By Olga Smith
"The most difficult thing in life is to get rid of long-term habits," goes a Russian saying. Getting rid of a foreign accent requires hard work, repetition, and perseverance. The keys to success are the right teacher and the right accent reduction book and app!
The accent reduction process is very individual. It depends on several factors:
1. When did you start learning English? If you have started working on your accent in your teens, then it will be easier than if you have started in your forties, which can be more difficult.
2. Your hearing abilities and the ability to copy what you hear.
3. How much time and effort you are prepared to invest in accent reduction training.
4. What is your native language? For example, in our experience, people with a native language that has sounds similar to English can get rid of their accents faster. There are languages that are very different from English, such as Japanese and Chinese. For speakers of these languages, it might take a little longer to get rid of accents.
5. How focused you are during the lesson and how much time you invest in doing your homework.
6. How good your teacher is. There are not that many trained teachers who can help people to get rid of their foreign accents. There are many teachers who can help one to learn basic and intermediate English, but to improve pronunciation requires a qualified speech tutor.
7. On the method of training. Apps and books in the series Get Rid of your Accent have proven successful and helped thousands of people to reduce and eliminate their foreign accents over decades of time.
This is what students experience when working on their accents: First, I reduced my accent to the point where people understand me clearly. Then I reduced it again so that people can no longer tell what country I am from. This is the level most of the students want to get to. They are not pretending that English is their native language, but it is easy to have a conversation and it’s not all about them being French, Spanish or Russian. They are not put in a box.