAT WILL YOU LEARN?

You will first learn the resonance (placement), inflection/rhythm, and pronunciation of general accents from both Africa and the Caribbean islands. You’ll go on to learn variations and intensities for each. I’ve grouped these two accents in the same training program because of their many similarities in voice placement and vowel pronunciation. The major difference is rhythm and pitch/inflection patterns that characterize West Indies English but not that of Africa. Here’s a brief summary of the training.

  • Lesson 1 teaches you the resonance or voice placement of most Caribbean and native African accents. In other words, it shows you how to shape your mouth to create their frontal sound focus.
  • The 2nd Lesson deals with the rhythm pattern resulting from these accents’ relative lack of unstressed syllables.
  • Lesson 3 shows you how to embed target vowels into the placement and rhythm you learned earlier.
  • The 4th Lesson addresses the pitch movement and additional vowel elongations more characteristic of Caribbean accents than those of Africa
  • Lesson 5 teaches the dropping of the R sounds coming after vowels in most of these accents. It goes on to drill some of the other important consonant pronunciations.
  • The Final Lesson puts it all together with several drill passages. First, it reminds you about the voice placement. Then, it walks you through the pronunciation phrase by phrase before leading you into a normal speaking pace.