By Intonations

It depends on the skills you perform the best. Some people like writing, but not speaking, i.e. great writers but poor conversational counterparts. Some like speaking but cannot write a single word. To become a "competent non-native speaker" you have to balance both skills, but far beyond a...

Formally speaking, no. Your voice does not change because every one of us has an innate and unique pattern. You can cheat human ears, but not voice-recognition instruments. Anyway, you may (as a matter of fact SHOULD) change your intonation and start using sounds not common in your mother...

First of all, "ass" refers to a donkey in BrE, but in AmE and Canada, is a taboo word and may be offensive. In my humble opinion, care must be taken with questions of this type; although I admitedly think these words should be discussed so that learners are aware of them. Of course, a...

An alliteration is when there are more than two or three words in a sentence starting with the same sound e.g.: THis THin THing THat THe man used to eat with is a fork. My Mother's Maiden name is Smith. Peter Piper Picked Pickled Peppers... ... A iambic is a special intonation in a line of a...

Hello, Alek. English is a second language to me, the pronunciation of which I learnt by (initially) trying to immitate as closely as possible that of a native speaker. I would tape about a minute of news programmes (such as the World Service of the BBC) and play the tape again and again until I...

Emphasis perhaps? Check this: A: Marconi invented the telephone. B: No. Bell was the man who invented the telephone. A: Oh, okay. So Bell is the man who invented the phone. I think the emphasis lies on the telephone when you say "Bell was the man who invented the phone". If you choose...

To negate is to answer in the negative, to deny and can be expressed in different ways: - by negating the verb: He did not pay. - by negating the subject: Noone paid. - by negating the object: He paid nothing. a) You can negate e.g. by using - adverbs: not, never, nowhere, noway,...

Try saying: Would you please open the door? and Would you open the door please? Now tell me which one sounds better. It's all about intonation. Believe me, it isn't easy making the first example not sound like an order!

But it was a great excuse to ask for tea, that's why we run these forums after all. Yep, i noticed that there's a general new accent for native English speakers, a sort of "non-descript" version as you describe. Non-regional, non-specific, relatively well pronounced with modern intonations but...

I wonder what they would have said if they had studied English in the States! Learning Spanish is a completely different matter. Phonetically speaking, Spanish is quite an easy language to learn as it is written in almost the same way as it is pronounced. However, you would definitely have...