American Accent Training with Online Audio (Barron's ESL Proficiency)

I am not a native English speaker. I have been speaking English for about 15 years though and living in the US for 7 years. I definitely don't have a thick confusing accent and Americans keep telling me that "your English is so good and you don't have a difficult accent at all." However, I don't speak with an American accent :(It has mentally put me under pressure (partly because I tend to be perfectionist) to the point that sometimes I don't speak among others just because I don't want to be that token person. So, I decided to buy this book and try to change my accent (although I am one of those people thinking that your accent forms in your childhood.)Having gone through a few pages of this book and listening to the audio files, I have gained great info so far and am motivated to change my accent (even if it's just getting closer a bit to the standard accent.)I will update my review as time passes and I keep working through the book.BTW, this book's material and design is excellent especially the American flag design.Every time I pick up this book I feel so patriotic. I know I wasn't born here but the US is my adopted country and I would die for it. US of A :)Update-1, 11/4/2017: Something has been really bothering me about the way phonetics has been done in this book. Why not IPA? We spend so much time learning IPA in order to use a dictionary and then all of a sudden in this book you see a new convention (that I haven't seen anywhere else.) I am making my conversion table to IPA for this book and really wish that in the future editions the author would use IPA.

This book is perfect I recommended it and the seller is very good. He sent the order very fast

The book is good, very useful

I have been using the paperback version since 2018, and to be honest I found that the procedure necessary to get the audio files quite onerous. I teach in a variety of locations and having to answer questions based on the books content too time consuming.However, the Kindle, on the PC version, is perfect. Just click on the headphone/speaker icon and the audio will open in a separate tab and plays flawlessly. Of course, it would be better if the audio opened on the textbook, especially now that so many teachers are using Zoom and switching screens between the audio and the textbook is not always smooth.Another issue that I have always had is that the audio models are way too fast. The explanations need to be slower and the listen and repeat examples do not provide sufficient time for the students to listen and repeat. One model follows the other with barely no gap. Now that we have to switch screens frequently, this is a pain.But, all in all it is a very thorough and easy to use system.

This is a book that I would like to recommend to all English learners. Before I read this book, I was skeptical how a book could help someone to actually correct their accents. It really surprises me! It explains everything clearly and the exercises are pratical and helpful. I hope everyone could have the chance to read it!

The audio file is NOT downloadable, instead it’s online only and it has one year limited access.The provided link does not work.Accessing the online files is very sluggish, causing the computer running excessively hot.It’s a good book, however, I feel misled since the audio files do not come with the book. Needless to say this is an Accent and Pronunciation Training Book, without the audio file it’s useless.I have to return it.

This is the best American English training book I have ever seen. Combination of kindle and streaming music (at iPad) is very useful. As some reviewers reported, I faced a technical glitch that kept me from streaming/downloading audio. But Barrons fixed the issue immediately after my contacting the customer center.

Excellent book and mp3 rec download, a little triqui to download the files (for security reason very understand), mouth movement very good, because is key in English pronunciation. I wide recommend, I tried before with other, but I didn't get good results.