Whenever I think about accent reduction, I think about how employers may assume that a interviewee from the southern United States is less intelligent than his or her counterpart from the North. Studies have backed this up. Of course, it doesn’t apply if the person doing the interviewing is a southerner themselves. Still, it does demonstrate how accent reduction can be an important part of career advancement. Fortunately for me, my high school speech teacher recognized that, and taught us Texas kids accent reduction early on. I’ve learned that she was right to do so.
ELT is a language school that has been around for a while. I remember hearing about them when I was getting my Master’s degree in ESL. Accent reduction is especially important for people who are doing business using their second or third language. Most of the time, we think of individuals who need to work on their reducing an accent in order to better speak English, and ELT certainly addresses that. However, there are two sides of this coin. ELT also offers courses such as
Chinese language training so that English (and other) speakers who are participating in the global marketplace can reduce their accents in Chinese as well. I know my Chinese accent is awful. Never mind that I only speak a few words–I might as well be telling a joke for all of the laughs that I get! So if you speak a second language and want to be more successful in business, definitely consider working on your accent, because it’s almost guaranteed that you have one.
