Pronounce with Confidence

Mccune Kim is a linguist and pronunciation specialist with over fifteen years of experience teaching English pronunciation to non-native speakers across Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. She holds a Master's degree in Applied Linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles, where her research focused on second language phonology and the role of motor learning in pronunciation acquisition.

Kim began her career teaching English in Seoul, South Korea, where she first encountered the specific pronunciation challenges faced by Korean learners of English. This experience led her to develop the systematic approach that forms the foundation of this book—a method that treats pronunciation not as an abstract academic subject but as a trainable physical skill. Her approach integrates insights from phonetics, speech pathology, sports training, and music education to create a comprehensive framework suitable for learners at any level.

Over the course of her career, Kim has trained thousands of students through classroom instruction, private coaching, and corporate workshops. She has worked with professionals in technology, finance, medicine, and academia, helping them develop the clarity and confidence needed to communicate effectively in English-dominated professional environments. Her clients have included executives at multinational corporations, researchers presenting at international conferences, and university faculty teaching in English-medium programs.

Kim is the founder of ClearSpeech, a pronunciation training platform that combines video instruction, interactive exercises, and personalized feedback. She has also contributed to the development of pronunciation assessment tools used in standardized English proficiency testing. Her writing on pronunciation pedagogy has appeared in the Journal of Second Language Pronunciation and the TESOL Quarterly.

She currently divides her time between curriculum development, teacher training, and direct student coaching. When not working, she enjoys choral singing, learning new instruments, and studying the phonological systems of lesser-known languages. She is fluent in Korean, English, and Mandarin Chinese, and speaks conversational Japanese and Spanish—experiences that inform her understanding of both the challenges and the rewards of mastering pronunciation in a non-native language.

Pronounce with Confidence is her first book.