Trust is Key
For many of you who want to reduce foreign or regional accents, one of the main motivations to do so are underlying feelings of embarrassment, self-consciousness, and shame about the way you speak. Perhaps you have been frequently asked to repeat yourself when the listener did not understand what was said the first time. Often, you are asked where you are from, leading you to think that people are noticing how you are speaking, rather than paying attention to what you are saying.
By enrolling in an accent reduction program, it is very important for a sense of trust to be established between learner and teacher. In order to learn and make progress, learners need to feel that they are in a safe environment and that it is OK and natural to make mistakes. As human beings, making mistakes is at the heart of learning something new. For some, it is intimidating to change long established speech patterns. Learning and practicing new speech patterns can flourish when there is a well-established sense of trust between learner and teacher. Once a student experiences increased confidence when speaking with their teacher during lessons, this confidence will begin to carry over into their daily lives.
