Introduction

Hi, I'm AJ Hoge. I will be your teacher during this entire Effortless English Pronunciation
Course. I'm excited to help you speak with an American accent.

Do you have problems with your pronunciation? Do people sometimes not understand you when
you speak English? Do they say, "Huh? What? Huh?" and act confused when you speak
sometimes? Do you feel foolish because of this when you speak English? Probably you have
some pronunciation problems. That's why you bought the course.

Well in this course you're going to learn to speak with a clearer, more understandable, North
American accent. Now I say North American because the Canadian and the American accents
are basically the same; especially the standard accents in each of those countries. So I will teach
you the North American accent because I'm from the United States and that's my accent. At the
end of this course you will have much clearer pronunciation. You will be understood. You will
sound more like an American. You will have a much better accent.

So lets talk about how you're going to do this. This course takes about three and a half months.
Now I want you to go nice and slowly through the course and to learn deeply. Effortless English
is a deep learning system. It means I want you to practice and really master the skills. Just
thinking about and learning about pronunciation by reading or watching a video, it's not enough.
You have to practice it. You have to imagine you're an athlete and you're training. You have to
train the muscles in your throat, in your mouth, and you have to even train your mind to be able
to make the sounds correctly so that you have a nice American accent.

Lets talk about the process; how you're going to do this. Now this course has twenty units.
You're going to take five days for each unit. So every unit you will do it for five days in a row.
You're going to have two things in each unit. There will be a video; a video lesson, and there will
be a training audio. The video lesson teaches you how to make the important sounds, or teaches
you some technique for improving your pronunciation. Now it's a video because I want you to
look and see how I move my mouth. Sometimes I'll show you my tongue even so you can see
what I'm doing and learn how to make the sounds correctly.

Now in the training audio, that's where you will actually practice because just watching me is not
enough. You have to learn to do it yourself and that requires practice day after day after day.
You'll be practicing every single day. So that training audio, you're going to repeat it several
times a day. Not just once. Several times a day. And you're going to do that for five days, right?
So for example, in unit one, you'll practice with the training audio on day one. On day two you'll
practice with that same audio again. On day three you'll practice with it again. On day for and on
day five. So you'll get five full days practicing with that training audio. Training yourself to
improve your pronunciation. And then finally day six you start a new unit. You start back to the
beginning.

Now each day you'll do something a little different. You'll have a slightly different focus on each
day for each unit. For example, on day one you'll focus on listening deeply; focus on hearing the
sounds of English correctly. This is the first step. So you'll be listening to that training audio and
to the lesson video again and again and again and again, but not just listening and ignoring it.
Not just listening and distracted, but listening very carefully. To say the sounds correctly you
first must hear them correctly.

On day two of each unit you will pause and imitate. So you'll listen to one sentence from me in
the training audio, and you'll pause, and then you'll say the same sentence. You'll try to copy my
pronunciation. Then you'll to the second sentence, the third sentence. You'll do this pausing and
copying, pausing and imitating, pausing and repeating again and again and again. But not just
repeating the words. That's not enough. You have to copy my pronunciation. So imitating; that's
the important word. Pause and imitate on day two of each unit.

On day three of each unit you will read aloud and record yourself. You have the text for all of
these audios and videos. So you'll read them aloud in a nice strong voice, and you'll record
yourself. Then you'll compare your recording, your audio, to my recording. You'll listen
carefully and you'll notice the differences. Then you'll be able to hear your own mistakes with
pronunciation. That will help you improve a lot.

Finally on days 4 and 5 for each unit you will use a technique called tracking. I explain this
technique in unit one, but I'll give you a brief description now. This is where you listen to me,
listen to the audio, and you speak with me at the same time, no pausing. You don't pause the
audio, so you have to speak at the same speed as me. Now I'll tell you, it's not easy in the
beginning. You'll be listening and saying the same thing. You'll try to copy my pronunciation as
you listen without pausing. That's a lot to do at the same time. So don't worry if it's very difficult
at first. It probably will be, but day by day, week by week, this tracking technique will become
easier and easier and this is so powerful. This will help you create an amazing, clear American
accent. Your pronunciation will improve so much by using this tracking technique on days four
and five of every unit.

You will develop a clear and understandable American accent. Just follow this five day process
with each unit. Be patient. Let yourself improve gradually and slowly. That's how you do it.

All right, it's time to get started. Go to Unit 1 now. Watch the lesson video and then start training
with the training audio. See you now in Unit 1!
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