People ask me all the time how and why I got into the accent modification field, so I thought I’d write a bit about it here. I taught college and community ESOL for about ten years. Some students would have really strong accents and others would wind up sounding almost native like. I have a Master’s degree in ESL teaching, but the concept of how to teach pronunciation was never addressed. So when students asked me what to do about accents, I was clueless as how to help them. “Just listen,” was my not very helpful (yet quite accurate) advice. When I started teaching Italian, the same thing would happen — some students would have strong American accents and some would sound like accurate Italian speakers. This made me start to wonder more about accent and started me on a few years of research which culminated in my taking the Compton Method training program.
It does all boil down to listening, but my job is train people not only how to listen, but how to feel what they are doing physically (with their mouth, with their breath) and tie that in to what they hear when they make sounds accurately. Having said that, I do find that my clients aren’t tuned in to the sounds of language, and they are highly represented in “introverted” types of careers — math, science, engineering. I’m a total extrovert and love to hear regional and national accents. Sometimes I get into trouble because I unthinkingly start to mimic whoever I’m talking to!
So, the whole listening and mimicry was a natural for me, and it’s easy for me to teach people how to do it, but the challenge is getting them to consistently do it and change the way they behave and engage in a speech interaction. It’s fascinating work and I am so glad that I found a way to make a living doing something that I love. I am constantly learning about other cultures, about language, and about communication, and constantly improving the service I offer my clients. I have to say that I do have a dream job.
