Accent and voice

The main issues that our clients have are:

  1. A strong regional or foreign accent

  2. Weak voice

  3. Rushed speech

To neutralise a regional or foreign accent we recommend doing an individual speech analysis and work on Received Pronunciation - a neutral British accent. After the speech analysis, we can tell how many lessons a student might need to neutralise their accent. Accent work involves working on pure English vowels and diphthongs as well as consonants to make articulation sharp and crisp. We have three apps that help with that:
‎Get Rid of your Accent UK1, ‎‎Business English Speech, Elocution Lessons.

Accent reduction tips

  1. Identify English sounds that are difficult to pronounce for you and your nationality. For example /w/ sound does not exist in French and French substitute it with /v/ sound.

  2. Learn the placement of the tongue lips and jaw for sounds you need to practice

  3. Use the mirror to control the correct place your tongue and jaw for a particular sound

  4. Listen to the model pronunciation, copy it, then record yourself and compare your speech with the model. Do three repetitions of one exercise

    The main features of a weak voice are bad articulation, lack of voice power and high voice pitch. Students can master their voice with the app Power, Pitch, Pace, Pause. To enhance voice power we recommend breathing exercises.

    This app also helps with rushed speech.
    There can be a number of reasons to speak fast. I will focus on the two obvious:

    1. Feeling nervous. To overcome nervousness, we recommend that you take a couple of nice deep breaths to release the tension.

    2. Fast brain 

    A fast brain is something people are born with, you cannot change it.

    One may ask: can I learn to slow down and overcome my fast brain that forces me to speak fast?

    There is a simple yet very effective exercise that can help you to slow down:

    1. When you speak, try to separate each idea of thought by using pauses. Count 1, 2, 3 in your head after each idea and allow yourself to breathe and relax. Don't link all ideas; don't deliver them all in one breath.

    2. In a conversation with another person, make a pause after each question, do not jump on the answer straight away.

    3. Read out loud using the punctuation. In your head, count 1,2,3 in place of a full stop, and count 1 in place of a comma. Make even longer pauses between paragraphs.

For best results, we recommend one online or in-person lesson a week and working individually with the apps for 10-15 minutes a day.

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