American Accent Training

Why American Accent Training? With the proliferation of offshore operations in locations as diverse as India, the Philippines, South Africa and China, organisations need to ensure that their offshore employees are able to communicate effectively with customers and colleagues alike. A vital ingredient of successful communication for your overseas staff is their accent when speaking English.

The impact of First Language Influence (FLI) on an offshore employee’s accent can not be underestimated. American Accent training from Communicaid will help your overseas staff to minimise the influence of their first language while maximising their communication with your customers through a neutral accent. Whether through online American Accent Training courses, virtual American Accent training or face-to-face accent instruction, Communicaid offers scaleable American accent training solutions for your organisation’s offshore operations.

A Communicaid American Accent Training course will provide your offshore personnel with the ability to:

- Communicate more efficiently and effectively with customers and colleagues by reducing their

  first language influenced accent

- Build rapport and empathy and strengthen relationships with customers and colleagues

  through more successful communication

- Enhance your customer experience and satisfaction

Who should attend

A Communicaid American Accent Training course is suitable for:

- Front-line Offshore Customer Support Representatives

- Technical support staff

- Offshore in-country managers

- Offshore trainers, coaches and support personnel

Course Overview

All Communicaid’s American Accent Training courses are designed to meet the specific needs of our clients depending on their personal/organisational requirements and existing skills set.   An American Accent Training course includes:

- Rhythm and stress patterns

- Using intonation for attitude and emotion

- Pausing and breathing

- Relationship between spelling and pronunciation

- Accent familiarisation and extended listening practice

- Telephone training

Approach

Training is available worldwide via either face-to-face instruction or one of our many elearning and virtual learning platforms. Using a combination of published and Communicaid-unique materials and methodology, we design and deliver programmes that will meet the needs of you and your organisation.

We offer a variety of training formats for your American Accent Training course – from intensive, weeklong courses to extensive, modular lessons.  Appropriate formats will be discussed during your diagnostic consultancy.

American Accent Course Trainer

All Communicaid American Accent course trainers are native speakers with at least 3 years’ professional training experience in the offshore industry.  In addition to relevant academic and linguistic qualifications and experience, many of our American Accent trainers also possess considerable exposure and expertise in the professional world.

Your American Accent trainer will be assigned to you following the results of your diagnostic consultancy according to your objectives and areas of focus.  Detailed below is a sample profile of a member of our American Accent training team.

WR

BA Political Science
MSc Applied Linguistics, Teaching English as a Foreign Language
Graduate Certificate in Project Management

WR joined Communicaid in 2003. An American national, WR is an experienced Instructional Designer with experience of developing and delivering American Accent training in India, the Philippines, US, UK and China. In addition, WR serves as the project manager for Communicaid’s offshore development efforts.

WR is a Certified Tester for the Cambridge Business English Certificate, and has administered a host of other language-related examinations such as CELTA placement exams, Institutional TOEFL, Test of Written English, Cambridge CAE and FCE exams. This background is of immense value in the development of testing and assessment tools for Communicaid’s offshore programs.

American Accent – Facts about American Accent Training

Everyone speaks with an accent of sorts, but many times it is desirable to reduce the strength of that accent in favour of a “standard” or target pronunciation. English speakers with foreign language influence often are unable to create the standard phonemes (sounds) of English or speak with English-standard stress, intonation or rhythm. This is because those sounds, stresses and intonation patterns may differ in their native language, leading to a “strong” accent, or an accent heavily affected by the first language.

Accent training (sometimes called Accent Reduction or Accent Neutralization) is the process of reducing the affect of regional or first-language influence on the pronunciation of English. This involves three steps: Recognition, Reproduction and Repetition. First, sound awareness must be built. Oftentimes speakers don’t even realize that they have an accent and are unable to hear the difference between their pronunciation and standard pronunciation.

Training in Active Listening will help build this recognition. Once a person is able to recognize the different sounds, stress & intonation patterns and rhythms of English, he or she is able to move to the next step, reproduction. Learners must be trained to move the muscles in their face and mouth in a different manner in order to reproduce the new sounds. Finally, learners will only retain the new patterns through large amounts of repetition, training themselves (and their mouths!) through constant drilling.

World English
 
World English is a concept that posits that all the different variations of English around the world hold legitimacy; the way English is spoken in the UK, Ireland, the USA, Australia and even India and Singapore are legitimate forms of the same language. This means that when we talk about modifying or softening a regional accent, we mustn’t ever talk about training people to speak in the “right way”. Accents are relative. Some people may sound foreign to you when speaking, but you may also sound foreign to them!

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