So here we are, together for our first accent modification lesson. Yes, we’ve talked over the phone, but now we’re sitting together on Zoom, pens in hand, paper in front of us. Now what?
We’ll be talking, and I’ll be listening very closely, taking lots of notes, which you’ll be welcome to see either while I’m writing or after, but I’ll be explaining everything once the assessment is done. The questions I ask will be open-ended to encourage you to talk! I’ll be asking you to repeat things you’ve said so I can fully “get” what you’re saying and, more importantly, how you’re saying it: What is your tongue doing? How much voice are you adding? I’ll be asking questions that will elicit a broad variety of speech sounds so I can get a comprehensive idea of where you are now and where we need to go with lessons. I will likely ask you the same questions repeatedly, if I’m trying to be sure I hear how you’re saying something. I’m not listening to the content of what you are saying, so please not to take offense if I later do not remember something important you shared with me! It’s nothing personal! I’m just in “assessment/hearing” mode.
One thing I’ll be doing while we’re talking is preparing a set of priority phonemes (speech sounds that can change the meaning of a word) for you to modify. This list will likely be a mix of consonants and vowels (including diphthongs), and will be personalized to your speech patterns – not just based on what your native language is. The length of that priority set will depend on how much change you wish to make: Do you want to be understood all the time? Or are you planning to eliminate your “foreign” accent entirely? It’s a good idea for you to consider this matter before our first meeting, but, of course, you can change your mind at any point along the way after we start lessons. In fact, students fairly frequently do come into training thinking they want to eliminate their accents, and then decide to work towards being understood all the time, and vise versa.
And that’s how it works! A comprehensive conversation, lots of questions and repetition. And then the first, model lesson, right after the assessment, during our first meeting. So you can get a sense of how I teach, I can get a sense of how you learn, and then we see where we go from there. I look forward to meeting with you!
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Accent Modification | Accent Reduction | English Pronunciation 