I am a native Russian speaker and back in 2004, my American husband could not understand me because my accent was rather strong. After two years of elocution lessons with Linda James, my speech became clear and I wanted to help people like myself so together with Linda we wrote a book Get Rid of your Accent. In this blog post, I will tell how native Russians can soften their accents.

I recommend that you start with long vowels. In Russian, all vowel sounds have the same length, they are shorter than English long vowels, and so Russians have a tendency to shorten long English vowels. As a result, the speech may sound clipped and even a bit harsh.

Secondly, work on short vowels. Russian vowel sounds are closer to English long vowels and have slightly different speech organ positions which makes them rather hard to master.

Thirdly, think about the higher position of the tip tongue for the /t, d. l, n/ sounds.

Practise /r/ sound as in ”rat”. The difference between the English and Russian /r/ sounds is that Russians vibrate the tongue and English keep the tongue still thus making a much softer sound.

We recommend that you download the video course Get Rid of your Accent Part One to see how the sounds are created. Then download the apps Elocution Lessons and Get Rid of your Accent to practise the sounds in words, phrases, sentences and verses.

After you have mastered the sounds, work on connected speech patterns and intonation with the video course Get Rid of your Accent Part Two and the app Fluent English Speech.

The most successful of students book their individual speech analysis and book elocution lessons to get the results effectively and quickly.

Accent reduction blog