Impact English Language Training and Consulting – Professional Communication Skills - Business English Language Skills – On the web www.proesl.com
Accent Reduction and Repetition Reduction "People ask me to repeat what I say, and it seems to be happening more often. It can be frustrating sometimes. What can I do about this? I want to speak so that people understand me, and I don't want to have to speak slowly every time I say something." While there's no quick-fix solution to improving one's pronunciation and accent, these suggestions should prove to be helpful. 1. Enunciate more. This means moving your mouth and lips more to form the sounds of the words. You will notice that this requires more work, but it's necessary if people are to understand you more easily. 2. Use your throat to produce stronger vowel sounds. In other words, work more to produce stronger vowel sounds. This will help native English speakers understand you better. Vowel sounds that are short, choppy, and weak can make it difficult for native English speakers to understand you. 3. Slow down just a little bit. If you exclude elements of typical native English speaker pronunciation and make too many pronunciation errors, then native English speakers might not always understand what you say. Slowing down can help, though it is by no means a permanent solution. Your goal should be to improve in the manners in which you need to so that you can speak at a normal speed. 4. Try to anticipate which words are more important and that you feel should receive emphasis. Emphasizing words means adding more volume to them - saying them more loudly. By saying more important words more loudly, you create a contrast with the words you say at normal volume. This creates an intonation pattern - a contrast in sounds. English pronunciation is marked by a wider contrast in pitch and vocal volume range. This contrast creates intonation patterns, which are critical to good English pronunciation and the production of an accent that is more easily understood by native speakers of English. These are quick-fix suggestions, and by no means will they solve the problem. An understanding of how English intonation works, how English intonation patterns are formed, an understanding of other aspects of English pronunciation, and practice are necessary to improving one's English pronunciation and reducing one's accent. Be sure to connect, or link, words and syllables together. Vowel sounds must be stronger and somewhat elongated. Speech that is marked by short and choppy vowel sounds and whose words and syllables sound disconnected will lead to one of the following: 1. Can you say that again, please? 2. What was that? 3. What did you say? 4. Can you repeat that, please? 5. What? 6. I didn't quite get that. One more time, please. Most of the time, this has nothing to do with your volume. Slowing down will help your listener understand better. However, that's a mediocre solution to the problem. It's just a quick-fix - a temporary bandage. Your goal should be to speak at a normal speed, or even fast, and produce speech that is intelligible - speech that people easily understand speech that is clear.
© Copyright 2015 Impact English Language Training and Consulting - Do not distribute this document in any way. Do not reproduce this document or any of its content in any way. All rights to this document and the content on this document are reserved for Impact English Language Training and Consulting and Steven David Bloomberg. Impact English Language Training and Consulting Onsite
