Dr Duncan Markham answers common questions…
Understanding the difference
Accent modification is an increasingly common term which is felt to be less judgemental, and accent neutralisation is another term that is popular with some accent coaches.
A degree in speech pathology involves basic training over one to three years to correct defects resulting from developmental, neurological, or psychological problems, and in fact most speech therapists have never even learnt how to solve those problems during their studies (they learn afterwards, on the job).
An accent is not a defect to be corrected, and does not need “diagnosis” and “treatment”! The only speech therapists I have ever met with even moderate knowledge of phonetic and phonological systems in languages, the acoustics of speech, language structures, cultural behaviours and the subtleties of accents and pronunciation have been a few university-level researchers.
A good teacher, trainer, or coach should be able to help their clients without locking themselves into an arbitrary conceptual framework (or a meaningless marketing label). The “Ear & Speak Method” is just excellent knowledge, careful analysis and insight, and good teaching. We’ve studied scores of language learners, taught over a thousand university students, and trained hundreds of clients. Read about our experience and expertise.
I speak English, German and Swedish fluently. I also speak a little French, Danish, Spanish, European Portuguese and Italian. I can pronounce with reasonable accuracy Japanese, Mandarin, Norwegian, Finnish, Russian, Bahasa Melayu, Bahasa Indonesia, Icelandic, Greek, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch and Afrikaans, and have knowledge of the pronunciation patterns of many languages including Korean, Cantonese, Hokkien, Tagalog, Hindi/Urdu, Singhalese, Malayalam, Farsi, Arabic, Croatian, Czech, Polish, Hungarian, Hebrew, Turkish, Vietnamese and a few more. See my webpage about how popular foreign names and words should be pronounced.
Perhaps you’ve seen lots of other providers who have “how to lose my Chinese accent” pages and that sort of thing. There are so many of these, copied from one site to another, repeating the same things. There are also lots of YouTube videos, repeating the same things. If those tips are so obvious and simple, then almost no-one would have an accent! Ear & Speak is focused on serious, face-to-face training and results.
Practicalities
We do occasionally provide group training about basic principles of good communication, and some tailored courses for businesses, covering a range of skills.
Some clients with just a few very specific issues to address might attend fewer appointments. Some clients with many difficult issues to address might have training for more than 20 sessions. Every client has different needs, goals and abilities.
New clients are required to prepay their first appointment, but this is still mostly refundable if you need to cancel with good notice. All other appointments can be paid on the day or in advance.
We do have audio and video materials to support our clients when they are practising at home. We have also developed a special, narrowly focused online accent reduction course, because we do still want to help people who can’t come to face-to-face training.
Concerns
Most of the Prime Ministers of Australia in the last 40 years have sounded either typically Australian (“general Australian English”, in linguistic terms) or very Australian (“broad”), with the exception of Malcolm Turnbull and Malcolm Fraser (1975-1983) (but no, changing your name to Malcolm isn’t the path to speaking like you have education and privilege).
The two politicians most criticised for their Australian English have been, notably, women. Julia Gillard was picked on mercilessly, even though her speech was no more strongly Australian than people like Tony Abbott or John Howard… but she was a woman, and so the prejudice was higher (unfair and too often the case).
So… If your Australian English is actually affecting your life in some way, then perhaps elocution lessons can help (note that changing your native accent is often uncomfortable and difficult). In many cases, if only one or two people are reacting negatively to your speech, tell them to concentrate on your message or [censored 😉 ].
In answer to the question, I would say the same thing as for the question above about Australian English: If your flavour of English is actually affecting your life in some way, then perhaps elocution lessons can help. In many cases, if only one or two people are reacting negatively to your speech, tell them to concentrate on your message or go back to watching Skippy 😉 .
If you’re unsure, just contact us for a thoughtful discussion of whether training might be useful for you.
It isn’t desirable to intervene in a child’s development unless the situation is causing the child problems (e.g being bullied, or having trouble being understood). Unnecessary training can affect self-confidence/esteem and in the end do more damage than good.
Nonetheless, there might be unusual situations where a child has a strong accent after many years in Australia, which could indicate broader learning problems or social issues that need to be addressed.
Parents can minimise the risk that their child’s English development is below average or different from their peers by making sure that at least one parent speaks to the child in English all the time. (The second parent could continue speaking their other language in order to promote good bilingualism.)
If you’re unsure, just contact us for a thoughtful discussion of whether training might be useful for you.
Every client can achieve at least some progress toward their goals.
Accent training doesn’t require you to sound exactly like any particular dialect, but the clarity of your speech will always depend on how big the difference is between your accent and the accent of the person listening to you. So, most clients will be given advice about how to speak in a way that works well enough for their audience, and if a client actually wants to sound local, then training will focus on authentic local sounds.
Training
Fine-tuning pronunciation or speech habits is of course quicker than addressing more serious problems in communication skills or accent modification.
Sometimes we’ll work on one thing for a whole hour, but often we’ll be mixing the issues and activities in order to keep you on your toes and maximise the effectiveness of training.
There’s a lot of conversation sometimes, because you need to be able to make changes in normal communication, and luckily for our clients, we can engage you in conversation about almost anything. We get very good feedback from clients about improving their skills in this area.