American Accent looks very promising at the beginning. It appears to cover many features of English pronunciation and to provide multiple opportunities for practice. After going through all of the models, I found the experience to be very disorganized. At times it felt like this app was created out of a hodge podge of pre-existing materials that have been re-packaged into an app. Many modules do not even focus on the main topic of American accent or English pronunciation.
As a pronunciation trainer, I found many descriptions to be overgeneralizations. Some sections went into great detail, but then lacked common terminology in the field of teaching pronunciation (or even from other materials on accent training and even accent training for the stage that I have seen). While I had high hopes at the beginning for ample opportunities to listen and record my voice, as I went further through the app I found that recordings were rushed and I had trouble repeating the sample words or phrases before the speaker started the next word or phrase. This will surely frustrate learners who will certainly be much slower than I am at recording their voices.
With a price of $9.99, I was expecting a much more polished end product. Essentially what you get are paired down modules culled from Ann Cook’s book American Accent Training, and many of these modules were so shortened that they felt incomplete. I also felt like I never became “familiar” with the app and how it worked. The technical issues of it freezing and crashing also did not contribute to the experience. From my professional perspective I was most disappointed with the content. While I can tell that a lot of time and experience has gone into the creation of these materials, the content appears to be informed more by intuition, experience, and tricks that may have worked for some learners than by an extensive knowledge of features of English pronunciation. In summary, the materials are not pedagogically sound.
If I compare these materials to the dozens of published pronunciation textbooks I have on my shelf, this app really miss the mark through its omission of phrase stress and rhythm. Knowing which word in a phrase to highlight (last content word, contrasting information, etc.) and how to mark this word (or syllable) is crucial to intelligibility and acquiring a good American accent. And using a stress-timed rhythm is a commonly cited feature of American pronunciation (and issues with rhythm often cause problems with intelligibility). Sadly, this app omits these critical features as key topics. For an app that advertises itself in the iTunes store as allowing you to “start with the most basic intonation patterns and go through to the most advanced levels in English,” I found too many of the basic features of pronunciation or accent training missing. If you are looking for an app that will really help you with the critical features of English pronunciation and an American accent, you will need to look elsewhere.
See my full posting about this app on my blog “Today’s English in the World.”
DJ Kaiser, PhD
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