In dialect and accent coaching, experience shows that large amounts of phonetic jargon and symbols are unnecessary.  I provide some background information here for those who are curious.

Speech is the mode of language use that involves sound.  Other modes include writing and signing by hand.

A dialect is a variety of a language that characterises a group of speakers.  Dialects can be regional or social. Everyone speaks a dialect, but some dialects are accepted as “standard”.

An accent is the way a given dialect is pronounced.  The dialect will have other characteristics (e.g. of vocabulary and grammar), but strictly the term “accent” only refers to the pronunciation features.  In common usage, however, the terms “dialect” and “accent” are often used interchangeably.

(A completely separate use of the word “accent” refers to accentuation.  When a syllable is given an accent, it's pronounced more prominently.)

There’s disagreement in scholarly research as to which should be foremost when teaching pronunciation – training the ear or training the mouth.  I find that it’s important to work both on the student’s perception and on the student’s articulation (for example with mirror work).

The sound of speech can be analysed both auditorily (by ear) and acoustically (by computer).  In auditory analysis, phoneticians often use phonetic symbols; the most widely used symbols are those of the International Phonetic Association (IPA).  I myself was a contributor to the Kiel revision of the IPA symbols.

The graphic at the top of this site shows an acoustic image of my name, known as a spectrogram.  Superimposed on the spectrogram is a transcription of my name in IPA symbols.  See the links page for Paul Meier’s excellent online audio-visual IPA charts.

A very compact introduction to vowel articulation is provided on the site of top Hollywood dialect coach Joel Goldes (see links).

My own published research includes this article on vowels in British and American dialects:
Lindsey, Geoff (1990).  “Quantity and quality in British and American vowel systems.”  In S. Ramsaran (ed.), Studies in the pronunciation of English, 106-118.  London: Routledge.