One of the biggest complaints people have about accent reduction and elocution is the prohibitive cost. Your average accent reduction school in London can charge anywhere between £100 to £300 per hour for a session with a qualified coach.
Lured by the appeal of the promises made by the school, students believe they will finally be able to transform their accent with the help of a professional. They sign up for a package of ten lessons. A few months and at least £1,000 later, there is barely a hint that their accent has changed. Disheartened, they give up and move on.
The CEO Effect on Teaching Standards
There is a specific reason why this happens. The industry naturally attracts busy professionals with corporate budgets. The schools know this. When a company CEO walks through the doors, they are often treated as a customer rather than a student.
This customer rarely has time for extensive drills. They are spending money and simply expect results to follow. Because the company is often footing the bill, or the cost is not a personal financial burden, the financial risk for the student is incredibly low. If a school’s primary clientele is not bothered by the cost of their lessons, the school begins to operate on a very lazy system where actual results no longer matter.
These students keep returning regardless of the teaching quality because they blindly trust the expert. This is a systemic problem in almost every industry where authority precedes performance, be it legal, property, medical, or consulting. Providers get away with delivering mediocre results simply because they hold the title of authority. The customer does not challenge them, and because the financial sting is absent, the cycle continues.
The Forgotten Professional
But what about the tier of customers below this? What about the working professional who makes a decent living but actually needs their investment to drive real and tangible results?
This is where the flaws of the industry are exposed. These students scrape together the funds, sign up for ten lessons, fail to see results, and inevitably leave. Yet, the schools easily stay afloat, relying on a revolving door of new and hopeful customers constantly coming in to replace the ones who leave in frustration.
What is Wrong with the Teaching Method?
The failure goes right back to how these schools cater to that top tier customer. Instead of adapting their teaching methods to drive real results, schools lean too heavily on theory and fail to understand the individual needs of a student.
Changing the way you pronounce words does not happen overnight. At the same time, it does not require an exhausting amount of daily concentration. What it does require is long term commitment. A package of five to ten lessons is great for grasping the fundamentals, identifying where you are going wrong, and learning what changes need to be made.
However, those few hours alone are highly unlikely to deliver the permanent results students desire.
This does not necessarily mean you need to buy endless lessons. It means you need a structured programme to help you internalise those changes independently over time. Schools are often afraid to implement these independent study strategies because they know their main clients are too busy to practise outside of class.
But as with any real transformation, a long term and consistent outlook is the only way forward. In my next post, I will break down exactly what needs to be done and how much time you actually need to invest to see the results you deserve.