Accent Reduction
Canada is increasingly becoming more diverse. People come to our country from cities from all over the world. For some, they feel their accent is a barrier to communicating with others in the way that they would like. This may hold them back from socializing with others as much as they would wish to, or may make it difficult to give presentations at their workplace with confidence. It is important to note that some speech sounds that we use in English are not found in some languages around the world, just as there are some speech sounds in other languages that we do not use in English. These sounds in particular can make it challenging for people to speak at ease in English. A speech-language pathologist can analyze the speech sounds in a native language, and compare those sounds to English, to help develop a personalized program for accent reduction. These programs are not designed to eliminate an accent, but to help the individual communicate more clearly English sounds. The goal is to help the person increase their ability to pronounce English sounds, and develop confidence that they will be well understood by others.