How to Reduce a Regional or Foreign Accent

An accent can make you sound intriguing or charming, it can identify you with people in your community, but an accent that is too strong can impair communication with others. A thick accent could hinder you when you apply for certain jobs or try to make friends. Though it can take years to perfect the sound of accent-free American English, taming a heavy accent is possible, and can be achieved on your own. Whether you speak English as a foreign language, or have a thick regional twang, by following the steps below, you can noticeably reduce your accent in a matter of months.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. First, make a tape recording of yourself speaking for about 5 minutes. For example, you can read an article from the newspaper into a microphone. Play it back and pay attention to the way you pronounce all the vowels and consonants.
   
   While you are talking, you often cannot hear your accent. But when you listen to yourself on a recording, the distorted sounds are more obvious.

2. Next, listen to the recording while watching a national broadcast on TV, or listening to a national radio show. Tv and radio hosts are chosen for their accent-free English, so they are a good standard to measure yourself against. Compare their pronunciation to yours. Notice what is different in terms of how they pronounce vowels, consonants, the stress on syllables, and the intonation patterns (the rise and fall of voice pitch).

3. Every week, practice by imitating the way people speak in movies and on TV and radio. Say the words out loud and try to match what the other person is saying. Record yourself, and play back the tapes to measure your progress.

4. Understand that in standard American English, there are 20 or so distinct vowel sounds. Even though we only use 6 letters of the alphabet to transcribe these sounds, our mouths can make many many more sounds. When people have thick accents, vowel sounds are a key issue.
   
   To become more aware of when you are making distorted vowel sounds, pay attention to how your throat constricts, the shape of your lips, and how wide you open your mouth when you pronounce vowels.

5. If you are foreign, you should also use English tapes to work on vowels, consonants, stress, and intonation. The tapes are divided into lessons that thoroughly teach you how to make the sounds. They also teach you the physical aspects of making sounds, such as how wide to open your mouth and where to place your tongue with respect to your teeth. These are things you cannot learn simply by listening to native speakers.

6. Every night, open a page in a dictionary, and pronounce all the words on the page using the phonetic symbols next to each word. There is a key in the front of the dictionary that explains which sound corresponds to each funny looking symbol. You may notice that the standard pronunciation differs from the way you naturally say some words.

7. Keep practicing by listening, speaking, and recording. Over time, you will develop an ear for accent-free speech, and you will be able to imitate it with ease.