Can you really help reduce accent? I heard your accent is set when you are a child and can't be changed afterward.

While it is absolutely true that your pronunciation patterns are generally set by early adolescence, the individual range of capability varies tremendously. Some people are able to achieve almost perfect American accents with relatively little effort; others may never sound entirely perfect in their pronunciation, despite years of effort. The greatest benefits to communication, however, come from the gross improvements that can be made by almost anyone, rather than the subtle effects that only few ever master. Even in individuals who are unable to reach pitch-perfect accent in languages other than their native one are frequently able to make considerable changes with sufficient practice.

Practice, however, is the key. Repetitive drills and exercises are not always fun, but they have proven the single most effective method of reducing accent in most of our students. Pronuncian can provide you the tools: you have to bring the effort.

How do your recommendations work?

We start off with a base set of assumptions generated from the native language you report to us and the results of your initial assessment test. We are able to determine specific problems based on your ability to properly discern certain sounds and distinguish words with subtle sound distinctions between them. Using those results, we can "grade" your specific pronunciation issues by severity, and present you with a customized lesson list to study and practice to correct the issues. As you progress through the lessons, we use a combination of self-reported information (whether or not you feel you have comprehended the lesson), follow-up quizzes, and tracking your practice time on the site to dynamically update your pronunciation issues and their severity. As you successfully address issues, they are removed from the list, and any new problems you encounter are added.

Accent reduction! Isn't that racist? What's wrong with having different accents?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with having different accents! Pronuncian is fully committed to respecting different cultures and ethnicities, and in fact by the very nature of our ESL teaching background, we probably have more contact with other cultures than most people who level this criticism!

The problem is not accent itself, but communication, and in that light we view accent reduction as simply an extension of any other sort of language learning effort. Perfect grammatical knowledge and complete memorization of the English dictionary are of no account if the words and concepts learned by the speaker can't be pronounced understandably. A knowledge of English can't be considered complete until it can be spoken with total comprehension to the listener. Helping someone pronounce words properly isn't racist, it's educational!

Most students come to Pronuncian for the same reason they pursue any other course of education: they recognize it can be to their benefit. We're not foisting ourselves on anyone and certainly not suggesting that anyone "sounds funny..." students make their own decision as to whether or not their accent is an impediment to every day communication and address the situation accordingly. For many ESL students, this can be an uncomfortable and even embarrassing situation, and all we want to do is help.