How can I as an American make my English accent better? (please read details)

Britons: what do you think of my English accent, & how can I make it better? Is it passable (plz read details)?

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOhap_zdUrE Please open this link, and tell me what you think. Thanks. P.S: I was improvising, so I had no clue in my head what to say.

• Answer:

  You don't sound English at all, sorry. Are you looking to get an acting job, or something? Because unless you intend to play English parts as an actor, there is no need for you to acquire an English accent. English people tend not to like people who are fake or trying to hard to impress, and will like you a lot more if you speak in your own natural accent. If you try to fake an English accent for any reason other than an acting job, people will just think you're pretentious. I've noticed that you've posted similar questions about your English accent hundreds of times, without much success. This is because asking native English speakers how to speak with an English accent won't help you much, for the following reasons: 1. Native speakers aren't usually particularly conscious of what it is that they do with their lips, tongue, throat, mouth etc that makes them sound the way they do, so are rarely very helpful in coaching others to acquire their accent. You need a dialogue coach or an elocutionist, who will be trained in coaching others. That's how most top actors learn accents - they get professional coaching from a specialist who can give them specific vocal exercises to practise. An ordinary native English speaker wouldn't be able to do that. 2. The English people on this site will all have totally different accents. A Londoner like me sounds completely different to someone from Newcastle, for instance - totally different vowel sounds and speech patterns. So everyone's idea of an English accent here would be different, in the same way that someone with a strong accent from New Orleans would give you different advice on sounding American than someone from, say, rural Maine. 3. It's impossible to give someone any sort of dialogue coaching in writing. You need to be able to hear someone and speak back to them to imitate what they do. 4. Basically, your best bet is to devote more time to practising, listening to native speakers (watch English TV programmes, watch English films, buy English audiobooks) and possibly invest in some dialogue coaching, and spend a lot less time posting hundreds of clips and questions on YouTube and Yahoo Answers, where you are unlikely to get constructive, objective or professional advice.