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If you are a foreign born professional, we would like to hear from you. We are very interested in the story of how you are overcoming self-doubt and learning new skills.
We would be happy to feature your story in a future issue.
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trOur Mission is to help our clients transform their accents from a communication barrier to a charming cultural flavor using "listener friendly" speech.
Order Mastering Meaning from Lulu.com today online. For an autographed copy contact Judith Bergman through our web site. (Pay for autographed copies with check by mail or credit card phone order only). $19.99 + S & H and applicable sales taxes.
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We can help you engage all your senses in the process of reducing your habitual accent patterns.
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Triangle Speech Services is the private, professional practice of Judith L. Bergman, a licensed speech-language pathologist (SLP) who specializes in foreign accent and regional dialect modification and related communication skills. I offer customized, individual tutorials to corporate-sponsored and self-enrolled individuals who speak English fluently but with moderate to severe accents that create challenges and frustrations in the workplace.
Can this really be issue #71 of this monthly newsletter? The month of May has almost slipped past me. I look at the challenges my current clients are facing, I watch the ways that I try to help them and I think about what I can learn in the process. In this issue I want to speak in the first person and to work backwards from the "big picture" to its specific application to reducing features of a foreign accent.
The social media experts all advise small business owners NEVER to mail out marketing newsletters on a holiday weekend but I know that these monthly newsletters have a deeper purpose beyond marketing my micro-business, one that is really important to me.
This afternoon, the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, I attended the second "Celebration of Life" service at my Unitarian Fellowship in less than one month, with my grown son. Both services were to remember and honor women who were about 15 years younger than myself. One died unexpectedly in February from a misdiagnosed micro-coronary artery blockage and one two weeks ago and only five months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I've just returned from the reception followed by a nice meal with my son and then my daily three mile/one hour walk. I'm full of gratitude and full of awareness of the blessings of family, good health, work I love and my circle of caring friends and I'm wishing these blessings on all of my readers.
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We have all watched a child like this, totally absorbed in his play, not thinking about anything else and paying full attention to his present experience: seeing, hearing and feeling everything! The respected and wise spiritual teacher, Krishnamurti wrote: "If you listen both to the sound of the bell and to the silence between its strokes, the whole of that listening is attention. Similarly, when someone is speaking, attention is the giving of your mind not only to the words but also to the silence between the words." The Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, in his book True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart, emphasizes that in order to love in a real way, we must first learn how to be fully present in our lives. Then we can practice listening and looking deeply when we are with others. Catherine Ingram, a renown dharma teacher, in her book, Passionate Presence: Experiencing the Seven Qualities of Awakened Awareness writes about her teacher in India, the late H.W.L. Poonjaji who "awoke" in her "a clarity" and who "exhibited a possibility of living in the quiet center of one's being while remaining fully engaged in activity." (Intro. p.xiii)
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 | Paying Full Attention is the Key to Success in Accent Modification
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The voiced and voiceless "th" sounds in the and think respectively, simply do not exist in 37 of 40 of the world's major languages. My clients from India transfer the "'style" of very tense speech muscles and quick, clipped even pronunciation of syllables to English. They can easily copy the placement of "th" with their tongue tip poking out slightly between their teeth and they picture the printed "th" as they try to imitate a word but they are not using all their senses to hear that the sound that is emerging from their mouth is a tight, tense "d" as in "duh" for "the" or "t" as in "tank-you." They are not at all aware of the tension in their mouth as their teeth clamp down hard on their tongue tip preventing the slightly prolonged buzz native speakers hear when they say "the" "this," and "that" or the smooth flow of air (instead of the pop of air) we can feel when we say, "think" or "thanks."
The harder my clients try, the more tense they get! How can I help them? First I have them slow down and think of their practice as a foundation drill, not a rehearsal for actual conversation. They practice deliberately relaxing the muscles of their mouth, buzzing the voiced "th" and "blowing air" for the voiceless "th" in isolation. They close their eyes to FEEL these "strange" sounds and then blend them into syllables. With the online program version of the PESL (Pronouncing English as a Second Language), they WATCH the acoustic display of the sound waves and use this feedback to create a LINE for the buzz or the blowing. They are using all their senses to create and get used to establishing the voiced and voiceless "th." Later they will work to become aware of the incorrect patterns in actual conversation and to correct them quickly and easily until the new speech habit is formed.
After I listen to the online recorded practice which the program sends me daily (with the clients' permission) my "daily feedback emails" reinforce the in-person lessons and give encouragement with each small step of progress.
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We invite you to click on Triangle Speech Services to visit our informative website. Our goal is always to provide information, inspiration and encouragement since these are essential components of any successful learning experience. If you are seriously considering enrolling yourself or an employee in an individual tutorial with us or simply want to talk to us about our programs, please contact us through the contact page of our web site. 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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