3 Simple Tips to Dramatically Improve Your Accent in English
So, you have an accent?
Let me guess. You learned English after the age of 12 or 13?
I know what you are thinking. Can I read minds?
Nope.
But I CAN read scientific journals. And they say that the age of puberty, which is approximately 12 or 13 years old, is a “critical period” when learning a language.
In fact, an entire hypothesis was built on the critical period, which assumes that learning a language after this period will almost always result in a non-native accent. Linguists, like me, call this the “critical period hypothesis” (Penfield & Roberts, 1959; Lenneberg, 1967).
Why do kids get so lucky when adults get the short end of the stick?
Because pronunciation relies on neuromuscular function, and adults are simply past the age of learning new ones.
You know when people say, “my biological clock is ticking”? That expression should really be about language learning!
So, there is bad news and good news, folks.
The bad news is that, in truth, there is only one way to achieve a native accent. Take a ride in a time machine back to a time before you even knew what acne was. To a time sponsored by Osh Kosh B’gosh.
Timewarp to before your critical period. Now learn English.
If only it were that easy, right?
The good news is that there are clear and well-defined strategies that can help non-native speakers to improve their oral comprehensibility without having to learn the dreaded international phonetic alphabet (phew!). Side note: the international phonetic alphabet is about as international and valuable as is the American penny.
They all have to do with a little something called prosody.
Prosody is when people say, “it’s not what you say but how you say it”.
It is in the loudness of a yell and in the silence of a pause. It is in the words you stress. It is rhythm. It is pitch. It is essentially an Eminem album.
After over 20 years of teaching university English to international students, I have come to the conclusion that some aspects of pronunciation improvement bring far more success than others.
Here are 3 functions of prosody that I guarantee will make a huge improvement in your accent:
1. Syllable Stress
A stressed syllable has a longer, louder, and higher sound than unstressed syllables, such as in the word, ‘in-for-MA-tion’.
Stressing the wrong syllable is pretty confusing for the listener.
For example, “my boyfriend gave me a pre-SENT for my birthday”.
For words that are both nouns and verbs in English, we often stress the first syllable for a verb form (e.g. ‘PRÉ- sent’) and the second syllable for a noun form.
By stressing the second syllable in ‘pre-SENT’, the listener is almost questioning if you got a presentation for your birthday!
Similarly, miscounting syllables also causes potential miscommunications.
I once had a student who couldn’t nail the word, ‘convenience’. Whereas I carefully assign this word 3 syllables (ie. ‘con-ven-ience’), my student overgenerously assigned it 5 syllables (ie. ‘con-ven-i-en-see’). Even with contextual clues, I was lost. “My city has con-ven-i-en-see”. What?
2. Stress Timing
There are two types of languages in the world: syllable-timed and stress-timed.
Syllable-timed languages assign equal time and loudness to each syllable in the word or sentence. Stress-timed languages focus time and loudness on syllables and words with important meanings.
Japanese is syllable-timed. Consider the Japanese translation of ‘how are you?’: ‘o gen ki des u ka?’. Each Japanese syllable is said using balanced time and weight.
English is stress-timed. Even in a simple phrase like ‘how are you?’, the ‘how are’ is often minimized and the ‘YOU’ generally takes center stage. Alternatively, for emphasis, the ‘ARE’ can star the show, leaving the ‘how’ and ‘you’ backstage. “How ARE you?”
In stress-timed languages, usually content words such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives are stressed while articles, prepositions, and conjunctions are unstressed.
Now, your first language will determine the type of timing you naturally lend to other learned languages.
So, if your first language is syllable-stressed, you may sound like a robot when you first learn English!
Some languages, such as Arabic, have similar stress-timing to English, so often (but not always) my Arabic-speaking students have a more naturally sounding speaking ability.
3. Intonation
Intonation is the song of a language. It is a pitch that we use to show attitudes and emotions. It is often subtle and always beautiful.
You may have never thought about this, but we tend to lower our pitch at the end of a sentence. For example, say “I bought an ice cream”. If you are like me, your voice gets lower at the end of the word, ‘cream’.
After a low pitch, after the end of a sentence or thought group, we expect a short pause. These subconscious expectations make it easier for us to follow the speaker. In the absence of such changes in pitch, it becomes harder work to listen and we may just drift off in the process.
What’s more, we tend to raise our pitch to indicate that we are not finished with our thought. Take for example, “I bought an ice cream, a brownie, and a soda.”. When I say this, my voice gets higher at the end of the word, ‘cream’ and ‘brownie’ to indicate that I am not finished with my list.
This is a prime strategy that I teach my students to hold the floor during debates or discussions during lectures. Everyone wants to get a word in edgewise, but no one is so brazen to take the conch away from a person after raising his/her intonation.
What about consonants and vowel sounds, you say?
Research has shown that discrete phonetic sounds make less of a difference in intelligibility than we once thought.
Even if you say, “I hope to take a cruise ‘sheep’ this vacation”, most people will interpret ‘sheep’ as ‘ship’ due to the context of the sentence.
Only in very unique (and often hilarious) situations would the listener be unable to distinguish from context ‘beach’ from ‘b*tch” as an example.
Key Takeaways
Because of the critical period hypothesis, the most recommended and realistic pronunciation goal for an adult non-native speaker is to improve comprehensibility and intelligibility- not to sound exactly like a native speaker.
The most effective way to do this is to focus on improving prosody rather than discrete consonant and vowel sounds. Try to focus on syllable stress, stress-timing, and intonation to get that natural-sounding feel when you are speaking.
Note to the reader: This is my second blog post ever! I am brand new to Medium and if you like what you see, it would pull my heartstrings if you follow me or clap at my article. I will be sure to follow you back. :)
And….if you agree or disagree with my tips, I would love to hear about it. Leave me a comment below and I will be sure to reply.
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