Do you speak with an accent? What we believe: accents are beautiful, quirky, tell a story and endear us to people. What we also believe: difficult-to-understand accents can detract from what we’re trying to convey. Accents can also hold us back in our careers if...
Where do accents really come from? Why do people even have an accent? Formal language classes focus on reading and writing from the first day of class. This causes us to input what we know about reading and writing on the new language before we even hear it. That...
You Speak a Second Language with an Accent. So What? My Spanish-speaking client arrived for her in-office Corporate English Training lesson and flopped into her chair, clearly exasperated about something. “Why can’t I order a regular coffee like everyone else at...
When I first moved to Mexico, I made my friends order for me at restaurants. Why would I do this when I spoke Spanish? It’s simple. I had an English accent, and speaking with an accent made it hard for native Spanish speakers to understand what I was saying....
As a language training company, we get this question constantly: “How do I approach my employee about their accent? It seems as though everyone has a hard time understanding him/her because of his/her heavy accent.” In fact, I got a call like this just the...
