Language - Relax Your Natural Speaking VoiceLanguage - Relax Your Natural Speaking Voice
Business Communication - Accent Reduction
Written by Travis James, www.relaxandspeak.com
It's ironic that many bilingual speakers have trouble with self confidence when relating to people in everyday conversation. At first, they feel less spontaneous, questioning if their saying a word in the correct pronunciation, and lack the self confidence when relating to new colleagues and new friends in both a personal and professional setting -- so, when it comes to their accent, their self confidence becomes a barrier for communicating expressively with no accent.
Why the barrier?
Because when we try harder to be understood, that mental and physical tension gets in the way of the voice and articulators functioning freely. The people we're talking with hear our accent almost immediately. We may have even noticed that they tend to put up their guard. Their reaction to our foreign or regional accent, immediately destroys the ability to communicate freely without a blow to our self confidence and therefore, without the need to over articulate to get the others attention off our accent and on to what we are saying. The harder we try, the worse the accent gets.
We go into our personal conversations wanting to be accepted by the other person. But we end up feeling that we are being judged unfairly by our foreign accent or language skills.
And because we've encountered this problem over and over in the past, our anticipation of hearing the dreaded question, "Where are you from?", remains in the back of our minds. We never even consider the possibility that it is possible to eliminate our accent or learn to speak with a new accent.
Accent assessment: Do you wish you could turn your accent on and off like a prerecorded telephone message? (depending on the situation?) What are you hoping to avoid?
Answer:
• Project a professional image
• Avoid others from hearing your accent
• Save time
In other words, you want people to focus on what you say, not how you say it.
It's time you took control of your self image and language skills and improve your accent right now.
Here's how:
Be willing to admit that not having an accent sometimes, would actually make you feel better about your ability to communicate. Be willing to challenge yourself and try something new. If you aren't open to sounding in a completely different way, you'll never have a chance to exercise the important techniques to lose your accent.
• Replace your old speaking voice with a professional sounding voice.
• Learn to enjoy the processing of improving yourself
• Build vocabulary.
• Avoid entering a conversation without knowing your pronunciation mistakes.
• Enter the conversation with confidence.
• Trade your old accent, with a new American Standard accent.
Any signs of tension and lack of confidence when you first enter a conversation, will only be exaggerated the more you try to over correct the pronunciation patterns. Relaxation and muscle coordination, (not overeagerness) helps you speak with less accent.
Monitor the words that contain the sound deviations, that your accent reduction trainer has identified as challenging. This will help you focus on your specific task and relax you during conversation.
When you tap into your ability to practice your accent mistakes, your ability to relax during the conversation improves, thus giving off the impression of self confidence.
Natural voice tone and self monitoring is the crucial secret to transforming the foreign or regional accent into a more neutral, American accent, that projects self confidence.
