Seven tips to help with accent reduction

Published: 08 Nov 2019 Tagged: Accent ReductionCommunicationconversationESLlanguageSpeakablespeech and language pathologytips

Australia is a very rich country, perhaps one of the richest nations because of the impressive cultural diversity it has experiencing along the last decades. This country is assimilating beautiful traits from other countries and folks worldwide, developing its own cultural blend of gastronomy, fashion, music and many other aspects. However, its official language is the English, which is used in the majority of organisations and as a standard at educational environments. This fact sometimes concerns immigrants who might suffer from strong accents, which can lead to lowered grades at studies or even less opportunities to be hired or promoted at the corporate environment.

In order to enhance immigrants’ communication skills, accent reduction techniques might help minimise or even eliminate some linguistic traits. There are accent reduction service providers who can make it happen faster and more effectively, but simple tips can start giving you some successful achievements on your own effort:

1. Copy TV people: when watching movies, series and any other TV shows, pay attention on how these people move their mouths when speaking, and imitate them on intonation, rhythm and pronunciation.
2. Slow down your speech: while not completely fluid, try to speak calmly and try not to rush on words, even when knowing that some words should be spoken almost as one. Thus, you help the other person understand you even if you make some mistakes.
3. Keep a dictionary easily at hand: it doesn’t matter if the dictionary is a mobile app, what matters is that you don’t feel embarrassed looking for some word you don’t remember the meaning, or how to pronounce it. If possible, try to be familiarised with the phonetic alphabet, so you can understand what sounds it indicates for the searched words.
4. Keep a recording tool at hand: it could be a hand-sized notebook, a mobile app for typing, or even a sound recorder. Whenever you see a word or sentence that seems relevant or interesting, record it and try to repeat it. Show it to native speakers for them to pronounce for you or ask the meaning of that for them.
5. Special attention to how you’re finishing words: sometimes, we might forget an ‘s’, an ‘ed’ or other suffixes that can modify completely the meaning of the sentence, changing genders, quantities and tenses. Even when you see that a native speaker suppresses some of these suffixes, they have some devoicing and grammar strategies to ensure it can be understood.
6. Read aloud: you may be great just reading for yourself, but your pronunciation might not be aligned to your decoding capability. Try to read aloud a magazine, blogpost, newspaper or even product package during about 20 minutes a day. You’ll be able to hear yourself and identify some improvement points in your accent and speech.
7. Nurture patience, don’t feed the trolls: Don’t feel obligated to modify such a culturally defining trait as accent, be aware that only constant practice and focus can lead to successful outcomes. At times, you might be underestimated by other people or even yourself because of persisting accent characteristics. Don’t minimise your accomplishments so far, be certain that you will reach what you want with serenity and focused effort.

We have these seven tips for you to start practicing or improve what you’re already doing to reduce accent. In case you have other interesting strategies, don’t hesitate on sharing them with us! If you want to know more about accent reduction, feel free to contact Speakable and see how we can help you achieve your goals.