We continue our series of recommended sequence for American English consonants and vowels. For practice this is Number 2.

Deliberately practice with this video with the intention of getting better. Don’t do this practice in a mindless manner. Just a couple of minutes.

This SECOND speech tip is our chosen one for systematic learning. It will help the muscle memory in your brain remember the four English consonants that are quick and have NO voice as a group (P, T, K, Ch).

Here’s the English speech sound K (often written as C) and the consonant sound for T.

In American English speech, speech sounds K and T have a loud puff of air.

Deliberately practice this word loudly, especially the consonants.

Deliberately make portions of your tongue stiff and tense— the back of your tongue stiff and tense for the consonant spelled c and pronounced K, and the front tip of your tongue tense and hard for the consonant T.

You get instruction for the American English short vowel A in this speech tutorial. That’s probably the most frequent error for vowels for nonnative-born speakers.