2 Table of Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Tools for Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Chapter 1: Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Chapter 2: Introduction to Stress, Rhythm, and Intonation . . . . . 16 Chapter 3: Vowels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Chapter 4: Diphthongs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Chapter 5: Consonants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Chapter 6: Consonant Clusters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 Chapter 7: Rhythm and Intonation: Multi-Syllable Words . . . . . 145 Chapter 8: Linking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Chapter 9: Rhythm and Intonation: Stressed Words . . . . . . . 169 Chapter 10: Unstressed Words and Words that Reduce . . . . . . 179 Chapter 11: Contractions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 Chapter 12: Gonna, Wanna, Gotta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214 Chapter 13: Putting it all Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 Chapter 14: Continuing to Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 Appendix 1: Answers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 Appendix 2: Video Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 Appendix 3: Audio Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 Appendix 4: Sound Chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 This material is copyrighted by Rachel's English LLC, 2015. Please do not copy or distribute this file. 3 Introduction I’ve been creating accent reduction videos on YouTube for over six years. During that time I’ve gotten requests for a book. I always resisted because my ideas on pronunciation and how to teach it are always evolving, thanks to what I learn from teaching. I’m still not done learning. Hopefully I’ll never be! But I started to see the importance of writing a book for organizing my thoughts on pronunciation, and setting up a structure for study. Many people find a video through search and don’t have any idea how it fits into the bigger picture of