Do you want to lose your accent?

So, I know you have a lot of goals for your English.

You want to stop making the same mistakes again and again. You want to be more fluent and speak more quickly. You want to use natural, advanced vocabulary. And you want to lose your accent and sound like a native English speaker…..

Well I want to talk about that last one today because I’m not sure that getting rid of your accent should be one of your goals. Stay with me here 😉

Your accent is part of your identity and it is beautiful!

Seriously, I’ve taught English learners from all over the world and I absolutely LOVE the huge range of accents and how lovely English sounds in different accents. (And let’s not forget that even native English speakers all sound completely different depending where they’re from!)

The only issue with your accent is when it impedes communication. What I mean by that is when your accent makes it difficult for the listener to understand what you’re saying.

But the good news is you can fix that! It’s mainly about adjusting specific sounds that you might struggle with because of your native language.

Let me give you a few examples:

• Spanish speakers often struggle to pronounce ‘would’. They pronounce it ‘good’ so that’s one for them to practise because it can affect communication
• Arabic speakers mix the /p/ and /b/ sound which can lead to miscommunications so they should work on that one
• The South Koreans I’ve taught had trouble with /f/ and /r/ so those are examples of sounds for them to practise
• French speakers often miss the /h/ sound at the beginning of words so they need to be aware of that

I could go on and on but there are too many accents and nationalities to cover!

So why don’t you check for yourself? All you need to do is a simple search….

Once you know which sounds are tricky for you, you can keep working on those.

Another thing that will make sure you’re understood in conversations is using the correct word stress and sentence stress.

Well that’s easy to fix too!

A good dictionary (even an online one) will tell you where the word stress is. Just look for the ‘ and the syllable that follows is the one you need to say strongest.

So, in the example below, photography would be pronounced PhoTOGraphy, with the stress on ‘tog’.

And if you need some help on which words to emphasise in a sentence, you can watch my video lesson on sentence stress.

So there you go. Lots of tips to make sure that your accent is clear so that you can have successful English conversations. But that doesn’t mean you need to lose your accent. Speak English like a native English speaker, but sound like yourself!

What do you think about this perspective? And did you find the tips useful? Let me know in the comments below 👇 I’d love to know your thoughts!