Ask HN: How to Do Accent Reduction? I am brown guy.I have been in usa for 2 years.One problem I have is that i got this thick south asian accent and also get fluent speaking english because during internship at the end thats only feedback i got from my manager that you are techinaclly sound but you do lack communication skills.So reason for asking the question here is to get advice and resources to solve my problem:) |
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Watch more American movies.
That's how you end up intending to say "Than you very much" in French, but actually saying "Thanks, nice ass!"
Not that I know from personal experience or anything.
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There’s nothing wrong in focusing on accent reduction. But I’d suggest focusing on proper spelling and grammar while writing too. Most technical communications happen in writing (be they on email or chat) than through speech (though speech is very important in interviews and presentations, for example). Your return on time invested would be much higher focusing on writing and getting the proper use of English. That could also be a foundation for improving your speech.
Also, don’t get disheartened by the feedback. Learning another language well as an adult is hard. And English is harder (compared to some other European languages) to get right unless you’ve been exposed to the proper form for a long time. Give yourself a year or two and measure your progress regularly so that you can know how far you’ve come.
"I am a brown guy. I have been in the US for 2 years. One problem I have is that I have a thick south Asian accent. [and also get fluent speaking English because during internship at the end] The only feedback I got from my manager is that I am technically sound but lack communication skills. So the reason for asking the question here is to get advice and resources to solve my problem."
Shadowing is basically just playing audio and repeating what you hear as soon as you hear it. You can do it by just watching Netflix/youtube. The ideal setup is a pair of headphones and microphone that plays your own voice back into your headphones to help you hear yourself.
Focused shadowing sessions will increase your awareness of sounds that differ in your current spoken voice and your goal.
One more thing: Watch out for 'small' mistakes in your writing. No space between a period and the next sentence. Pronoun 'I' not being capitalized. Spelling mistakes. They tend not to cause communication problems but people may label you as having weak English because of them.
There are 2 main factors to focus on: Pronunciation, and tone.
Pronunciation is fairly straightforward; you can look up or listen to how words are pronounced to get a better understanding.
Tone is the tricky one. You need to learn how to correctly raise and lower your voice for individual syllables. Most native speakers have this hardwired in their minds, so you need to practice (a lot) to get the hang of it.
As an exercise, listen to some YouTube videos or podcasts with transcriptions. With one colored pen, highlight the syllables where the speaker raises their voice, and with another pen, highlight the syllables where they lower their voice. Then, practice speaking the sentence with the same tone.
It's a lot of hard work, but it's a skill that can indeed be learned.
To make my accent more "standard" I use a combination of the Elsa Speak app (https://elsaspeak.com/) and the American Accent Training by Ann Cook that comes with audio exercises that you can download. I can't praise the latter enough.
Changing your accent is long journey that requires dedication, but I'd say that with my app + book combo I'm seeing steady improvements.
For example, the wife of a friend is from Turkey and is not very proficient in German, so we talk in English. The first few times it was really tough for me to understand anything, until I figured out how the Turkish accent works. For example, the Turkish accent replaces th -> t, e.g. "tank you" instead of "thank you", which was really confusing for me since I'm used to German ESL speakers who replace th -> s instead.
Without trying to be mean, your writing could use work too. Practice writing more formally: have instead of got (mostly); capitalize things that need capitals, like English and I; spell check; full sentances with subjects and verbs; a space after sentances.
Also, it's apparently an easy enough mistake for a native speaker, too. :) English spelling is hard!
- Write simple small sentences.
- Put a space after your periods.
- For engineering communication use white-space liberally. This last one is not standard English writing style, but I love it for work communication.
And then drill and drill some small point you want to work on until its second nature. You can do something similar with shadowing to. listen to a section of speech and try to say it at the exact same speed and intonation as the example. find the places where you trip up and drill them. Stand from the end of the sentence and work backwards getting more and more connected speech.
other than that, i recommend watching English-speaking news, reading up on enunciation, copying what you hear, recording your voice and comparing it to what you're repeating, etc.
Repeat, repeat, repeat.
> also get fluent speaking english because during internship at the end thats only feedback i got
As an example, I'm not sure if your saying that you do speak fluently or don't here.
The hard truth before I offer reassurance, I would have a very hard time working with someone who wrote a message like the one you typed above.
Reassuringly, you can definitely improve your grammar with some classes. I've seen people go from far worse then your writing to totally fluent. Good luck!
Find an english song you like and know very well, record yourself singing it, it's gonna sound horrible trust me, listen to it, you're going to notice all the tiny mispronunciations because you know the song very well, and you also know how to pronounce it correctly for the same reason.
Now you have a good reference to work with, pay close attention and start fixing little by little.
It worked for me, maybe because I like playing guitar and signing, but I guess it can be done with other recordings as well, like TV shows or speeches.
It seems like it would be hard for someone new to a language to even discern an accent. You have my congratulations for even becoming conversant in more than one language. I took several years of Spanish and still cannot carry on a conversation or read much of anything in it.
Nouns in English require an article unless they are:
- proper nouns (names)
- pronouns (he, him, her, it)
- indefinite plural nouns ("nouns require...")
- collective nouns ("pizza is delicious" "foliage is best viewed in autumn")
I am _a_ brown guy._I have been in _the_ [US] for 2 years._One problem I have is that [I] [have] this thick south asian accent (and also _I need to_ [become] _more_ fluent speaking [E]nglish), because during _my_ internship, at the end, that's _the_ only feedback _I_ [received] from my manager, that "[Y]ou are [technically] sound, but you do lack communication skills." So _the_ reason for asking the question here is to get advice and resources to solve my problem _with communication skills. _:)
I would look into if there is some similar audio based course in your native language that targets English.
My experience learning Spanish and French in classroom settings was that once most people see a word written, they fall back into a way of pronunciation that leans toward their native language and causes an accent. Audio only courses can help break that pattern.
The Pimsleur method should also help your use of “a” and “the” feel more natural which is going to help with your rhythm when speaking. Even as a native speaker, if I drop “a” and “the” I’m going to sound strange.
Get the basic vowel sounds right: maybe you need to lengthen/shorten some of them. That should immediately make you more understandable.
Also, there's a big difference between accent and grammar. Make sure you work on both, because one without the other will still cause problems.
Any English school or coach can also help.
Often a HR 'initiative' or management whim to buy a product or hire someone dedicated to this, but it's got to have management momentum.
Take a call centre - easy to add into feedback, measure, monitor, should gel with on-the-job performance, the feedback often with a dedicated QA or QA team providing input.
Take a (classic, bigorg) development team - not so much regular communication (spoken), and what there is gets stuffed into conference calls and [fake] 'scrums'. Those that already have good communication (and technical) skills do OK, those hired for technical skills (with language and softer skills taking a back seat, as when a role is created or becomes free then filling it with someone reasonably up-to-speed becomes the priority - I know this is setting yourself up to fail - and 'language' a long term improvement target - if someone's gone through 10 years+ of English language education I don't think 2 hours coaching per week, now with a fulltime job, perhaps getting married, social life, perhaps kids, other hobbies, is going to work but for all but the most committed).
It's a solved problem. What's not solved is banging management head against the wall with (long term) bad-fit hires OR giving staff a proper amount of time (10 hours pr week, company time, personal time as they choose) to allow them to develop as a long term fit with the company.
And on development conference calls - so so so many times dominated by someone in a position of seniority or more fluent language to the extent no one else gets a chance to get practice of making a substantial and cooperative (i.e. discuss, not just blast what's been done) contribution and having a discussion (going round "what's achieved, what are you doing, any roadblocks" doesn't count).