American Accent Training---A Review

I am writing this post specifically for my Brazilian friend , but I am sure that it will be of interest to other readers of this blog as well.
When we teach people to read in English, we teach them to break words up into small pieces called syllables. A syllable is a group of letters which must contain a vowel(a,e,i,o,u, or y) or a VOWEL SOUND. There is a Channel 7 Television News reporter whose last name is "Przbyl" Her name has two syllables: "Prz"--"byl" and is pronounced "Priz"--"bul". The first syllable of her name(Prz) has no vowel in it, but does have a vowel sound(the short "i" sound). In the second syllable of her name, the "y" is considered a vowel because it sounds like a vowel.
While it is important to teach non-English speakers to pronounce syllables in words, we also have to teach them at some point that we SCRUNCH many words.....Scrunch?...That is a slang word. I don't expect that you know what it means. Let me explain what scrunching is.
Consider the word "history". "h--i--s--t--o--r--y. The word has 7 letters. It has 3 vowels: i, o, and y. (Many times if you count the number of vowels in a word, it will equal the number of syllables. Try it.) When we say the word "history" we leave out the middle syllable. Thus we say:
"HISS--tree"----not HISS--to--ry. Here is another example: "average", a 3 syllable word--av--er--age, is pronounced "AV--rij......When we pronounce the word we SCRUNCH it or SQUEEZE OUT the middle syllable. That is what scrunching is: squeezing out the middle syllable of words. It is not lazy speech. It is not bad pronunciation. It is simply the way we speak, and if you want to be understood by Americans, you need to speak this way too! I will give you a sampling of some scrunched words (middle syllable eliminated). This is what I suggest that you do:
1. Get yourself a tape recorder
2. Find an American who will listen to you read
these words onto the tape.
3. Put the tape aside for a week.
4. Repeat the exercise and compare the two tapes.
Here is your sample list:
1. History-----------------------------HISS--tree
2. camera-----------------------------KAMruh
3. business----------------------------BIZness
4. diaper------------------------------DIpuh
5. catholic----------------------------KATHlik
6. different----------------------------DIFFrent
7 emerald---------------------------- EMrld
8. vegetable---------------------------VEG-tuh-bul
9. comfortable------------------------K' MF.t' bl
10. chocolate--------------------------CHAWK-l't
Of course there are many more words that are "scrunched", but this is a start. One word that I left out is BROCCOLI. If you come from the three northern states of New England (Maine, New Hampshire, or Vermont) you are likely to say, "BROK-uh--lee"(This is how George Bush says it because even though he says he is a Texan, he spent a lot of time in Maine!) If you come from other parts of the United States, you "scrunch" the word and say "BROK--lee".

Try to make your tape with an American listening to you. THEN practice saying the scrunch words. If you practice saying them wrong, that is worse than no practice at all, so get the tape correct FIRST. Then go from there. -----Also, remember, Rome was not built in a day.