Do you want to improve the way your foreign employees communicate with your team? Whether they are internal or client facing, a heavy accent can be an impediment to productivity and team morale.
Group Coaching
Our system works best one-on-one. However, we can get the same results even when coaching small groups. In fact, because of the group interaction, students can sometimes get better results than working alone with our coaches.
Executive Coaching
We also understand executives’ needs to be a little more discrete when working with an accent reduction coach. So, if you need private lessons, these can be arranged.
Our curriculum and process
Our accent reduction system works in a holistic way. Lessons incorporate every element of the system, because they all flow into and support one another. Every lesson is 100% interactive. Our system is not about lecturing or theory.
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Why learn to speak like a native English speaker?
The truth is I don’t want to teach you to speak with a native English accent. I want to teach you to speak EASILY and EFFORTLESSLY. You have to ask yourself, why do native accents evolve? There are many many variations of native English accents. There is Australian, American, English, Irish, Canadian, and dozens of regional accents in every English speaking country! But they all evolved to deliver the English language in the most effortless way possible. That’s how speaking should be for you.
Speaking with a native English accent is really hard!
Every student will tell me sooner or later that speaking in the way I am instructing them is really hard. My response is always the same: The way you speak English normally is very hard! You have to make so much effort just to pronounce all the words and you speak slowly and your mouth gets tired and still people don’t understand you! I’m telling you how to speak this language in the easiest way possible, with the minimum effort and still be understood clearly.
So what is a native English accent?
A native English accent is characterised by very soft consonants. Consonants are the sounds we make when the lips come together for /p/ /b/, when the teeth touch the lips for the /f/ /v/ and when the tongue touches the inside of the mouth for /n/ /l/ /t/ /d/ /k/ etc. The consonants are so soft that often you can’t hear them because you are expecting them to be stronger, and sometimes you can’t hear them because they are not even there. Everytime you struggle to understand a native English speaker it’s because they are speaking with very soft or completely missing consonants.
Let it flow
Why are the consonants so soft? Another characteristic of native English accents is the breath. In English the breath is always flowing. Because consonants are produced by lips, teeth and tongue making contact, they restrict the flow of breath. When the breath is blocked it cuts the flow of words and syllables. Let it flow let it flow let it flow. When breath and voice is flowing the stress pattern and intonation pattern of English language will start to become easier to imitate too.
What do you want to express?
We do not only communicate through words. We communicate through stress pattern and intonation too. Language is a multi-dimensional system and if you ignore the stress pattern and intonation then it’s like singing in only one note or having a powerful computer and only using it to browse the internet. When you free your voice and let it flow you can start to learn the other dimensions of communication too.
How does the course work?
The course is structured to build your ability to produce the essential aspects of native English accents. One by one, you will learn these aspects, adding them together to produce more and more complex and effortless sentences. You will do this by listening and imitating special words and phrases and learning the logical system of sounds to communicate anything you want. You will then practice these sounds using a visual card game to connect your new auditory memory with your visual memory. You will be given audio files to use at home, on your way to work, in the gym, or even while trying to sleep at night so you can practice these aspects of effortless speech and build them into lifelong habits. In the class you will also train your ear and with songs, deliver speeches, and transcribe and imitate film and television.
Why you find it so hard to change your accent
You learnt English mainly through reading and writing and talking to other learners. This means you developed a strong visual memory of the language and just pronounce the words how they are spelt or how your own language would pronounce those letters. But English is not a phonetic language. This means you cannot learn to speak it from reading and writing. You have to learn it from listening. Your auditory memory is weak. On this course you will develop your auditory memory, like building a muscle in the gym. With this muscle you will be able to hear the language rather than see it. When you can really hear it, and can rely on your auditory memory then you will slowly change the way you speak. Eventually when you are searching for a word, you will hear it in your head instead of see it.
By the end of the course
By the end of this course you will have learnt all the essential features of the native English accent and more importantly how to speak effortlessly. You have decades of speaking English incorrectly, so it will take time to build new speech habits and use them without thinking. But with your new listening skills and hours of 1-1 correction and practice that you received on this course, your new way of speaking will evolve naturally just as all native English accents did in all the countries and regions of the world.
Enjoy the journey,