I don’t believe that there is one correct way of speaking English. Each person’s voice is unique and tells other people something about who you are. Improving your English pronunciation is not about completely getting rid of your accent. It is about speaking clearly and feeling confident so that you are maximising the impact of your communications. 

For non-native speakers of English, pronunciation is a language skill, much like grammar. However, most people who have studied English do not have a good grasp of the English sound system. This is because most teachers don’t teach pronunciation in a systematic way. You may have noticed that the spelling of English is not very helpful when it comes to knowing how to pronounce words. On top of this, there are rules for how to connect sounds together, how to stress sentences and varied uses of intonation.

Improving your pronunciation can be very challenging to do by yourself. Many students I have worked with have lived in the UK for 20 years and while all other aspects of their English have become fluent, their accent has not developed to the same level. We process the sounds of a foreign language through the sounds of our mother tongue. This means that we are not actually hearing accurately. If you can’t hear it, you can’t imitate it. You actually have to change how you perceive what you hear through training your ears and retraining your brain before you can begin the work of improving how you speak.

Apart from how we look, our voice is our most distinctive feature. It is unique to each one of us . So working to change it often involves emotional and psychological challenges as well as linguistic ones. So in addition to a focussed linguistic approach, the fields of psychology, the neuroscience of learning, personal development and coaching techniques have all informed my approach. Communication is much broader than just pronunciation and classes involve examining what makes a great communicator.

Studies show that non-native speakers are judged on their accents. This is not fair and not your fault. This kind of discrimination often happens at a subconscious level, so while work is being done to address unconscious bias in the workplace and there has been a cultural shift towards acknowledging how an individual’s privilege affects how they see the world, English is still the world’s shared language and those whose mother tongue is English have a definite advantage. Working on your pronunciation won’t address these social injustices, but it might help to level the playing field in the meantime, thereby opening up opportunities that allow you to make a positive impact on the world we live in that you may otherwise miss out on, in turn opening up opportunities for others who may follow in your footsteps.

What I care about most is how you feel when you speak. This will have a bigger impact on how effectively you communicate than any other element. In fact, I believe that feeling good about ourselves is the key to finding fulfilment, joy and success in life.