Accent Mod Blog

I will soon start a trial run of accent modification training at a distance. I have a poor student-type (post-doc, actually, which is even worse than being an actual student, because it means you’ve already got your PhD but you’re still being paid peanuts) who is willing to be my guinea pig (an ironic twist of positions, since he’s likely experimenting on rodents all day). We’re going to use Sight Speed software with web cams and headsets on each end. I’ll be on my Mac and he’ll be on a PC. 

I really hope it works, because I would love to be able to work with clients around the world, and this is a potential way to make that happen.

I’m off to Italy for three weeks (totally unrelated to accent modification), so we’ll start in late July. If my client gives me permission, I’ll post a video clip of our working together here.

One of the things I try to encourage in my clients is a practice of mindfulness — this is a way of being self-aware, particularly when it comes to listening to how they sound and what they are doing physically to create the sounds they make.

I find that this is the key to change (probably for any change, but certainly for accent modification), and is the most difficult lesson to instill in my clients. People who I encounter as clients don’t pay a lot of attention to these physical aspects or to their outward sounds. 

I’m using Ellen Langer’s books: Mindfulness and The Power of Mindful Learning as tools to help explain mindfulness to clients. I have to remember to check in with them about being mindful, and have created a little checklist for my folks.