At the beginning of every new accent reduction group I go around the class and ask everyone what is motivating them to push their English skills to the ultimate level. Here is Julie’s answer.
“Hi I’m Julie, I’m from Vietnam, and I’m a project coordinator. The reason I’m here today is mostly because of my job. This is the second week in my job. In my old job I worked with a Chinese company so most of the people I worked with speak like me, so I didn’t feel like I stick out. But in this new company most of them are Australian and the ones who are not Australian speak very good English. You can tell that their accent isn’t Australian but you can’t tell where they are from. So they speak very good English.
I want career progress and i feel like having an accent makes you look less professional. Sometimes when I pronounce something wrong it sounds funny so people notice less about what you are trying to say and more about how you say it. It just makes your presentation a bit funny.
I just want to speak more correctly clearly and more natural.”