Strong Accent?

My friend Jorge is from south America. He has studied English since he was small. He knows how to put an English sentence together and has been in Canada for a few years. He understands 98% of what he hears and he can read newspaper articles though he has to look up a word now and then.
However, he finds that people often ask him to repeat himself. He thinks he knows how to pronounce most English words. "Where can I be going wrong?" he asks me. "People say I have a strong accent."
This affects his confidence so he speaks quietly and mumbles making himself even harder to understand.
Well Jorge, having a "strong accent" means that your pronunciation varies enough from the local Standard English as to sound strange or even incomprehensible.
There is nothing wrong with having an accent unless you are having trouble making yourself understood.
In my experience as a Business English consultant, I find that there are three areas in particular where speakers of English as a second language can have problems in being understood or in being perceived as having a "strong accent"

So Jorge could have problems in one or more of the following areas:

1. He may pronounce one or more sounds or phonemes used to form English words incorrectly(with a variance from local Standard English).

2. He may not have had enough exposure to English to know how to pronounce the words that are in his vocabulary. English spelling doesn't help you with pronunciation.

3. Perhaps Jorge can pronounce hundreds of words correctly in isolation but is not aware that when you combine them into sentences, they are often pronounced differently.
English is a stress-timed language and we change the pronunciation of vowels to fit the rhythm of the sentence.

The good news is that none of these problems is insurmountable and I will be making lots of entries with more information on these topics and with tips on how to improve your pronunciation.