There are many reasons people want to work on their accent.
The primary reason to work on reducing your accent is to improve social and professional communication.
You might fall under the category of being frustrated by not being understood. You are also probably frustrated having to repeat yourself. You may even want to rush and avoid social situations.
Here are a few questions you might have.
- What is an accent?
- How do accents affect communication?
- Can I change my accent?
- What can I expect from a speech-language pathologist?
Be realistic. You don't want to give up your entire accent, which makes "who you are".
But it is important to improve your understandability so other don't have to work so hard to understand you.
There are some key things to work on which will improve your speech intelligibility greatly.
Here are some options and pointers:
1. SmartPalate system at home and with a trained Speech therapist will help with visual feedback.
check www.completespeech.com, and browse my blog.
2. Working on vowels- but not all the vowels, just the ones that get in the way.
3. Work on consonants- but not all consonants, just the ones that get in the way.
4. There are many accent modification demensions to focus on, and supra segmentals are a few important things to work on.
5. Then work through a linguistic system (heirarchy). This will help you to maintain and generalize your skills across situations and people.
Remember most adults have habitualized their speech (accent), but with hardwork and right practice, you can help your muscles to develop new muscle memory. The cognitive piece is the easy part, the motor memory is the hard part, because it takes practice and time.
If you are interested please contact Ann Dorais at 801-372-4383, or email; adorais159@gmail.com