Online Accent Softening Courses

Do you feel that your accent makes it difficult to communicate clearly? Do people often ask you to repeat yourself? Do you worry that you aren’t communicating your ideas as effectively as you could be?

Our Online Accent Softening Courses offer a clear, step-by-step process to help you find greater clarity in your speech by softening or neutralising your accent. These virtual classes are designed especially for non-native English speakers looking to modify the way they speak for professional or personal reasons.

Working in an encouraging group setting you’ll work through a structured plan to help you soften your access and improve clarity. You’ll start by exploring the physical process of making sound. You’ll practise the vowel and consonant sounds of the neutral British accent of Received Pronunciation (RP). Working through repetitive exercises you will retrain your mouth muscles to freedom and ease in making new sounds and pronunciation.

In this course you will:

• Learn rigorous articulation exercises designed to strengthen your speech muscles in order to achieve clear, flexible Received Pronunciation (RP) sounds more easily
• Understand placement and facial movements of the accent and how to alter these
• Explore a detailed breakdown of RP sounds to provide awareness of tongue and mouth movement as well as sound length
• Receive personal feedback on your speech and accent habits and techniques to help improve your long-term goals
• Work with a variety of texts to apply the techniques
• Begin to apply the new sounds to everyday speech and text

Please bring a text of your choice to this course. This could be anything: a short story, business report or email, magazine article or letter or an excerpt from a novel.

As with all of our online voice and accent classes, you will need:

• a device with a camera and microphone
• at least 2 metre squared to move in
• form-fitting clothes so you can move freely

A note on participation: Enhancing these skills requires practical and active participation. As this is an interactive, group class all students will be required to have their videos turned on.