Why Speech therapists WON’T change your accent

I have a client that spent thousands of dollars on a speech therapist to change her accent. She had to book seven months in advance and on her first class she was told:

“Forget about sounding like a native English speaker. It’s too late for you.”

What??! I was so mad to hear this. Just because you cannot help someone does not mean they cannot achieve their goal and that someone else can’t help them.

Speech therapists have trained for years at university to be skilled at helping people who have speech defects due to deformity, or accidents or strokes. They have learnt all the theory about the mouth, tongue and exercises about how to repair and alter sounds.

But they are not taught to change accents. In fact it seems they are taught that you CAN’T change someone’s accent.

This is rubbish. Complete Rubbish.

You can change your accent. You just need to know how to break the rules. You see the problem with speech therapists is they are taught to follow the rules, and they will teach you to follow the rules. But sounding natural like a native English speaker is all about breaking the rules.

I have spent years paying close attention to the REAL sound system that is used in native English accents and I LOVE giving this to clients. It gives them so much freedom, makes speech so EASY and gives them so much confidence and pride.

Sounding native stops being a secret magic trick that they can’t work out and when you see how it’s done you feel:

“Oh wow is that all it is?! It is so easy!”