Accent, Speech Problem or Both?

By Ela Britchkow, Speech Therapist, American Accent Specialist

Having a strong accent and a speech condition can interfere with accent neutralization.

One time, I was working with a husband and wife team who were originally from India. Soon during our first lesson it became evident that the husband had a frontal lisp...

(protruding his tongue tip when saying the /s/ sound). In this case we needed to work on exercises to retrain his tongue pattern for the /s/ productions in addition to working on his accent. Sometimes people have a lateral lisp so that the /s/, and “sh” sounds sound slushy. Since I am a speech therapist I am able to help my clients to produce these sounds correctly in their own language as well as in English.
Another time I was attending a marketing meeting and a young man approached me after finding out I am a speech therapist. His family was originally from China, but he was American born. He told me that people are constantly telling him that he is difficult to understand because of his accent. After hearing him speak for a few minutes, it was clear that his speech sounds were fine, but at the end of every phrase and sentence he spoke, his pitch went up. We call this uptalk. I spent a few minutes with him showing him how to say the last word of a phrase and sentence with his pitch going downward. After practicing for a few minutes, he was able to do this and was thrilled.
Another time, one of my clients was having difficulty in speaking louder when making presentations. I was able to show her a few techniques to speak louder and improve her presentation. Increasing your vocal volume can be complicated as I need to find out the reason for it. Frequently it is a matter of learning how to use your breathing to support your voice production.
 
If one of the following speech conditions applies to you, correction will optimize your speech communication and accent reduction. As a speech and language pathologist, I can help you with all of these issues. - Ela Britchkow, Speech and Language Pathologist

To read more about Speech Conditions:

Thanks for reading my post about having both an accent with a speech condition.  If you have any questions let me know.

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By Ela Britchkow, Speech and Language Pathologist ©2018 Ela Britchkow
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