Reducing Your Accent—Four Areas to Consider
by: Kristen M. Gagné, Founder/Owner, Webtawks
First, I love accents — of all kinds.
I am always intrigued by those who speak English with an accent. I’m not referring to those in the US (or other English speaking countries) who speak differently based on their region. I’m referring to those who speak with an accent because English is their second language (or third, fourth or fifth).
I grew up in a small town in the US where everyone was essentially of the same ethnic group and all spoke the “same” English. It was a rare treat to meet someone who was ‘from away’ and who spoke differently than I did. It wasn’t until I moved to Montreal for university that I realized being monolingual is the exception. Everyone I met in Montreal could speak two languages, but usually three or more. And for the most part, English wasn’t everyone’s first language, so when we did speak English together, they spoke it with an accent — I was so envious! They were intriguing, worldly, and diverse and I, well, wasn’t.
Skipping ahead a few years and fully immersed in ESL teaching, I became even more fascinated with accents, but for a different reason. Some of my students wanted to reduce their accents. They would tell me that having such a strong accent made it difficult for them to find jobs, or land certain promotions; so, we started the process of deconstructing their speech to find the areas where they could improve. At first my students thought it was only a pronunciation issue. As an example, they felt if they could pronounce properly the “th” in the words, “this, these, then, there” then it would fix their accent. This is a misconception. Improving the pronunciation of certain sounds, while useful, will not affect the majority of accent issues. Instead, I’ve put together some information on four areas to improve in your speech in order to reduce your accent. As a learner, starting to recognize these on your own is helpful but working with a qualified teacher will accelerate your progress. Also, please recognize that they take time and practice to retrain your muscles and your brain to process the language differently than what is comfortable for you.
Some of these concepts may be difficult to understand. If you have any follow up questions please contact us at Webtawks and I’ll be happy to answer them.
To reduce your accent, consider these four areas:
1. Word stress: In English, words are made up of syllables. Words can contain just one syllable or a few syllables. In words with more than one, there will be one syllable that will be stressed more than the others. For example, the word “understand” has three syllables — un/der/stand. When saying this word the stress falls on the last syllable, un/der/STAND. If you stress un- or der-, the word will sound “off” and the “off” contributes to the accent.
2. Sentence/statement stress: Just as words have stress, so does the sentence or question. Here is a sample sentence,
“The student wasn’t happy that the teacher moved the test date.”
As a general rule, only words that hold meaning for the sentence are stressed. The rest of the words are spoken quicker and softer and the vowels of those words typically become “schwa” denoted with this phonetic symbol ə. Here is how I would stress the words in our example sentence,
“The STUDENT wasn’t HAPPY that the TEACHER MOVED the TEST DATE.”
Now, I’m not saying you should shout the words in bold, my suggestion is that they are said with more emphasis, meaning, they are more enunciated as compared to the unstressed words.
3. Intonation: In English, the rise and fall of your voice when you speak is known as intonation. When saying questions, it’s important that your voice rise at the end. The rise in your voice on the last word indicates to the listener that you are asking a question. In a statement, your voice needs to fall at the end. For exclamations, a higher tone is kept, but the general rules of intonation still apply.
4. Sentence Flow: The last area that contributes greatly to reducing one’s accent is learning how to say words together in a sentence—how they flow into one another. This idea of Sentence Flow, combines word/sentence stress and intonation but also pronunciation of words when combined. Many second language speakers will try to enunciate each word in a sentence fully, but even if the stress is correct and the intonation is correct the flow needs to be considered. First language English speakers tend to cut off or blend words together when speaking. This is why for those learning English it sounds very “fast” or “difficult to understand”. Let’s use the same example sentence from before.
“The student wasn’t happy that the teacher moved the test date.”
As a first language American-English speaker, I would say the sentence like this (some phonetic representation included)
“Thə STUDEN wasn HAPPY tha thə TEACHER MOVED thə TES DATE.”
You’ll notice that final “t” sound isn’t enunciated. What happens in the mouth is that the tongue moves to the location to make the “t” sound (pressed on top behind the teeth) then stops before the air is pushed through the mouth and instead the “t” sound is muffled in the throat. Try and practice it. Say the sentence a few times slowly (notice the stress indicated by the words in bold) then as you become comfortable, say it quicker and you’ll be amazed at how different you can sound.
Please keep in mind this is a VERY brief and simplified explanation of these four areas—and this isn’t the entire list. As noted earlier, while it is helpful to start noticing these four areas on your own, you’ll progress much faster with a qualified teacher in accent reduction.
If you have any other helpful suggestions, please include as a comment.
If you found this useful please share with a friend!
