Training your accent is a practice that many multilingual people use in order to adopt a native like pronunciation.

Before we get started on that, let us make sure that we know the difference between the two. Because accent and pronunciation are quite different.

Everybody has an accent, they vary from city to city, country to another and also from continent to continent. There is no such thing as a bad accent, just strong ones. However, bad pronunciation does exist.

Most bilinguals tend to worry about the way they sound. They know they pronounce words the way they should be pronounced but they still feel uncertain about their accent.

The video below will help you understand how accents work. Bear in mind that most difficult accents to understand are native ones. Still, it does’t mean that they are the best.

Accents

         So how do we train our accent?

the success of adult learners is usually due to the combination of three elements: high motivation, continued access to massive second language input, and intensive training in the perception and production of the second language speech sounds.

        Let us try and simplify it:

A natural and easy method for a productive second language learning and teaching is in essence building up auditory perception, and including techniques to help the learners find native-like pronunciation, turn it into a routine that will become like a second nature, and be able to transfer it to new articulations.

Among the techniques are multiple chorus repetitions under the belief that the simultaneous auditory input neurologically influences the spoken output, as well as the entire acquisition of a spoken

language. This aims to help the learner get a similar second-nature and flexibility, as the native speaker has, with the audio-motor goal-oriented capacity for expression and compensation for any lack of vocalization.

The method originally focuses on prosody (also known as language rhythm or tempo)in full sentences, then goes on to the segmental pronunciation and simultaneously combines the other teaching and learning (such as grammar, vocabulary, and pragmatics) with the prosody and pronunciation exercises. In this way, the prosody and pronunciation exercises should be fundamental, and the coincidental contents of these exercises ( words, phrases, syntax, pragmatics, etc.) will naturally sneak in into the learner’s minds without any supplementary training, together with the growing audio-motor habit of the prosody and pronunciation, as a result of the myriad of exercises on the same phrases.

 

Taken together, this may be seen as an approach of acquisition quite similar to that of a first language with alteration to the adult’s mental and physical resources and pressure, and the outcome for a driven learner can be almost as good as in the native language acquirement. The main remaining problem for the adult will be a lexical obstacle due to the late start in life, to which there is no noted fix.

To sum it up, all you need for your accent reduction is to follow these three steps:

  1. Finding the “perfect” target sounds : attentive listening while the teacher repeats the target phrase 5-10 times in as natural speaking style and rate as possible.
  2. Make this native-live formulation of phrases and tempo automatic using it in daily exercises.
  3. Make multiple repetition in chorus.

 

Apart from that, learning a language is simply child’s play!

 

child play