Greetings!!

I am Andre from Republic of Korea. I am hoping to hear from people who knows well about English pronunciations. I hope to adjust my English pronunciation to give good and friendly impressions to foreigners in my country, and to give intellectual and professional(formal) presentations to introduce my country and its history, culture and modern IT technology to them from time to time.

Also, I thought I could provide teachers how Korean accents could be improved by certain suggestions: as an experiment. If my intention does not match with the characteristics of this forum, I will certainly take this posting, but please do me a favor of recommending a forum where I can get help. Thanks!

First, below is my audio file reading the description of one of my dictionaries.

http://audio.xanga.com/withjack11/82d7a90884/audio.html

Any comments would be very helpful for my experiment. Such as my 'V' pronunciation is not stressed enough, or the tone of the voice is too constant.

Respectfully,

Hi! Thank you very much for the quick reply!

Your correction gave me very valuable discovery. I had expected that the corrections would be mainly 'R' or 'F' from 'of' because they are two of things that many of Koreans often make mistakes, but I did not think my 'J' sound is hard to understand. I must now practice on that one. ; )

And I agree with your second correction because it has been actually my biggest concern how I can correct my syllable emphasis. Even if I pronounce it right, people sometimes ask me back to repeat it, which is the case I get baffled and start to stutter: disappointing because I have no idea what's wrong with my English at that moment. I had been trying to deal with it by looking up the accents of each word. However, I do not feel that the way I am practicing is right one to correct it. I am pretty sure there are some fundamental formula which applies to not all but most of cases. [To all: Does anyone know any method of getting used to right syllable emphasis? Any help will be appreciated.]

Again, thanks for the corrections 'nona the brit' By the way, your photo is awesome. Do you like sky-diving? It looks scary, but I want to try someday.

Regards,

The F's are pretty good. Most of the Rs are ok, one or two a bit wobbly, but no more than some native speakers (did you know that some native speakers have a problem with this sound too?).

I'd say 'illustrations' (the first time) is the word with the most obvious emphasis problem. You are getting the majority of emphasis right.

I'm a bit reluctant to go into too much detail as I don't speak American English, and my answers might be 'contaminated' by my British English thinking, but welcome to the forum.

This: Post:205383 is a thread you might find useful.