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| TELL US YOUR STORYFeatured Article |  |
If you are a foreign born professional, we would like to hear from you. We are very interested in the story of how you have created a successful and prosperous life in the United States.
We would be happy to feature your story in a future issue.
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OUR PROGRAMS
Transforming accents from communication barriers to charming cultural flavors!
Individuals-Groups
Basic Level:
Compton P-ESL: 2008 Revision!
Specialized:
Medically Speaking
Regional Dialects:
Speak Standard, Too!
Idioms: MIAE (Mastering the Idioms of American English)
Advanced:
MEEC (Mastering Effective English Communication)
RULES for Medically Speaking (Rules for Using Linguistic Elements of Speech)
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We can help you reduce your accent step by step. Change is possible at any age!
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Triangle Speech Services is a small company of licensed speech-language pathologists (SLPs) who specialize in foreign accent and regional dialect modification and related communication skills.
We are all creatures of routine, loving the familiar and the comfortable. AND we all started out as infants and toddlers with an insatiable urge to explore. Ideally we "knew" that our parents or caregivers were always nearby and we felt safe crawling or toddling into new and unfamiliar territory. Our parents certainly had to watch us closely because if there was an open door, we WOULD most certainly go through it in a flash! So, now that many of us are parents ourselves and, in some cases, with grown children, what has happened? Why do we often resist opportunities to explore, to change and to grow? Why don't we walk through a door when it opens? And what does all this have to do with improving our spoken communication, anyway?
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Self-Acceptance Can Overcome Your Resistance to Change Paradoxically, being able to look at oneself, one's "skill sets" and one's strengths and weaknesses is much easier to do from a "platform" of self-acceptance. Many years ago I spent a lot of time in personal growth workshops, even spending an entire year (1988) as a short term resident a the Kripalu Yoga Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. I recall a workshop exercise in which each person had to look in a mirror and sing a short song that had words something like, "I love myself the way I am, and yet I know that I can always grow and change." And I remember being in tears when I heard these song lyrics by Libby Roderick (1988), "How could anyone ever tell you you were anything less than beautiful? How could anyone ever tell you you were less than whole?" Now I know that achieving true self-acceptance -- just as we are -- is truly required before we can be comfortable and feel okay about "walking through the door" and seizing the opportunity to learn new skills, to grow and to change. Otherwise we will feel that we must have something "wrong" or "defective" if we need to change or if someone else tells us that we need to improve a skill. |
 | Finding the Courage to Explore and Change: Some Helpful Advice |
 So how can you recapture this "intrepid" (brave) drive to explore and
grow the way this baby is crawling, presumably toward the photographer?
1. Change patterns of thought that are self-defeating. Remember: same choices, same results! First, you are NOT your speech; you are NOT your accent even though we all know that --just like the clothes we wear--our speech can appear to "define us." We've written extensively on our website and in these newsletters about the origins of accents and why "listener friendly" speech is possible without losing the "charming cultural flavor" of your origins which DO in part define who you are. Secondly, you CAN grow and learn new skills at any age.
2. Examine your life, write down the problem, turn it into a positive statement of what you want and figure out the first step to take.
3. Find a teacher, mentor, tutor or coach. "You don't have to do it all by yourself," writes business coach Vickie Bevenour.
4. Take small steps. Changing speech patterns involves "rewiring the mind and body" and "the brain transforms when we repeatedly practice a skill," according to Bo Forbes, a clinical psychologist and author of Yoga For Emotional Balance.
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If you are seriously considering enrolling in individual training, don't hesitate to contact us and schedule your free thirty-minute phone consultation. We invite you to click on Triangle Speech Services to visit our informative website. Managers, forward this newsletter to your international "stars" who might be interested in this professional training opportunity. We are looking forward to hearing from you.  Sincerely,
Judith L. Bergman M.A. CCC-SLP
Speech-Language Pathologist and Corporate Speech Trainer
Founder & Director of Triangle Speech Services |
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