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Accent Improvement
Areas to work on to improve your English accent
Date : 07/05/2016
Author Information
Uploaded by : Philip
Uploaded on : 07/05/2016
Subject : EFL
Accent Improvement - areas to work onFirst of all, I prefer to refer to accent improvement ,
rather than accent reduction, neutralising or softening it seems more
positive. It is impossible not to have an accent we just often think that
people have an accent if they don t speak in the same way as us! You can t have no accent! The accent that many learners of English aspire to is
sometimes called Received Pronunciation (RP), Oxford English, BBC English or
Standard English. This is the pronunciation that is given in dictionaries and
learning material and it is probably the most popular and widely-understood. Increasingly
English is used internationally as a language of wider communication. For
example, one of my clients is a German engineer working on a contract for a
Swedish company but sourcing from Chinese suppliers. How do they communicate?
In English, even though it is not the first language for any of them! I could
give lots of similar examples from my own students. A Standard English accent
is the easiest for them all to understand.I don t have a standard programme for clients who want to
improve their accent I assess their needs and determine the specific areas
where work is required. Some of these areas can be fairly predictable,
depending on the person s first language, but I will assess clients
individually and devise a programme according to their needs. I usually target
first the features which can cause most misunderstandings when they speak.
Depending on the client s needs, I work on the following areas (normally all of
them need work, but some need more work than others): Individual sounds
(phonemes)Many languages do not distinguish between two similar
sounds, so we need to train students to hear the difference and then learn to
put their mouths in the correct position.For example: fit /f t/ feet /fi:t/ soot /s t/
suit
/su:t/ (You may have learnt that these are
short and long vowels that is not totally accurate they are different
vowels!) Difficult sounds: I often have to teach students to pronounce th
as these sounds don t exist in their languages. It s not hard to teach them to
do it but it s harder for them to change the habits of many years in their
everyday speech!Silent letters car
/ka:/ talk /t :k/ listen / l s n/ knowledge / n l /You will have noticed that I use the established IPA
phonemic symbols to show pronunciation. I strongly encourage students to learn
them it doesn t take long and makes pronunciation much clearer and more
logical. A great resource is the online interactive chart at:
There is also an app you can download.
Word stressIf you stress the wrong syllable, it can make you very hard
to understand. It can also change the sense of the word.e.g. COLLeague,
not coLLEAGUE EXport
(noun) exPORT (verb) Sentence stress /
intonationWe stress the important words in phrases, often to make a
contrast. Not THAT
one, the OTHer one! What do
you want to do this evening? Stressing/emphasising any one of the underlined words
changes the meaning slightly. Intonation the melody of English. You want to improve your
English, don t you? Rising intonation indicates a genuine question. You want to improve your
English, don t you? Falling intonation asks for confirmation and expects a
positive answer.Using the correct words with the wrong intonation can cause
as much misunderstanding as using the wrong words! Connected speechStrong/weak formsMany words, especially grammatical words, have a strong
form (when we say the word on its own, or emphasise it). These are the forms we
usually learn. But in normal speech we often reduce the words if they are not
so important as to need emphasising, so we use the weak form. For example: to
/tu:/ but weak form /t /: I m going to bed /..... t bed/We do this A LOT more than you might think!Contraction, Elision, Linking etc.This needs an article (or a book!) of its own but I will
deal with these features if appropriate to a client s needs.If you don t
understand any of the above, don t worry! I will explain and guide you all the
way!
This resource was uploaded by: Philip