Accent reduction is an area where it’s not uncommon for students to experience extreme frustration while trying to improve their accent. Despite spending large amounts of money, students often don’t achieve anywhere near the desired results. This is because, when it comes to the way we articulate sounds, there are two distinctly different things we need to consider: understanding phonetics VS improving your accent.
Most schools provide their students with teaching materials to aid in their understanding of English phonetics and the speech mechanisms of the English language. This usually involves learning the International Phonetic Alphabet, vowel sound charts, vowel sounds, consonant sounds, syllable stress, etc. Initially, students may be impressed. They see all these methodically prepared charts and diagrams with detailed explanations. They do a few drills with the teacher and are convinced that they must already be achieving results.
However, six months later, no one can tell that they’ve ever undertaken any accent improvement. The student has spent a considerable amount of money trying to improve their accent and now feels like giving up. So, what’s happened?
This is a common situation that I observed when I first started teaching Japanese students at a pronunciation school in Tokyo many years ago. The founder of the school came from an engineering background and was very proud of the work she had put into her teaching materials. The attention to detail was impressive. However, most students weren’t actually improving their accent or pronunciation. Instead, they were just becoming experts in the theory and understanding of phonetics. Like anything in life, theory is one thing, and the practical application to actually make it work is another.
There’s a huge gap between understanding English phonetics and the actual practical application of improving your accent. This comes down to providing relevant drills and exercises that will genuinely help the student make progress. For example, if a student has a thick accent due to articulating sounds from a specific region of the mouth, studying linking and the contraction of sounds isn’t going to help them.
It really comes down to honesty from both the teacher’s and the student’s perspectives. I feel that many schools and teachers just have a generic teaching method they apply to everyone, regardless of the specific problems each student encounters. The student develops an understanding of phonetics, but are they really improving their accent?