5 Stages To Improve English Accent As An Adult
Well, my English sucks
If you are new here, brace yourself for some English accents and grammar errors that cannot be stopped by Grammarly. (No, Grammarly is great. Just not as great as my English problems. đ« )
Before I turned 25, all my English learning was driven by college entrance exams which covered only English writing. Itâs nice to understand and speak English natively. But, as you know, in real life, nice-to-have things donât happen⊠If they do, they usually donât persist. Only must-have things happen. So, no, speaking English natively did NOT happen.
Wait, what happened at age 25?
I got admitted to a Ph.D. program in the USA. So English is not (just) for exams anymore. I need English to understand this foreign environment and carve something out for myself. Most importantly, I need it to connect with others. I was lonely as hell.
I felt inferior because of my English.
As to how I learned English in my first 25 years, I bought a bunch of English learning books, attended English workshops, and collected over 20k new words. Of course, I also abused the privilege of watching YouTube when I came to the US. (YouTube is not available in China).
Like someone who signed up for CrossFit but never showed up after two days of going, my English learning is inconsistent, to say the least. I remember this clearly: when I accidentally deleted the Google Sheet that has those 20k words and expressions that I spent more than a year collecting, instead of feeling panic because of the loss, I felt a slight relief. ÂŻ\_(ă)_/ÂŻ
It was pretty clear that whatever I was doing to improve my English wasnât engaging enough for me to stay motivated. However, as an overly educated Asian female, I also found my way and didnât care enough to make a change. After all, peers and supervisors are not allowed to disrespect me or laugh at me during my presentations or job interviews. The problem is, I do.
I got away with my terrible English for decades.
In short, I got away with my terrible English by earning a graduate degree and working hard in every other aspect of life.
However, this compensating strategy stopped working when I started my YouTube channel. More actually, when I decided to speak English on this channel.
Why did I make that decision? Mostly because I believe in the power of media, and I am a masochist. [1]
Now itâs time for the payback.
Pretending to have a conversation in front of the camera with no one on the other side turned up the dials for all the critical judgments about my English instantly. Grammar and pronunciation issues that I got away with in the past to are now put under a magnifying glass. A simple, straightforward sentence became heavy. Does my English even make sense? What am I really trying to convey here? I didnât know I was (am) such a terrible communicator. With all the overthinking taking up my bandwidth, the coherency and vibrancy of my English speaking started to fall apart. I donât feel connected to my speaking as I would when I am talking to a friend. Finally, I got direct feedback from my viewers, saying that my English accent made it hard to understand my content.
I decided to invest in my English speaking. I hired an accent trainer and spent 1â2 hours every day working on my English again. However, after the first month of the honeymoon phase, I started feeling discouraged. After all, I can do so many other things in those 2 hours. Why EnglishâŠ
Unlearning is harder than learning.
This discouragement and my doubt about the waste of time just sat there for several weeks. Until one day, I had this idea:
âIf I have to go through this suffering anyway, wouldnât it be nice to know how long it will last? This way, I wonât even waste my energy fighting it. I will just wait for the time to comeâ.
This idea also brings another idea to light.
It wasnât until then I thought that learning English, especially speaking natively with culturally rich expressions, would take a lifetime. This is still somewhat true because there is no upper limit to a craft. However, I started stumbling upon people who picked up English speaking in only a few years; to the level that they canât be differentiated from non-native speakers. Maybe they have a better environment, maybe they are born with more talent, or maybe they got a knack for English. They proved that there must be a way. And it is possible to get there in years, not decades.
It takes years, not decades.
So, I searched for a timeline and a framework for accent improvement. During this process, I discovered the idea of âFive Phases of Accent Training,â as explained by Rachel. From my experience with the GRE and LeetCode, this frustrating English accent training process suddenly made sense.
As adults, we learn things to know, like grammar and vocabulary. They are concrete, and we can share them. However, the accent problem is less about âknowingâ and more about âtrainingâ; it's like going to the gym or practicing sports. There is a very limited amount of knowledge you need to understand. The difference is made in how you train.
Itâs called accent training, not accent learning.
These 5 phases of accent training were discovered when Rachel was reading a book on how to learn about potty training for her son. Not sure if itâs this book, but itâs pretty cute.
Phase 1 â Unawareness
A newborn baby doesnât recognize peeing or pooping in their bed as bad. They are unaware of it. This is why we have diapers.
As for English pronunciation, this is when weâve never known about the sounds of American English or what we were doing wrong. We learned English, but weâve never specifically studied pronunciation.
As in my experience with English learning, I wasnât paying much attention to how what my English sounded like. First, I had barely spoken. When I did, I didnât have the bandwidth to care about my accent. Speaking itself was hard enough.
Phase 2 â Past Awareness
As the baby moves out of diapers, he has to start noticing something about his body that he hadnât paid attention to before. They will announce they peed only after it had happened because the two-year-old is still understanding whatâs happening.
In English accent training, this is when adult students start noticing the way they sound that we havenât necessarily paid attention to before or even known how to pay attention to. In this stage, we only realize our pronunciation problems after the sentence is out.
Since you started noticing more about your accent problem, it can be disappointing, but it is a necessary step in this process. This has not been established as a habit yet.
Phase 3 â Present Awareness
In this stage, our awareness becomes quicker and sharper. We can detect our speaking issue right when itâs happening. In potty training, this is when your kid can tell âhe is peeing,â not after he peed.
Compared to the last phase, you are in the present, not the past. You notice it as you do it.
Phase 4 â Future Awareness
In this phase, you think about it before it happens. This is the phase, thankfully, where your kid can say: âI need to pee. Iâm going to pee.â This is much easier to deal with than âI peed or Iâm peeingâ.
Phase 5 â Habit
This is when speaking with the correct accent doesnât take extra effort anymore. It happens naturally without you paying attention to it. As for your kid, he doesnât tell you about peeing anymore. It became part of normal life.
Most of us are stuck in phase 2
Most adults are in phase 2, and we still have another 3 phases to go through. We know we are doing something wrong because we learned and noticed it. The problem is we are still constantly doing it wrong in conversation, even though we notice it. We canât think of what to say and how to say it simultaneously. Therefore, we tend to get stuck in phase 2. The âpast phase.â We notice it after weâve already made a mistake.
That can be very frustrating.
This is where some of us want to give up. Itâs our habit, and we donât see how we can ever change it. How can we ever think of two things at once? It felt like we have to give up everything else in our busy lives to improve our accents. I agree. That doesnât sound like an amazing offer.
However, there is a happy path.
If you identify this âfrustrationâ as your âprogressâ in developing your awareness of the correct accent, it will become a game you want to play rather than a goal to conquer. This means working on your accent can give you energy rather than drain it.
In phase 2, we started the training. We do the repetitions to retrain our muscles. How do we bridge our practice time to speaking in a real-time conversation?
The answer is simple: just more training. With more training and time, youâll no longer need to think about it. Like how we translated our native language into English when we first started speaking, that process eventually disappeared.
SpeakBit
Phase 2 is the hardest step. You not only need to learn about the basic phonemes, but you also need to identify your biggest accent issues and track your common words to train yourself effectively. This process can be tedious, so we are building a speech training app - SpeakBit. It tracks your daily speech in the background and provides feedback based on the sentences you said yesterday. We want to help you speak English with certainty and authenticity. The first version of SpeakBit will be out in February this year. You can check our latest progress and sign up for our newsletter here.
This article is about English accent training. But donât the five phases apply to everything else you are working on? Donât let the initial frustration stop you. Focus on the practice, and you will get where you want to be.
Looking forward to talking to you!
Moon
