Speech therapy can be a great resource for someone who wishes to work towards accent reduction. To begin, the speech therapist will want to learn more about how the individual speaks, including the rhythm and intonation of their speech. They will provide specific sentences for the client to say aloud and will listen carefully for differences.
From there the speech therapist will be able to come up with a customized treatment plan that will target the areas of speech that pose the most problems. Specific goals will be set and worked towards with regular appointments.
Consistency is key in accent modification and requires dedication and determination from both the speech therapist and the client. A speech therapist can help to teach the mechanics of how speech sounds are formed. Understanding these building blocks of speech and language is the basis of a successful accent modification program.
A speech therapist can also help to identify the adjustments that need to be made and help identify any speech patterns that may be incorrect.
Speech therapy is also an excellent opportunity to practice conversation skills, an area that can often be challenging for those who are communicating with an accent. Building confidence in these skills is a very important part of accent modification. Languages can be intricate and complicated.
That being said, if you or someone you care about needs support with accent reduction or modification or you simply want to learn more about how online speech therapy can help, schedule your free introductory call today! What is an Accent? What Kind of Challenges can Accents Cause?
Some sounds are easier than others! How Much You Practise:. They key to changing your speech is to focus on it regularly. Practice needs to be regular. Quality courses provide their students with easily accessible resources. You need to have access to practise resources that you can use to practise with on a daily basis. People who make excellent progress are dipping into videos and audio lessons every day or at least every few days. They are practising regularly — each day — building their skills, little bit by little bit.
Your Motivation Levels :. You need to be proactive and motivated. You need to put in effort and actively listen and actively speak. Patience and persistence is the key. Of course it varies from person to person and on the 3 factors above but this is an outline anyway. So how do I know all this? From working with thousands of students over 15 years! The first week is spent identifying priority areas, understanding these areas and developing listening skills. Hearing the difference is the first step to achieving real change.
Once you can hear the differences you can start adjusting your speech. A gentle warning! In the first 2 weeks of the course I occasionally hear from a student who is frustrated because they feel like their pronunciation is getting worse! Once they develop their listening skills and practise to gain control over the new sound they are learning — they make excellent progress!
I can hear things like word stress. I can hear that my speech and tone is flatter than a native speaker. This is exciting! This awareness an essential step before being able to make any changes. With quality training and practise resources most people make very good, noticeable improvements in the first few months. Usually they have improved between around 3 priority areas. For example this might be, rate of speaking, general mouth position, word stress, sentence stress or a particular vowel or consonant sound.
As I mentioned, I often have very motivated students which is brilliant , but they want to move from area on to another area very quickly. Doing is the most important part!!! So a good, quality course will give you LOADS of opportunity to practise you new speech sounds and stress patterns. This stage focuses on self awareness, monitoring skills and practise.
This is when real change starts. Four months from starting, many of our clients find that this is when their colleagues and friends often comment that their English pronunciation has improved.
The student feels like their confidence has grown. St this stage, When someone misunderstands them and usually more confident. This is when people start to see big results after so much hard work.
This stage is when students really gain good control of their new sounds. They practise regularly to make their pronunciation of the new sounds easy and automatic. A great English Pronunciation course should give you the skills and knowledge to keep improving and levelling up your pronunciation skills well in to the future. In other words, it should empower you with the knowledge and skills to continue your improvement forever!
After your training you will know what areas to work on and how to do it! If you stay aware of your pronunciation, actively listen to your pronunciation and others you will continue to improve. The good news is you can also take a break and enjoy the confidence that comes with being easily understood and sounding more like a native english speaker.
There are no rules about when weak vowels are used in English! No matter how. Balance, Practice reading out loud the paragraph and stress the marked words. Then tape yourself reading the paragraph after you have successfully mastered it, play the recording and assess your speech.
How does it sound? You can find a longer paragraph and continue to practice. Try to repeat various phrases and sentences either in your head or aloud to imitate the English you have heard. Again, repeat this several times until you can more naturally say the intended speech. I filled her in on the article I was writing and how in the English language certain words are stressed. Give me a few more minutes. Tip 3:These two charts of the International Phonetic Alphabet — IPA vowel and diphthong sounds, and consonant phonemes can be used for individualized practice.
You can read the words aloud, then tape your voice and listen to the recording. Practice continues until you feel comfortable with the sounds and you have incorporated these into your daily speech. You can make a word list of other words that have those specific sounds and target any areas that you may need help or you are having difficulty with.
You will notice the phonetic symbols in the charts, much like the symbols in a dictionary to aid in proper pronunciation. Understanding the phonetic alphabet will help you to improve your accent and your overall English ability. Individual sounds, sound clusters, and blends connecting sounds to each other are all important parts of English to be aware of and to practice.
Here are some of the common sounds:. Tip 4: Thought groups with adequate pausing and the correct intonation are important areas to think about and incorporate in your ESL communication. Can you say both of these problems with the correct pause that is indicated by the parenthesis? Usually there is a falling pitch right before a pause so the listener can comprehend what you have said before you continue.
In the first sentence, John is talking about Harry and mentioning that he is a great guy. In the second sentence, Harry is the one talking. He is saying that John is a great guy. So you can see from this simple example, that pausing after specific thought groups depending on the what you want to say is very important in getting across the meaning of what you want to say.
For example: What are you doing? Where are you going? When does your flight leave? Why are you weeding the garden? And, who is going to the movies with you? You can also focus on developing your listening skills.
Listen for pauses, ups and downs of the English language, and the beginning words in questions… and then try to imitate this when speaking. Tip 5: Further study.
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