It all starts with "phonetics" (symbols that are supposed to be a universal sign for specific sounds). After identifying which sounds in your speech give you away as a non-native speaker, we work to adjust those sounds. This starts with mastering making that sound as well as understanding when to use it. After establishing a strong foundation in the phonetics of the American accent, we'll move on to advanced reading exercises outside of materials (e.g. books, articles) to bridge the gap from controlled practice to speaking. If you want to know more, read this blog post.

It depends on a variety of factors. These factors are: What’s your starting point How many classes a week are you taking? How consistently are you practicing outside of class? Are you re-watching the class recordings? Are you recording yourself as you’re practicing and listening to yourself and other native speakers very consciously? To learn more, read the blog post dealing with this subject.

Learning a language is certainly not easy. However, you need to know that when most of us learned English in school, our teachers didn’t teach us / didn’t know themselves, how to properly teach us the American pronunciation. Instead, we learned speaking English in their accent. In the process of accent reduction, you will be learning “phonetics” which will help you understand the proper mechanics of how the American sounds should be said as well as where to place them. There are a lot of rules and patterns we can follow to help us. At the same time, some of it will be vocabulary (i.e. memorization) as well.

These tend to be the main reasons: wanting to blend in with native speakers speaking with confidence being able to communicate clearly overcome subconscious bias in personal / work life

Use the contact form to send me an email to book a 1hr A La Carte Session to start your accent reduction journey. Note, this session can only be booked after contacting me. If you'd like to just get your feet wet, ask more questions about the process and the materials, I recommend booking the Clarity Call instead.

We encounter and also have subconscious bias in most parts of our lives. To give you an accent related example, every country has varieties of accents. At the same time, there is usually an “accent” that’s considered the “proper” way of speaking. Often, people in bigger cities will speak like this more commonly than people in rural areas. As a result, when people from cities listen to people from rural areas speak, they might (subconsciously) associate their way of speaking with a lack of intellect which, of course, is not justified. This exists everywhere, not just in the US. The UK can be quite a vivid example of this because they have a very large variety of dialects and even native speakers can sometimes have a hard time understanding each other, depending on how strong the dialects are. (e.g. London vs Scotland)

Students must request to cancel/reschedule at least 24hrs before or session will count as completed and cannot be refunded. The only exception to this is if students paid for a 10 session package. Then you can cancel up to 12hrs before the session time.

In short, it does not matter. I have worked with students from all over the globe but not from every single country. Even beyond that, inside of one country, the accents will differ based on geography, social background, education, etc. However, the accent reduction process is the same, regardless of which accent you have. The sounds we need to start with or the kinds of mistakes you are making might be different from certain accents but all that means is that we'll be attacking the sounds from the angle that makes the most sense based on how you're deviating from American.

All classes are conducted online via Zoom.

I strive to respond to everbody within 24hrs, within my office hours. Office hours: Mo - Fri: 9am - 4pm PT, Sa: 10am - 2pm PT