How to Reduce Your Accent in English

Are you tired of people misunderstanding you or asking where you're from when you speak English? Maybe you've tried listening to lots of English speech to pick up a better accent, but haven't had much success. If you want to reduce your accent in English, there are a lot of methods that can help even if you've spoken with an accent for years.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Audio examples of English sounds
• Accent reduction workbook

1. Consider how you feel about changing your accent. Sometimes just your beliefs can make it hard to change your accent. Do you feel like you'll lose part of your identity if you lose your accent? Are you worried your friends will think you're trying to be someone different? Do you feel like you're making fun of people when you talk the way they do? Think about these things before you go further.
2. Choose an accent. Among native speakers of English, there are dozens of different accents. Many people, including native speakers, believe it's best to speak with a "neutral" accent that doesn't come from a specific region. These accents are what accent reduction tapes use. Just remember, even so-called neutral accents are still generally North American, British or Australian.
3. Speak slower and pronounce words more carefully. Beginning English learners often speak with less accent than fluent non-natives because beginners speak so slowly. Once you already speak freely, it's easy to forget to pay attention to pronunciation. You might also have habits that you know aren't correct, such as pronouncing "th" as "d." Try speaking just a little bit slower and pronouncing even the more difficult sounds. This alone can really reduce your accent in English.
4. Examine the differences between sounds in your language and in English. English has a lot of subtle vowel sounds. Pay close attention to these because there may be some that your native language doesn't use. Likewise, your language probably has sounds that English doesn't have. Be careful not to accidentally use these sounds in English. Letters can have different pronunciations in different languages, too. For example, the German "l" and the French "r" are pronounced differently from their English equivalents.
5. Study minimal pairs. These are pairs of sounds that non-native speakers of English often confuse, such as "sheep" and "ship" or "bad" and "bed." When you practice minimal pairs of vowels, exaggerate the sounds so you can really hear the difference. You can reduce your accent in English a lot by learning to pronounce these vowels correctly.
6. Practice intonation. Intonation is the rhythm of speech. The wrong intonation can express the wrong emotion. You might sound angry even when you don't feel angry. Listening and repeating is the best practice intonation, but accent reduction workbooks and textbooks for advanced ESL students usually provide written exercises that can also help.
7. Pay attention to how sounds combine in normal speech. In spoken English, sounds are often linked or blended together. For example, "Won't you?" sounds something like "Wonchoo?" This blending is a natural, correct part of English; it's not considered lazy speech. There are patterns to these links, or liaisons, and accent reduction workbooks provide explanations and exercises to help you understand them better.

Tips & Warnings

• Try speaking your own language with an English accent. Listen to the way English speakers speak your language and mimic them by exaggerating the most distinctive incorrect sounds and sound combinations. It may sound funny to you, but if you can transfer these sounds to your English, you'll be speaking correctly.
• Choose accent reduction material very carefully. Get recommendations from friends or English teachers. Ask a native English speaker to listen to some of the audio to check if the accent is acceptable. This is important because there are some accent reduction materials out there made by people with non-native accents. After all, if you want to reduce your accent in English, it won't help to learn another foreign accent.