WELCOME!

Ear & Speak was created by me, Dr Duncan Markham, in 2002, after many years of international teaching and research. As Principal Consultant of the business I am responsible for most of the core activities.

I provide services to individuals and businesses in many areas, helping people improve their language skills and self-confidence. I also have trusted colleagues who sometimes help my clients in certain language skills.

My areas of expertise are talent and aptitude in language learning, and the characteristics of real-life spoken communication. I have many years’ experience teaching phonetics (the science of the sounds of speech), and researching the nature of accents and accent change. I speak German and Swedish to a very high standard, and have some knowledge of a large number of other languages, including Mandarin, Russian, Japanese, French, Portuguese and Spanish.

I’m an Associate of The Presentation Group, which provides a range of communication training services, and I’m Senior Communication Consultant for New Careers Australia. I have held training seminars on behalf of the Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators (AUSIT), and I participate in public debate about the English language.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me to discuss your needs. If I’m unable to help you, then I might know other people in speech and language training who could.

A little more about me: I have a PhD(Filosofie doctor) in psycholinguistics and phonetics from Lund University, Sweden, and a BA(Hons) in Germanic languages and linguistics from the Australian National University. Before establishing Ear & Speak in 2002, I was a full time researcher at University College London, working on the intelligibility of different people’s voices, and how voices can be enhanced to improve intelligibility. I have previously held a position as Lecturer in Linguistics at Deakin University, Melbourne, where I established a speech analysis laboratory.